No, seriously. It's a booming business here in the Bay Area, and it is only going to keep growing. Grooming is pricey, but people will cough up the bucks to have their pets properly cleaned up. I should know, having recently spent $80 having Natasha detangled and bathed and combed out. The interesting thing is it can be lucrative. According to today's San Francisco Chronicle, your average pet groomer takes home as much as thirty thousand a year. I can definitely keep my current lifestyle without too many adjustments on that much a year. And I'd get to be with pets all day.

I've often wondered if I could work with animals since I'm so crazy about them, but I've always thought along the lines of vetinary school or volunteering at animal shelters, and I know I couldn't do it. There's too much science and medicine involved, and being around ill, wounded, or abandoned pets all the time would send me into a deep, deep depression. No matter how much I'd like to be a savior to animals, I just haven't got the temperament.

But I could groom them. I could take care of pets whose owners loved them enough to have them bathed and clipped. I'm endlessly patient with animals, far more than with people. I could get away from the repetitive strain problems that are an ever present danger in my current occupation. I could go into business for myself if I really wanted to get away from the whole 9 to 5 thing. Mobile pet grooming is especially popular here since everyone's so busy working 24 hours a day at startups and dot coms (and spending what little free time they have buying up all the available cheap housing, not that I'm bitter or anything). There's plenty of opportunity.

The only drawback, as far as I'm concerned, is lack of respect. People just aren't very impressed when you tell them you're a waitress, or a file clerk, or a pet groomer. At least being a travel agent has an aura of glamour about it, although it is just another service industry job. But that wouldn't stop me, I assure you. If my current occupation runs out of time in the next five years I'm going to go find a Pet Grooming Institute and sign up.

And then I'll legitimately be able to say to my clients, "Oh, bite me."

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