Blame the Cat...

There is no good excuse for my lack of blogging as of late...so I won't even try to offer one. What I will say is that I have a nice long list of blog ideas, and I plan to start writing a lot more in the weeks to come.

Because of my lengthy absence from this blog- I thought it would be best to start with a little anecdotal story…

It is quite possible that I am the last human alive to keep handwritten business records. Yes, that's right...I handwrite all of my expenses, earnings, miles driven, etc. I always have, and it’s what I’m the most comfortable doing.

When colleagues gasp in horror at the very thought of conducting business in this manner, I simply point out that I never have to worry about the computer crashing, or a hard drive going haywire, thus losing all of my records. My records are kept safe at all times.

Or so I thought.

A few weeks ago, after tallying up 2009 for my CPA, I made the fatal error of leaving my notebook of records on the dining room table. Normally, I would have locked them back up in my safe, but I had a brief…and costly…lapse in judgment.

Insert cat here.

It seems one of my feline beauties decided to check out this mysterious notebook while I was otherwise occupied, and decided that the thing my records were missing the most was that morning’s canned tuna…and a nice fat hairball too!

Yes, one of my cats vomited on my tax records. And they did a very thorough job in case you wondered.

I’ve now changed my thinking about the safest and most reliable ways to keep my business records safe. I now subscribe to the theory I was taught many years ago (in regard to files)…if it doesn’t exist in at least two places, then it doesn’t exist. While I will continue to keep hand written records, I will also keep back-ups on my computer. Hopefully that will save me…and my CPA…a little heartache down the road.

And if I can save just one business record from the would-be expulsion of a full-bellied cat…then my job here is done.

Kara Edwards Voice Over