Crazy Cat Lady

I was at the gym today...changing in the locker room. There was an older lady who was talking on her phone with someone at a Doctor's office. I could here the frustration in her voice as she continues to talk to the receptionist. She begins to raise her voice and tells the lady, (I'm paraphrasing) "Excuse me, don't interrupt me while I'm talking. All I'm asking for are the test results! I came in yesterday as an emergency. I was told I could get the results in the morning. Then you guys told me to call back around noon. So, I called at 12:05...and you guys tell me to call back at 5...and now you're saying I have to call back tomorrow?!!!" She then looks at me and raises her hand and shoulder in the air giving the "I don't know" look/this-lady-is-crazy look. I found it weird that she would gesture something like that to me...a stranger.

She continues yelling at the lady. I'm in the middle of sending Brandon a text message when the lady gets off the phone and turns to me, "Sheesh, that lady was rude!" Ok..for one, I deal with confused claimants, rude attorneys and angry adjusters...she hasn't seen rude. Haha. And two, she was yelling at the lady! How can she say the receptionist was being rude, when she was being rude in the first place?

She then decides to tell me about her cat who she thinks may be sick and dying. She goes on about how the previous Veterinarian Doctor misdiagnosed her cat with high blood pressure. He prescribed high blood pressure medicine, which made the cat throw up. Then she took the cat off the meds...and then the cat got better. And now, the cat is throwing up again. She's afraid that she might have to put her cat down...considering her cat is 16 years old. But in "cat years," the cat is 112 years old.

Ok, when you start talking about cat/dog years...you are what I call CRAZY. Crazy Cat lady, to be exact. She continued to rant about her dang cat for 10 minutes. I couldn't believe that I had been listening to this lady talk about her cat..something I've never met, or seen, or even care about...for 10 minutes! I kept thinking to myself, "Brandon, Houa...someone, call me! SAVE ME!!" Anyway, after I signaled that I was ready to walk out of the locker room, she graciously thanked me for listening to her. Wow...this whole time she pouring her heart out to me, I was just ready to shut her out and walk out the door. I felt so bad.

I don't know why she opened up to me, a random stranger. Maybe she needed someone to listen to her because no one from the Vet office was?! Maybe she likes to open up that way to many other people?! Who knows?! But...Crazy cat lady reminded me of a valuable lesson today: to encourage someone daily - whether it be a stranger or a close friend.


"Therefore encourage one another and build one another up, just as you are doing." 1 Thessalonians 5:11