Hey everyone, not sure if this is the right place to ask, but my mom just told me to put a notice in the newspaper hoping someone would see it and volunteer. The entire Off the Press staff is going on a five day sabbatical to Tuvalu this week but we can’t take our office cat, Nico, with us so we’re going to need someone to watch him. Don’t worry, this will not impact our rigorous journalism, and there will still be a relevant, thoroughly researched, 600 word journalistic masterpiece next week.
Nico is a six year old tabby cat who’s up to date on vaccines and doesn’t take any medications. He does have a bit of a wobble because his brain is all funky, but he’s still spry and loves to chase things around the office. Just make sure he doesn’t crash into any table legs because sometimes he gets enough momentum that they just break, and then papers will go everywhere. We wouldn’t want you to mistake them for common raspberries because he doesn’t like them and will scratch you if you put those in his bowl. We won’t be able to be in contact with you at all during the week so you’ll have to do it yourself.
Another cute quirk with Nico is that his great-grandfather was a dragon from Montenegro, but not a cool giant one. The dragon was pretty much the same size as Nico and did a lot of hissing, but had weird scales, wings, and talons. Anyway, the point is that he might just start speaking in odd mythical languages, but it just means that his great-grandfather’s spirit is passing by and briefly possessing him to make sure he remembers where he came from.
Nico is venomous and will protect our office at all costs. A little love bite could lead to a bad case of Despotellis.
All right, we won’t hide from it anymore. At some point, you’ll have to clean his litter box. This is a little more involved than your average cat. While Nico is descended from a dragon, he’s also more closely descended from a ukulele-playing rabbit (all his other ancestors are conventional cats) so he really likes making music. The problem is that he only plays the ukulele in his litter box and he’s very bad at it on account of the fact that he is a cat. So you’ll need earplugs and you’ll have to steal his ukulele while he is in between songs. If he starts trying to sing along, even the earplugs won’t save you, so you’ll have to get 3M PELTOR Optime 105 HP Earmuffs to survive. After that, it’s just scooping like normal.
We think you’ll find that Nico is very affectionate and shares our passion for good journalism. He often curls up on our office couch and you’ll see a few singe marks where a little bit of fire came out of his nose while he slept. He is his great-grandfather’s great-grandson after all. Nico loves pets and will want to sit on your lap and purr. Let us know if you’re interested because, by the time this article is published, we will be at the airport so hopefully you turned right to the Off the Press article when you pick up the newspaper. We pay $3 per day because our accountant runs a tight ship and there’s never extra money for anything.
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