DEPUTY CATS

On the quiet cost of being the person who carries things out

Olive says: Mom, I want to talk to you about what’s happening in Warriors. Right now, there is a new Deputy Cat. And then she summarizes the plot centering a dead deputy cat before the one currently in charge, several apprentice cats, a handful of clans, clan leaders, full moon rituals, and a non-political medicine cat (oh the respite!) who also will die.

It’s Wednesday, we’re at the Italian place because I historically hate cooking – (or maybe just the dishes?) – and I’m in a bad mood because – wouldn’t you know, if you too have a mind-reading child – I got a job and lost it on that very same day.

The job was an arts-related job that I should have been grateful to get. Everyone knows that arts admins go to art school and work their way up the ranks of organizations that hire only people in the network of art people, and though I don’t think of myself this way, I’m certainly an outsider.

But I wasn’t grateful. I was stressed. I was going to be the deputy of the deputy cat, but when I met the clan leader along with the deputy cat in the third round, it was clear they were not on the same page. In short, the organization’s mission wasn’t clear to me, and I would have been responsible for communications around the murky mission: a dangerous position.

When Olive tells me these kinds of things, they never seem coincidental. I hadn't told her much about the job, only that I might have one soon and that it would change our schedules a bit. I hadn't had any phone calls around her, and I hadn't told her that things were looking good before they went south. She just looked me dead in the eye, over pasta, and told me, line by line, that her new book foretold the very same plot.

“What kind of person wants to be a deputy cat?” Olive asked, noting that it would be an especially bad position after the prior cat dies.

There was such wisdom in her question, along with a quick alignment with the desire to be fully in charge. We talked a lot about it, without mentioning motherhood: what characters from other stories might be deputies, and what kind of personality traits would signal this kind of character.

Underneath this conversation, there was a sinking feeling that was settling in.

Are mothers essentially deputy cats? Is this why so many of us feel so vulnerable? I'm saying this independent of household arrangements or who makes the money and who stays home. Mothers, it seems to me, are to be more likely to be the carrier-out-ers, high stress jobs with no glamour and the exceptional honor of being first in line to solve impossible things. We are the one who has to hold things together.

One could say that the ability to hold crumbling things together was why I had gotten the job. But one could also say that I had lost it for the same reason.

I made so many different versions of the same Excel spreadsheet that had my hours and the four pick-up and drop-off times I’m responsible for in the car pool, and no matter what colors I coded them, I couldn’t make the ask seem reasonable and not overly complex. Like: great, I accept this job, but I have to leave at 3:30 on Monday and alternate Fridays, and also on Wednesdays I can’t get in until 9:30 am, and I have to leave at 1 pm for early release. Right? That sounds too crazy.

So I tried another tactic: the simple truth.

Thank you, I said, for this offer, I’m excited. I do however, have a family commitment that would require me to limit core hours for collaboration between 10-3 pm. Will that work? If so, I’d love to accept.

This is too good to be true, I thought, when they called and agreed. The hiring manager even put the whole thing in writing and sent it off to me before 3 pm. I felt so relieved.

I followed up with a thank you and asked that we formalize it in the contract with an addendum.

That’s when they rescinded the offer, saying they believed there was a misunderstanding. The job was a 9-5 position that required in-office hours with some flexibility.

I was devastated. It had taken so much courage to go through the three rounds, and also so much humility to get back into the job market, and so many phone calls to friends and colleagues to get the negotiations as right as I could.

Don’t tell anyone you have a kid, my friend with a big job had cautioned.

I can understand why you wouldn’t tell them about having children, said a friend who has his own business, “but it’s the right thing to do.”

Do you have guilt about being a parent? another friend asked, seeming totally confused. You have a kid! You can go pick her up on the days that you need.

Something in me had known that whatever I did, short of playing pretend, this job offer would not come fully together

It had been my intuition that told me, so carefully honed through being a parent. It was a sense of what’s real acquired by years of listening to propositions related to caring for kids – having to discern a lie from the truth, or the truth from a hope, or a lie from a wish, or a dream from a desire.

You don’t have time for that bullshit, said a good friend. You’re a mom!

Oh, the irony. Moms don’t have time for that bullshit but they may be the most likely person to see their way through it.

It may be impossible to take a job as a deputy cat when I’m already the house deputy. But what’s a deputy cat supposed to do for a promotion when there’s no mom-in-command?