On Display

One of the strange aspects of working at my job....is the fact that people both children and adults, love to stop and watch me do my job.

Whether it's cleaning cages or feeding the animals or fishing out dead fish.

There's some sort of fascination involved in watching me do my job. lol.

I'll have customers stand there for five, ten, even fifteen minutes watching me do my job.

Which kinda makes me feel self conscious on occasion.

Usually if it's feeding animals I don't really care. 

But tonight, I had to close at work. 

And because my fellow closing coworker has a bit of an allergy to feathers and fur... (which why work in a pet store if you're allergic to animals??) I volunteered to help clean out the cat cages.

The problem with doing this at night, is that the store is still open usually when we try to do an evening cleaning. 

Which means we have to kinda wait for a lull with customers and slip inside, scoop litter and wipe down cages, and slip out again before the customers come.

Tonight wasn't one of those nights where I could slip in and out without interruption.

A group of girls actually came in to stare at the cats for a while just as I was getting ready to go in and clean. So I gave them like five or ten minutes before politely telling them that I needed to do the evening cleaning and to let me know when they left the cats.

Like most customers....they didn't let me know, but I was nearby and watching, and so I slipped in basically as they were leaving.

But....they didn't leave.

Instead the girls kinda made a camp outside of the cat adoption center. -Since it's basically just a tiny room with a big glass wall for people to look in through.

And spent the next maybe 20 minutes just watching me work.... 

Normally I don't mind being watched.

Today I did.

I think in part because a couple of the girls had their phones out, and I couldn't tell if they were taking videos/pictures of me or of the cats or if they just happened to be texting in an angle that looked like they were taking videos/pictures....

And I really wasn't in the mood to be on display or to randomly end up somewhere on internet land as a picture or a video. *exhales* 

The second part of my slight anxiety of being watched over, is that we currently have a grumpy cat in the adoption center. Where she's super sweet and happy and playful inside the cage, but once she leaves the cage....

She becomes a hissy growly little monster. 

As this particular cat doesn't like the other cats, and seeing them puts here into 'defensive attack mode' Basically if one of the other cats looks at her weird, she'll hiss and strike at them, even though the other cats aren't doing anything in their cages and she's safe enough if she'd just ignore them. She doesn't need to go all crazy.

But she does go all crazy.

Crazy enough that I'm rather wary of trying to get her out from underneath the adoption cages without protection. Because I don't want my arm all clawed and bitten up.

So far, this particular kitty has been more bark than bite. But I wasn't going to take chances.

I was hoping since I had an audience, that I wouldn't need to resort to the bite glove and broom.

-bite glove to protect my hand (we only have one randomly) and the broom to shoo the cat out from under the cages so I could grab the cat with the bite glove. *exhales*

So I purposely saved that particular kitty for last.

Hoping that after watching me clean the other cat cages (there were four other cages today that had cats in them.) the people who had gathered to watch me do my job would get bored and leave.

They didn't. I think I ended up with like 10 people watching me. 

*exhales* 

Which meant that they were still there as I reluctantly opened that last cage. 

Like usual the kitty moved out, and started hissing up a storm with the other kitties, though thankfully she didn't actively try to strike at them today.

However, I was unable to coax her back into her cage....

So I had to go grab the bite glove. 

Figuring I would try to just use the glove at first to get her out, as I'm pretty sure someone in my watchers would react badly to seeing me using a broom to shoo the cat out. 

Thankfully, I was able to use the glove to first get the cat out from under the cages, and then use said glove to grab the kitty by the scruff of the neck and get it back into the cage with no further hassle. 

Dunno what my audience thought, but once the 'show' was over most of them finally left to go check out the rest of the store. while others who'd been waiting for me to finish went in to see the cats closer.

*exhales*

Needless to say it was a bit tense for me doing my job while they were watching.

I didn't like it.

Usually I don't mind.

But today I minded. And it totally got me tense. *exhales*

Oh well, at least the customers got a bit of entertainment today right?? ;) 

Until you next read these words;

I'll be watching the leaves.

Enjoy the day!

-Sarnic Dirchi