BY MUDYARD KIPLING
It is a great misfortune in life to be one’s own secretary and his employer at the same time. The man so afflicted finds himself as if torn by two different dogs at once. If the secretary is incompetent, as in my case he is, then his employer feels the anger of frustration and delay — why on Earth were these simple tasks not completed in time? — and especially so if some penalty has accrued because of secretarial ineptitude.
For his part, the secretary groans inwardly with shame and remorse — why on Earth did he not start work on those repellent tasks a little earlier? Now he must suffer the recriminations of his employer and the ghastly feeling of having let the side down.
It is impossible for my secretary to say why these outstanding tasks, nagging sometimes for months, are so often hashed through at the last minute and more often days and weeks beyond the last minute. Nor can he tell me what flaw dictates that as the need for diligent secretarial toil becomes increasingly urgent, the more is he overtaken by impulses to, say, write something that might save the world, practice the violin, embark on a long-distance walk, reconnoitre the foothills of mathematics, strip down a bicycle, double-dig the entire vegetable patch, or research the history of the Incas. There is no point pressing him for an answer. He has never had one and never will.
Once my secretary has allowed matters to become very bad, I am forced to sit down with him — we can’t avoid it after all — and insist that the paperwork comes out. The accumulation of neglected correspondence and my secretary’s lack of organisation require that the reams must be spread over every available surface: the table, the floor, the bed. Jointly we peruse the mass. I am disappointed, again, and more or less angry depending on what new negligence is brought to light. My secretary is remorseful, again, and often ashamed. Each leaf of A4, armed with its manacle clauses and its thumbscrew date makes a new argument for the prosecution. Defence counsel is suitably abashed and mute.
At about this time the cat arrives on the scene. He is a sturdy animal of ten or eleven pounds. Up onto the bed he springs, then tramples to and fro across the papers with utter disregard for their contents. The threats and punishments they announce, the anxieties and worries, the pangs of guilt they induce are as nothing to him. Back and forth he goes, trampling and treading, buckling each sheet with a kind of insulting nonchalance. Then by some instinct he picks the most dismal document, and sits down firmly upon it, looking as immovable and content as a Buddha.
My secretary thinks this cat is a very wise animal. His long-suffering employer concedes that the cat points to something in the predicament of modern man.