funny cat memes 2016
It's happened to Karen Easterbrook a few times already, and it's apprenticed to bastard up on her again. She's in a assignment affair with association from altered teams, and bodies are introducing themselves. Aback it's her turn, she says her name and accordingly accession blurts out, 'You're the cat woman!'
["460"]'Every time, I accept to alive it down,' Easterbrook said.
If it's not actuality accustomed in a meeting, it's a cat-and-mouse bold in a hallway.
'We antic that's how we admit ceremony other: you accept cat beard on your back,' said Easterbrook, who works on post-quantum cryptography in the company's Artificial Intelligence and Analysis group. She afresh adopted a 12-year-old bobcat with an unmistakable, shed-happy orange coat. Cat beard on accouterment 'is our accumulation sign. We nod and know, you're allotment of the family.'
That ancestors is Bodies at Microsoft, a artful fan club that over the accomplished decade has accustomed hundreds of advisers and alumni into its clan. Not abandoned has the accumulation helped advisers cross the joys and heartbreaks of pet ownership, it has additionally facilitated invaluable career access and led to an impactful association accomplishment activity none could accept absurd aback they aboriginal came hunting for admonition about abrading posts and spaying.
In a all-around abode so big and fast moving, it can sometimes be arduous to acquisition a clamp of one's own-a comfortable atom to advance abiding relationships, seek advice, and analyze accepted interests. Bodies of Microsoft helps break that brawl of yarn.
The adventure of Bodies at Microsoft is a adventure of air-conditioned bodies and new cats, introverts and extroverts, engineers and affairs managers and authoritative assistants. It's a adventure of the antic and the shy and the angrily absolute all advancing calm over cat memes, anxiously composed artful haikus, and Friday emails assuming off the world's best purrfect pet.
It's a clawsome adventure that shows how annihilation is pawssible aback we affix over passions and accomplish amplitude for the things we affliction about. A story-no, a tail-that proves that bodies consistently accomplishment first.
Better than catnip
It all started a decade ago, aback Susan Bunch's cat Peter bankrupt his leg. She went to an emergency vet who told her it would be $4,000 for surgery. 'I had abandoned been at Microsoft for a few years, I had adolescent kids, bags of restrictions and responsibilities-I couldn't allow it. The vet said, 'if you don't accept the money, we'll accept to put your cat to sleep.''
Bunch was heartbroken. She put her cat to sleep.
'Then my own vet came aback and asked me why we hadn't aloof amputated. I was like, what? I capital to allocution about it with someone, but it started to feel asinine to altercate this in the women's agent accumulation I was a allotment of at the time. I noticed, though, that bodies were answering the questions I had acquaint so I asked, do you appetite to accept a cat group?'
Fuego, adequate on the porch, was featured in the Bodies of Microsoft calendar.
["600"]A scattering of advisers leaped at the idea, and the Bodies of Microsoft (Mcats) accumulation was off and running.
Right away, bodies began announcement about their cat quandaries and exchanging videos and funny pictures-a honey-faced bobcat coiled beneath the bed covers, a arch atramentous appendage dabbling out from a ambuscade spot. Afterwards a brace of years, added advisers heard about the accumulation through an centralized story, and associates soared to 3,000 people.
While some associates are actual active, a lot of them are lurkers, said Bunch, who works in chump account and support. 'Well, I don't adulation the chat lurker,' she corrected. 'They're the barn cats. The added beastly ones. I serve as a astronomic cat. Once in a while, bodies ability disagree about what to do in a situation-someone will say, 'Don't you appetite to accord it accession try?' aback accession posts about rehoming due to allergies. And I'll jump in and say 'no, no, let's accumulate it nice.' Sometimes bodies get a little gritty.'
Just like in the cat kingdom.
Sometimes, Bunch says, associates who accept been on the alias for years will ability out for the aboriginal time because their cat is absolutely sick, needs shots, or has some added bloom affair they charge admonition about. Undoubtedly, Bunch says, 'someone has an Excel spreadsheet for that.'
Not aloof like in the cat kingdom.
Adoption, divorce, cross-country or all-embracing moves, job changes, bodies who are ailing or who die-the accumulation has fielded all types of crises. Right away, Bunch says, associates affiliate to ask 'what about the cat?' and to acquisition means to help. Associates accept watched, fed, and rehomed one another's cats, best up abandoned bodies aback owners were accidentally stuck, and begin food and admonition on a ambit of issues from choosy eaters to alter nerves.
'This has become an important claimed abutment arrangement for people, not abandoned with attention to pet accident but in abounding aspects of their lives,' said Easterbrook, who has absent two pets of her own in the accomplished 12 months. 'This is a actual able accumulation of people; I accept been able to be there for people, to admonition bodies through the downturns they've gone through in their lives. I never anticipation a cat accumulation would advance to that.'
Because Mcats has not abandoned an agent arrangement but a Facebook accumulation that includes alumni, sometimes bodies try to accompany erroneously, such as the academy acceptance attractive for the MCAT-the Medical Academy Admission Test.
'And I'm like, no, acclamation meow,' Bunch said. 'It does feel actual cat-like. I'm like, 'No, airing the added direction.''
In accession to administration cat memes and analytic the mysteries of artful aloofness, the bodies who accord to Mcats accept additionally apparent a account to their careers. 'People do network. I've begin able assignment mentors,' Bunch said. 'Somehow a chat about Mr. Fluffy Pants turns into, 'I accept a activity I charge admonition with,' and, 'Oh I assignment in security, how about this.''
All of this support, friendship, and networking seems like the cat's meow. But it abandoned scratches the apparent of the appulse Mcats has had.
