A Tsunami of a Property Problem

Esmeralda, Property Mistress. (Take that smirk off your puss, Malka, or someone will swipe it off.) Seems a thousand moons ago, I was thrilled to get this title. Yotur became Property Manager about the same time, but he’s always assumed his duties to consist of keeping an eye on our food supplies. I say eye, because if he lifts a paw, he’s likely to unbalance. Easiest for him to work lying down. Now I’m nimble on my paws and have no problem lifting one up to whack a runaway spoon. I like to keep my claws sharpened on the kitchen table or window bench, stolid wooden things that can’t easily avoid me. Originally from Mexico, they still haven’t learned to speak proper Kani (animal lingo). Which brings me to today’s Tsunami of a property problem (we cats watch such thriller movies with Brenda Biscuit).

It’s caused by authentication papers. Who’d have thought that, after all the traveling to and fro of property, a moon should come when a respectable item of kitchenware such as a stainless steel tea kettle should be asked for proof of its origin and legal entry into San Jose. This requirement of provenance receipts and sales documents has set our Willis Street house into as devastating a tremor as might an earthquake (according to Birdo who shook through one). Every few minutes, some plate or bowl is desperately requesting I turn them over to find a trademark. Hey, my paws aren’t meant to heft pottery. Slap it around a bit if it doesn’t move out of my way, yes. Our antique Chinese brass wares are particularly disturbed, “We come with august family on ship to Seattle port, thousands and thousands of suns ago. No papers needed. Or if papers, they are now dust.” The Russian samovar in the living room has been groaning about revolutionary edicts and pograms, but only a couple of Russian books can make any sense of its mutterings. Several Turkish plates hanging up in the kitchen have requested we affix them permanently to the wall. A carpet on a chest in the bedroom keeps repeating it is Oriental not Iranian. No papers for that rug, either, just a safety-pinned tag reading “hang out on clothesline once a year and beat to get rid of dust and moths.” Those two wooly German Christmas socks befriended by my predecessor, Property Mistress Douglasina, have snuck into hiding in our garage.

The fur in our animal ears is getting flattened by the barrage of questions, cries for help, shrieks of protest. I’ve no adequate answers to stop the noise jam. Soon I’ll have only ear holes like Birdo and Varna. Imagine what chaos will occur when the Property Police raid our Collective and our, mostly useful, things get taken away to be shipped back to where they were born! No Made-in-India begging bowl for us, cats and dogs. Birdo and Varna will lose their Chinese manufactured metal homes (they say this might be okay). Our shelves would be bare of knickknacks and books (no more scratchable, chewable book spines). Even chairs constructed out of genuine American tree wood are creaking nervously. Yotur is scrutinizing the small print on Friskies cans to determine if they are U.S. products. It’s a horrific scenario.

We members of the Willis Street ABCD Collective believe that only a widespread, organized protest by animal households will cause the authorities to pause in implementing whatever unjust laws are creating such devastatingly disruptive social turmoil. Voice your indignation at this cruel treatment of our necessary and legitimately employed property, animal citizens of San Jose!

Reported by Esmeralda, Property Mistress