Excerpt: The Princess and the Pee Test

Charm had gone out to her car to retrieve something from one of the boxes in the back. ‘ Ahhh…. My home away from home….’ She thought.

And out loud to herself “This is pathetic. I’m used to having patients who live in their cars but at this point in my life and this stage of my career…. C’mon…. I really need to take some time and find myself a place to live.”

The new Interim Director laughed at herself, knowing that her passion was simply to do a good job. She was driven create excellence where ever she was and whatever she had to work with. Right now all she could see that she had to work with was opportunity and mediocrity. Maybe even incompetence. But the patients were great.
That was part of the simple secret that held the key to Charm’s immense job satisfaction. She had recently tried to describe the process to a friend. “It’s really, really hard to take a place that’s in the cellar and move it up to the ground floor…. Owners rarely expect anything beyond that. Since it requires so much effort to move it at all, I tend to set the bar a little higher. And get there. It blows people away and keeps me working.” There was always another place that needed her help.
One of Charm’s secrets was, that in some ways, she never looked at where a place started as a goal for performance. That was probably a good thing here at Happy Valley. She simply assumed best practices as the norm and did whatever it took to get there. Lots of times the staff didn’t survive but frankly, she believed that was up to them. It was impossible for them to be completely oblivious to the fact that they were not doing a good job, wasn’t it? She was never really sure.

As she retrieved the forgotten article she closed the back of the car… turned to walk back into the facility and bumped immediately into something. Something firm but soft at the same time. She looked down into the intense gold-colored eyes of the most beautiful long-haired calico cat she had ever seen. One of the biggest things Charm missed because of her ‘gypsy’ lifestyle was the ability to have pets. She loved animals and tended lots of times to look at things from their perspective. “It wouldn’t be fair,” she thought. “I’m not home enough… I don’t even have a place yet…”

Lost in thought, she momentarily forgot her ‘ignore them or you’ll fall in love’ strategy. She looked down again.

“It’s gone… completely out the window… already useless,” she knelt down to scratch the beautiful kitty.

“What a beautiful girl you are, “ she cooed as the cat rubbed back and forth against her shins.

“I’m a guy.”

Charm froze. She knew that her short time at Happy Valley had been stressful but she didn’t think her mental state had deteriorated to the point of hearing voices.

“Hey! Human girl! Keep scratching,” snapped the cat.

“Oh, sorry,” she said as she distractedly started to scritch behind his ears.

“Me, too. I didn’t mean to yell at you just now. It’s just that I get so sick and tired of the stereotypes. Maybe it’s because this is an all-girl palace or something but sometimes I just want to scream… NOT ALL CALICO CATS ARE GIRLS!!! There, I said it, I got it off my chest. Are we good now?” He looked up at her and purred.

“Sure,” said Charm, still a little put off.

“Oh, crap… she might not be ‘the one’ after all. Oh, well, nothing ventured, nothing gained,” the cat said quietly to himself.

And then louder, to Charm, “It’s the talking cat thing, isn’t it? Sorry. I’ve been at it for longer than you can imagine and I still haven’t figured out a way to ease in to that part of the whole schtick. People sometimes find it off-putting.”

“I see,” said Charm, regaining her balance a little. “So you’re really talking and it’s not just sounds in my head. That’s a relief.”

“You know,” said the cat, “I never really stopped and thought about that possibility before. I just always took it personally… kind of like… oh, what do you folks call it here at the palace… ‘rejection.’ It never occurred to me that someone might think that I was a hallucination. Especially hanging around one of these drug places…. That helps a lot. The girls have been saying that you’re good… I feel a lot better. Thank you!”

The cat swished his tail with a flourish and rubbed across her shins a few more times.
Charm looked around to make sure there was nobody else in the parking lot or even standing at the front windows.

‘What the heck,’ she thought as she squatted back down. “What do you mean ‘the palace?’” she asked the big cat.

“You know… the palace… where all the princesses get locked up for a month or two or however long you keep them. They come in sad… crying… under some kind of an evil spell… then you all do something and when they come out they look like princesses again. At least I think that’s what you do in there. I’ve never actually been inside.”

“Oh, you’re talking about the facility? About Happy Valley? Close enough. And, I like the way you think, Mr…”

“Name’s Prince,” said the cat. “Just Prince.”

“Nice to meet you, Prince. I’m Charm. Where do you live?” she asked, suddenly noticing that what had initially looked like a lot of cat was, in reality, a lot of hair. Prince was painfully thin.

“You know how it goes…” he said. “I live a little bit of here, a little bit there and… everywhere.”

“That’s too bad,” said Charm, thinking as quickly as she could. She was pretty impressed by Prince and wanted him to stay around. Intuitively she knew she had to be very careful not to offend him.

The cat bristled a bit. “What do you mean, too bad?”

Charm looked hurt. She decided on a slightly daring approach. ‘I’m just not happy about the fact that we have to share you with ‘there and everywhere’. I thought that you lived here and were part of the team. I can’t spend any more time with a talking cat who can’t commitment to the job.”

She stood up abruptly and started toward the front door. “Just keep walking, don’t look back,” she coached herself under her breath. “He is not a being that will respect weakness….”

Halfway to the front door of the rehab she sensed that something behind her was different. She cast a quick glance over her shoulder and saw that Prince was now standing.

“Well, are you coming?” she asked, a bit more brightly and with more confidence that she actually felt.

Prince bounded to catch up to her, resuming a dignified pace and appearance when he reached her side.

“I thought you’d never get around to asking,” he said.