Not that I was really qualified to train anyone, let alone discuss the challenges new employees would face working with a DD population. I took a Civil Service test and came out #3 - so I was hired. Fortunately for me, we did not have any on-going staff development for the first 6 months after I started due to a disagreement between my supervisor and the institution administration. So I read manuals and books and talked to everyone about what I should know.
The first class offered was new employee orientation - some of these 'new' employees had been there for 2 years! - but I was to sit in our the training to fulfill requirements and learn how training was done. Two hours in, one of the instructors was unavailable and I was told I had to train the class. That class was "Life/Sex Education" - a class to acquaint new employees with how the clients at the institution dealt with sexual issues. The crux of the class was the clients were adults and should be treated as such, especially when they used all the different slang for body parts and functions. Yep, trial by fire!
Settling in, I discovered I enjoyed the job. It was very trying and a little intimidating, but the time I had when I first started helped. Truly learning as I went along, I had my own office and developed friendships and was treated with respect - mostly. Some people thought I was silly and not serious, but I found that my trainees remembered what I was showing them if I could wrap it up in a funny bow.
This all leads to Brophy. Brophy was the name of the building I worked in. The building was over 100 years old and had all the charm an institution could muster, which was very little. Still, I came in one weekend, painted my office, brought in some old chairs and wallpapered one wall with the brightest wall paper I could find. It was very comfortable and a refuge from the rest of the world. I got in a little trouble with our union painters, but they reasoned that they did not want to paint our offices anyway and let it go.
After one of my classes, some of the employees came in and told me of a little kitten caught in a bush outside. I was amazed they came to me and did not handle it, but they knew I loved cats and would be the one to save the kitten. So I went outside the front of Brophy building and extracted a little black kitten from the rose bush - now I knew the real reason why they came for me. Scratched from the bush, I brought the little kitten inside. I knew I did not need another cat at home, and we already had an office cat, but my boss (a new boss, not the one who did not get along with the administration) said for me to keep him in my office.
My new assistant would play with anything that moved, answered my phone (hard to explain the 'mew') and followed me when he was allowed out of the room in between classes and cried when I was not there with him and he could hear my voice. I tried many different names for him, but he always paid attention when the name of the building was mentioned. So, he became Brophy.
Fairly soon after Brophy took up residence, I was transferred. What was supposed to be a 'temporary' reassignment became a permanent move to another department within the state. Brophy now had to come home with me and get acquainted with the cats in my house. The minute he was put down, he jumped on everyone and basically told them he was in charge. That went well, except for one little girl kitty in the house who told him otherwise. He avoided her for all the time they were together.
Brophy had a personality and was very smart and opinionated. He was accepting of anything I did to him, but he told me about it anyway. He rode well in the car, he loved going to our cabin, and he hated leaving that cabin, showing his displeasure by defecating in his box - every time!
Last week he lost his year-long battle with kidney disease. For this past year, he let me inject him with fluids, he let me give him the medicine and he made sure to sit on my lap every night. But last week I came home and he was unable to control his bowels and bladder and I knew it was time for him to go. He looked at me with those big yellow-green eyes, the same way he looked at me the day I saved him from the bush as the vet gave him his release.
A fine cat.
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