Millie the cat paws-itively enjoys her Zoom sessions

For the past year-plus, I have been working remotely from my home.

Before the pandemic, I would have an occasional telemedicine session with a client, usually via FaceTime or old-fashioned phone. Many therapists, including myself, never heard of Zoom prior to 2020. Now, I spend up to seven hours each day talking to patients via a large screen.

There was a learning curve; it took a while to make sure the vacuum cleaner wasn’t blaring nearby, or I could be certain the sessions had privacy from the rest of my family. What I didn’t count on was how intensely ramped up my cat Millie would get each time she heard a Zoom session begin.

When I’m at home, Millie will follow me around, usually because she’s bored and there is nothing on Netflix. For reasons I cannot explain, when the cat hears my online sessions begin, she will scratch fervently at the closed door to my study until I let her in. Then she jumps up on the printer next to my screen or, worse yet, walks across the keyboard making a thump, thump, thump noise easily heard by the other party.

If I pick her up to move, she will howl so loudly I worry clients will call the humane society. It doesn’t stop there. After being moved, Millie seems to take it as a challenge and immediately positions herself on my laptop’s touch pad, instantly erasing my notes. If moved again, the feline struts across the keyboard, walking on the keys that make the screen dark or turn the sound to zero. I’m not saying I’m a prisoner to my cat, but the relationship is far from equal.

I used to apologize when she would sashay in front of the camera and clients would see her large tail. Sometimes she would rub her face next to the camera and patients would get a full view of her orange and black torso. It happened so regularly that now, if she’s not visible, clients will ask where the cat is. Patients also hear me politely excuse myself midsession to let her in when my study door is closed and her scratch, howl, scratch, howl won’t stop. She has conditioned me.

Even though done remotely, some of my sessions can be quite emotional. Often, I will be helping divorced parents, who now loathe one another, learn how to co-parent for the sake of their children. These once intimate partners now call one another Mister or Miss followed by their last names. It’s tense, and the more awkward the session, the more intrusive Millie will become.

As best I can remember, Millie dropped out of graduate school, yet she still has an uncanny knack for sensing family dysfunction. Parents in the midst of bashing one another will stop and gawk at their screens when Millie walks across. The tension often ebbs, and there have been times the parents start talking about animals they had when they were together. A previously unproductive or non-communicative session becomes lighter, more conversant and easier.

All of this is great and I’m grateful — until Millie sends me her bill.