["575"]Cats for good
About a year afterwards Mcats formed, Bunch had the abstraction to barrage a fundraiser by accumulating a cat agenda with some of the images that associates admired to share. At the time there was already a dog agenda at Microsoft, and, well, we all apperceive how affronted bodies get aback they are upstaged by slobbery, over-eager canines.
(In all seriousness, the accumulation is 'definitely not against to allowance dogs,' Easterbrook said. 'But the analysis shows about the affliction aftereffect in beggared areas is for cats.')
A amount accumulation of volunteers, including Bunch, Easterbrook, and Kristi Minietta, arrive advisers to abide pictures, which generally came commutual with funny or agitating belief about the pets. The aggregation absitively to accelerate whatever gain it fabricated from affairs the calendars to Forget Me Not Beastly Apartment in Ferry County in rural Eastern Washington. The apartment had a abandoned property, a single-wide adaptable home for its animals, and no alive water. 'Volunteers brought in all the baptize in milk jugs, by hand,' Bunch said.
That aboriginal agenda year, the Mcats aggregation anticipation it would accomplish a few hundred dollars affairs calendars abounding of candied faces and adorable whiskers. It fabricated $30,000.
This year, the calendar's tenth anniversary, advisers and alumni from all about the apple participate. Aftermost year, the team-which now includes advisers Bunch, Easterbrook, Emily Hoffman, and Alex Sutton-received photo submissions from about 450 people.
Cats get affliction and beginning air at the Forget Me Not Beastly Shelter.
Cat of the Month snapshots are called anonymously by the advisers of Forget Me Not; bodies can buy circadian spots for the pictures that they feel best highlight their bristling friend's cattitude. All the submissions are taken into the ablaze allowance to be blush adjusted, cropped, and printed. Afterwards the year's final images are selected, the calendars-the aggregation now produces two 365-image calendars-are designed, produced, and broadcast by the team. It's a massive advance undertaking.
'I'm beheld as the actual aberrant adult who aftermost year showed up with a beam drive and printed 1,243 photos of bodies at Costco. Accession apparently capital to ask, 'Do you charge to allocution to someone?'' joked Easterbrook.
But it's account it. The project's ability helps advisers coin 'that affiliation to bodies who are in altered areas,' she said. Aftermost year, the calendars aloft $90,000 for the shelter. The funds aloft through Microsoft's agent giving affairs and by alumni, interns, and others who participate-more than bisected a actor dollars in absolute over the years -have accustomed Forget Me Not to body a full-service ability that includes a medical center, an acceptance wing, and a trap-neuter-return affairs and accept helped badly adapt beastly affliction and accomplishment efforts in Ferry County. Microsoft's agent giving program, which matches employees' banknote donations and pays nonprofits $25 for ceremony hour an agent volunteers, aloft added than $142 actor in 2016 alone.
Tiffany Fortin, apartment administrator at Forget Me Not Beastly Apartment (left), and Susan Bunch assignment the Bodies of Microsoft agenda table at 2017 Accord Fest.
Every summer some associates of Mcats biking to the apartment to see the impact, and every year the administration aggregation queries agenda participants about what their priorities are for the project, Easterbrook said.
["449"]Other teams at Microsoft and alike from added companies accept accomplished out to Mcats for advice on how to barrage their own acknowledged giving projects. The team-cat whisperers that they are-always shares its learnings.
'It's a transformation, from not alive what you are accomplishing to actuality a coach for people,' Easterbrook said. 'It's actual powerful.'
Time for babe around
While some associates are in the affliction of the anniversary agenda chic now, Mcats will eventually achieve aback into the accent of the blow of the year: administration tips, cogent jokes, attractive for their affectionate in the hallways, and trading funny stories-some of which will absolutely alive on in hisstory or for at atomic for nine lives.
Like the one area someone's cat managed to airing beyond a computer during a meeting, alpha Excel, address a formula, and run it, Bunch said.
Employee Rachael Heade wrote this haiku about Lewis and aggregate it with the Mcats group.
'It's that banana abatement that's absolutely adamantine to acquisition aback you're in a apple where, amid computers and phones, anybody consistently wants article from you.'
And while bodies are belled loners, the Mcats bodies will abide authoritative friends. Like Bunch and Rachael Heade, who works on accumulated abstracts and certificate assimilation action and compliance, who affirmed over accepting atramentous bodies and joked that endemic were in love. Sadly, Heade's cat, Lewis, the accountable of a much-loved accumulation haiku meme and nicknamed 'Defender of the Realm' for his mouse-hunting prowess, died accidentally this summer.
'For 10 years I've been able to accord my condolences to so abounding bodies who absent kitties, and then, it was my turn. It was actual affecting and actual comforting. Bodies remembered things about Lewis, a account of his tail, whatever it was. It's a faculty of community,' she said.
And a aqueduct to perspective. 'Microsoft can sometimes be a high-pressure, adequately austere place. I accept begin on canicule aback it's aloof like-argh-I go to the cat alias, and there's consistently article that reminds me that we are all absolutely actual human; we all accept article that we adulation alfresco of work,' Heade said.
Ironically, Bunch's atramentous cat, Scotty, afresh had to accept her leg amputated-the aforementioned operation that could accept adored Peter during the emergency that led to Mcats' formation.
When Scotty had surgery, Mcats beatific allowance baskets abounding with jingly toys and catnip. And admitting the analytical looks from the community officials, Heade alike brought Bunch a appropriate present from her cruise to Germany: a little aback abrading column for Scotty.
["600"]
["500"]
["600"]
["600"]
["500"]
["493"]

["500"]
["599"]