CONTENT WARNING: Passing Of An Old Pet

I was inspired to share this story with you by seeing a related one here.

By the grocery store I used to work at while I was in college, there was an alley cat that everyone called “Razorface”.

Middle-aged, for a cat, and full of p*** and vinegar. He was a Tuxedo cat with striking golden eyes who was missing an ear. He’d been known to sneak up on people who were shouting at employees in the parking lot and giving the shouters an earful, growling and yowling at them.

Once, he even bit a woman who had thrown a slushy at an employee.

He hung around in a burrow that had probably formerly belonged to some other animal, dug into a patch of dirt near the grocery store. Whenever a can of cat food was damaged out, for whatever reason, we’d leave it out near his den.

One day, while I was dealing with the dumpster at the end of my shift, Razorface approached me. It was uncommon that he’d approach so openly; usually, he preferred to sneak up on people.

I figured he was hungry, and was trying to remember if there was a box of cat food that had been damaged out or not. He yelled at me and then started walking away. Then he walked back towards me, yelled at me again, and started walking away pointedly again.

I got the idea and followed him. He led me to the tree in the parking lot over his den, and then vanished into the den. I waited a bit, uncertain, and he came out of the den with a kitten. The kitten looked nothing like him, being nearly fully white with green eyes and a small orange spot on the top of her head. She had a badly damaged paw and was bleeding sluggishly.

At first, I thought Razorface had attacked the kitten, to be honest, but it quickly became clear that Razorface was aware that the kitten was hurt and was looking for help.

I brought the kitten, and Razorface, with me to an emergency vet… that put me back about $800 for the kitten alone, and another $600 to get Razorface looked at. It had been difficult for a poor college student to cover!

After that, I took both cats in. Razorface had a harder time adjusting to domestic life than the kitten, whom I named ‘Esper’ and he didn’t enjoy getting neutered, even though it did calm him down a lot.

Razorface died about four years after I took him home, of kidney disease. Esper lived to be about seventeen; that’s pretty old for a cat. She was four or five months old when I met her, though the vet had to amputate what was left of the paw. She passed last year of cancer.

Some of my coworkers at the time had also, jokingly, ‘refused to forgive me’ for taking Razorface home and thus removing their guardian angel.

EDITOR’S NOTE: The editors deliberated as to what category this story would fall under, but in the end, we settled on ‘Related’ because pets are family!

I got my first job nearly ten years ago at age sixteen, working at a local fast-food joint famous for its flippable blended ice cream desserts. I earned a fair share of stories from my time as a crewmember, and a couple more as a team lead, but my first day as a working citizen will ALWAYS hold a special place in my heart.

It’s Mother’s Day at 11:15; we’ve just opened for the day. I’ve already served my first two customers, an elderly couple who come in every day for the $5 lunch special. The manager training me continues to go over details about morning prep when we see another customer arriving.

Manager: “How do you feel about taking the next order on your own?”

Me: *Shrugs.* “Should be fine, I suppose.”

Manager: “I won’t be far, holler if you need me.”

[Manager] disappears around the corner behind me. In comes a lone woman holding a bouquet of fake roses.

Me: “Welcome to [fast food joint], how are we doing today?”

Customer: “Doing just fantastic today, and yourself?”

Me: “Starting my first day of work and I’m pretty pumped!” *Smiles.* “Will you be eating in or taking things to go today?”

I asked so I may begin the order process and tap one of my POS buttons.

Customer: *Smiles brightly at me.* “No, dear, I’m actually here simply to drop off a rose for every woman on staff today for Mother’s Day.”

Me: *Immediately attempting not to shed a tear at her offer.* “Whoa, that’s awesome! Let me check with my manager how many women we’ll have on shift today.”

Manager: *Already coming around the corner, grinning.* “Ma’am, that is so generous of you!”

My manager gives the count of women expected for the day, including herself.

Customer: *Handing over roses.* “Here you go, dearies. I think it’s important that every woman gets recognition on Mother’s Day. Not everyone has a good mother growing up, but that doesn’t mean it needs to be a s***ty day.”

