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Pack Rat Meets Fat Cat
I was climbing up the stairs at home and heard some rustling behind our bedroom door. I already knew what it was. Our cat Felix has an affinity for money. Shiny coins don’t interest him. It is paper money that he is crazy about. Maybe it is the scent that attracts him. Or the interesting design. Whatever the case, whenever I empty pockets of loose change and a few bills after a shopping trip and leave them on the dresser, I can usually find him there later, flipping through the money with his paws. He can keep it up indefinitely. I think of him as a rich fat cat who loves to play with money.
Our family has always had an unusual relationship with money. My father never really trusted banks, so socked away piles of banknotes in odd places around the house. When he passed away, we searched a long time before finding his hidden cash reserves. My mother is just as frugal, having had her family home destroyed during World War II. We call her a pack rat because she lets nothing go to waste. She constantly squirrels away wads of money in different places to make sure that she’s covered in any eventuality.
One spring day my 90-year-old mother decided to splurge and go for a one-day sightseeing bus trip with her friends. Without mentioning anything to us, she hid a quantity of cash and jewelry before heading out. On her return in the evening, she called us in a panic because she couldn’t find her stash.
We drove to her place immediately to calm her down and get the whole story. She related that she didn’t think that she had been burglarized. She was just so excited about her trip that she had absentmindedly hidden her treasure trove and now couldn’t remember where she put it.
We helped my mother search her home for hours, yet came up with nothing. She was just too good at hiding things. We tried to prompt her memory with questions, but she still drew a blank. The stash had to be hidden somewhere, but was going to take some doing to find. We promised to return the next day to continue the search.
My wife has a sharp mind that works differently than mine does, so we often brainstorm ideas for innovative solutions. On our way home, she wondered out loud if we should bring Felix back with us when we continued the search the next day. Because I thought that she was kidding, I laughed out loud at…
