No Cats Were Harmed in the Writing of This Post

We have a lot of groomers in my apartment complex. There are cleaners for each building, both those that clean the common spaces inside the buildings and those that pick up the trash located in the cans outside. There are guards to open the gates. There are people to cut the grass, water the lawn, and drain the fountains. There is also someone to brush the grass.

Huh? My thoughts exactly.

On my way to the store on Sunday, I noticed a worker along the edge of the lawn. He had a long, straw broom. Imagine the best caricature of a witch's broom. I'm talking long, rough-hewn handle with sparse, jagged twigs tied to the end. He was on the walkway and facing the grass. He was brushing the grass, as far as I could tell.

You'll have to picture this, but whatever he was doing, it couldn't have been very effective. Anything he wanted to pick up would have been much easier to do with his glove-covered hands. If he were raking leaves, it would have been much easier if he had been standing in the grass and pulling the broom towards him, not pushing it away. All I can think is that he was brushing the blades of grass so they'd ... point in the same direction?

It reminded me of the scenes in Monty Python and the Holy Grail where people are hitting cats against trees. It makes no sense. But, I guess it gives you something to do. And in a country of 1.5 billion (and counting), having something to do isn't such a bad thing.