Recently I was cleaning up my office. I took down a note that has followed me from state to state, employer to employer, office to office. It is a full-page obituary of Baker the Cat, from the September 1994 issue of Academia. If you are unfamiliar with Baker, he was part of an uncle / nephew team of library cats that became the official mascots of book distributor Baker & Taylor. Their photographs, and later stylized images, appeared on book bags, posters, etc., and were popular giveaways at library conferences. They were early celebrity cats. Taylor died in 1997 and they were not replaced either as library cats for the Douglas County Library in Nevada, or as the corporate mascots

I can still remember when a co-worker called me, very upset, and said “Baker died!” It took me a moment to figure out what she was talking about. We had recently had a conversation about the cats but it had slipped my mind. We talked for a bit and when the obit came out, I photocopied it and taped it up on my office. It has followed me ever since.

Why? It was a personal reminder of memento mori, that we will all die, but also a reminder to keep my ego in check. I could not imagine that anything I would do in my career would warrant a full-page obit in any professional publication. I always put it up in an office spot that I could clearly see but anyone visiting could not unless they turned in that particular direction. While I have always wanted to take my job seriously and do it as well as I could, how much of it was memorable? We all want to make the positive impacts that we can, and I hope that I have done so. But Baker reminded me that there is only so much I could do, and not to stress about it.

An earlier office note, that accompanied Baker for many years before it was lost in some move or other, was an article by Marcus Mabry in the April 1988 issue of Newsweek on Campus. “Living in Two Worlds” is a short essay comparing his life as a Stanford student and then returning home on college breaks to his family’s life in a lower income area. Mabry’s essay has been assigned in a number of classes at a number of schools as a conversation starter or as a prompt for student essays. As a first-generation college student I could relate, at least to some degree, to his sense of a divided life. I would tape this article up also in a place where I could see it but it wasn’t easily visible to others. I would look up Mabry now and then and was pleased to see that he did well. I hoped to follow that path, too.

The two pages were a nice juxtaposition. I should aspire to do well and yet remember that all things must end. I’ve decided not to put Baker’s obit back up. I’ve enjoyed looking at his quizzical expression in the photo on the page but it is time to turn a new leaf. He has been a faithful office companion these many years and I hope that wherever he is, he is happy.