Manager: *Wiping a tear away with her free hand.* “Well, thank you for that. I’ll make sure these get around at shift change.”

Customer: *Already headed for the door.* “Alright, hun, thank you. You all take care now.” *Looks back at me before stepping out of the building.* “Good luck, young man.” *Smiles and takes her leave.*

Me: “So who was that?”

I figured that, like with the two older customers, she maybe knew this woman’s name.

Manager: *Sets the roses on our cake prep counter and turns to me.* “I have literally never seen that woman before in my life, and this isn’t my first Mother’s Day working.”

We both look out the windows to watch her car depart.

Manager: “Don’t get used to that. Most of them are fine, occasionally you’ll get an interaction like that, and sometimes you’ll get your job threatened for forgetting to add a condiment to a burger.”

Me: *Raises an eyebrow.*

Manager: “Welcome to fast food.”

I was delivering pizza on a night when we were getting light snow. About two inches (five centimeters) had accumulated, which wasn’t much to me, but to native Virginians, it was un-drivable conditions.

I delivered to a house in a fairly well-off area. The customer’s order came to $16, and he paid with a $20 bill and told me to keep the change. Not bad, tip-wise.

As I was walking back to my car, I was putting the cash in my folded bunch of bills. We kept larger denominations in the middle, and $1s to the outside. As I was putting the $20 bill in the fold, I noticed that there were actually two $20 bills. Now, I could’ve been greedy and kept it, but the guy was nice, and he probably mishandled the bills because it was cold weather.

I returned to his door and knocked.

Me: “Excuse me, sir. You accidentally gave me $40, not $20.”

I started to hand him the extra $20.

Customer: “No, that’s yours. I don’t want to drive in this crap, and I appreciate that you can.”

I made a note in the computer when I got back to the store so that future drivers would know what a nice customer he was.

One day, during a snow day, I decided to take a walk from my apartment complex through the neighborhood behind it to enjoy the snow. I hadn’t gotten too far when I came across a dog (I’m a cat person, so I’m not good with dog breeds, but I think it might have been a Shih Tzu).

The dog is obviously very cold but also happy to see me, and after a few minutes of pets, I decide to follow it either to let its owners know that it got out or if it didn’t know where it was to help it find its owners.

After a few minutes of wandering, it becomes clear that the dog does not know where it is, so I decide to look up the local animal shelter, but they’re closed. I call my mom to see if she knows what to do, and while she doesn’t, halfway through the call, I remember that I have a friend who works at the animal shelter, so I give him a call.

He doesn’t know what to do either, so I decided to ask around the neighborhood, which involved following the dog up to someone’s house and knocking on the door. While the people I talked to for the most part didn’t know who the dog belonged to, they offered to call me if they found something. The dog, craving warmth, would dart inside when the doors opened and would paw at the door when it was time to go.

Eventually, one of the neighbors volunteered to help. He knew the neighborhood better than I did and knew who to ask about missing dogs. While we didn’t get any closer to finding who the dog belonged to, another neighbor volunteered to help us, and we took the dog to her house to warm up while she made some calls.

While the calls didn’t provide any more clues about the dog, someone suggested we take it to the animal hospital to see if it was chipped, so the four of us hopped into the car, dropped me off at my apartment, and then took the dog to the animal hospital.

A few hours later, I got a text to let me know that the dog had been reunited with her family, and a mom with two young kids came to pick her up. Apparently, a maintenance worker had left a gate open, and the dog slipped out, but thanks to some awesome neighbors, the dog was able to be reunited with its family!

My fiancée and I were in the mall with our eighteen-month-old daughter. We go to the food court for dinner and decide on this burger place. 

I realized there was only one guy working, taking orders, and then making them. I’m thinking this guy probably deals with stupid people all the time.

When we got our food, my daughter was eating her fries, and for the first time, she said:

Daughter: “Fries! Fries! Fries!”

Knowing what this guy surely deals with on the regular, I went up and told him:

Me: “The fries were so good, they made my daughter say ‘fries’ for the first time!”

He seemed quite happy and even gave us another batch of fries for free.

Just felt good to make someone happy who surely deals with BS all day.