Thaddeus's job

"Write a paragraph about a cat with a silly job.”

(Janine’s prompt for her second grade Abbott Elementary class)

There’s this about cats: they do not have “jobs.” You might say a cat’s only job is to take care of themself, on their own schedule. So I was surprised when our otherwise undistinguished domestic short hair, Thaddeus, started doing something regularly on his own, without being taught (as if he could have been). He began to patrol our house (well, his house) every three or four hours, like a prison guard, apparently checking every closed door to determine if it could be opened. Not that he could or would open it himself. No, he stops at every closed door, then meows until a human shows up to open the door and show him that it is unlocked and can be unlatched and that its hinges have not rusted closed. And not that he goes into whatever space the now-opened door leads to, but that he just watches it opened and, perhaps, closed again, and then moves on to the next door. He does this for about fifteen minutes before he tires of the game until next time. But perhaps the routine is not a game to him but a service to everyone in the house. After all, what if I wanted to go through some door sometime—or, God forbid, had to open a door to escape a threat like a fire or a robber—and I could not open it to save my life, all because Thaddeus had not done his job and forced me to check it regularly? I mean, what if that happened? Not silly at all, is it?