Felix Domestica!

Emmanuel(or,Manny as he goes by now) got himself a summer job!
We just moved to this neighborhood,and apparently there are people who are willing to trust him with their cat for the weekend.True they are in their seventies and age might have clouded their judgement-or in a more positive light,they probably have brought up kids and know how they eventually turn out well inspite of the mini heart attacks and sleepless nights they tend to give their parents.I for one, wouldn't trust him with my ladle,but hey it's their cat and I am thinking it has a few more lives to spare out of the allotted nine so.......
About a month ago the neighbour introduced himself  when I went over to check the mailbox which sits in front of their house and asked me if Noe was Manny-and in my head I  went,"Hmmmm,somebody is infamous already?".The next day I ran into his wife who asked me an even more unnerving question-she went,"How old is Manny?"- I guess my face betrayed my unease because she went on to explain that they usually went away for the weekends and were looking for a responsible kid(and they picked him?!!) to cat sit Felix who was about 8 years old and was well trained.I told her that I would send him over and she could discuss it with him and let him decide.I did not want to have anything to do with the decision because my firstborn is known to blame others(read,me)for any and everything amiss,however trivial in his life.
He came back pretty excited and told us that they would pay him three dollars a day to look after the cat-he had to go there every morning, open the garage door a little to allow him to walk in and out the place,check his litter box and clean it up if necessary,check his automatically refilled food and water dishes, pet him a bit just so he did not feel abandoned(I don't think cats do-Felix probably went,"Ha!!I have the house all to myself without those pesky humans around!!") and then at the end of day,he had to go and close the garage once he checked and made sure the cat was in the house.Seemed pretty straight-forward to me.
The first weekend,they were off for four days and he was asked to water the garden once in that time so he made a cool fifteen dollars for fifteen minutes of work everyday.I was far more nervous than he was and so kicked him out of bed every morning to go let the cat out and after that,I kept reminding him every ten minutes throughout the day that he had to let it in and close the garage door in the night AFTER making sure the cat was IN the house.
He did a commendable job-cats are notoriously snobbish and behave like you are at their disposal,but Felix seems to like him which was attested to by the fact that he walked in with cat hair all over his shirt one day and said he spent a good part of ten minutes petting the cat.And the cat rushed out to purr all over him every time he walked past the house. The weekend flew by and come Monday(looong weekend,EVERY weekend when you retire-lucky!!!),our neighbours were back,seemed satisfied with his skills and paid him his wages.But the ultimate seal of approval is being called back to do the job again and I let him know that he would find out soon if he did a good job or not.In the meanwhile,his joy at having earned fifteen dollars was enormous,and he made grand plans to buy a model Concorde jet when he had saved up enough!
Whoa!!Stop right there!!That made me decide to teach him life's lessons as regards making and spending money that very same week.He was asked to read a Percy Jackson book before being allowed to watch the movie(Dad's idea)-and I made him pay for it-$4.95 for the book.And he decided to indulge in an old fashioned bottle of coke from an old fashioned bottled coke dispenser and had no money-so I loaned him the $1.25 -and made him pay me back!!So his income was already dwindling-but he didn't seem to mind and I was this close to asking him to pay for food and board,but that would have been going too far right?!
Anyway,the good news is,he was called back the next weekend.Rainy days that week meant he did not have to water the plants-so he made 12 dollars that week and the following weekend they went away for just three days and he made 10 more dollars.So for three weekends of relatively light work he made almost $ 40.00!!And he has most of it still and now his grand plan is to get himself a flight simulator joystick!I am planning on making him tithe 10% to the church(I know,I know I consider myself a progressive on issues like church and faith and maybe the money should go to the Oregon Food Bank,but I am still a person of faith and want him to look up to a higher being  in life when it does and does not go his way),and while at it I wonder if I should make him tithe a percentage to his parents,for after all-Matha,Pitha,Guru, theivam huh?!