Hello, everybody. This is Jennifer Matarise. And before I get started with the episode today,

I just wanted to say a couple of things. The first thing that I wanted to say is thank you to all

of you who expressed your condolences for the loss of Otis. He left me on August 9th. And since then,

it has been rather depressingly quiet in my apartment.

There's no yowling cat.

There's no purring sound near the microphone and it is a little sad.

I'm having a really difficult time kind of dealing with being alone in the

apartment. Pubert is here, but pubert is a tarantula and he sits there and he eats crickets

and he doesn't really do a lot and he doesn't meow no matter how much I ask him to. So I am just going to focus on my next move, which is getting a dog,

so that I can have somebody in this house who will make noise and talk to me,

and it won't seem quite so upsettingly empty in here.

But thank you very much, guys, for expressing your condolences.

Otis is a real sweetheart.

I teased him a lot, and I always kind of elbowed him and said,

you're 15 now, when are you going to get a job?

But he was my cat, and I was very upset for quite a few days.

And it was a really stressful thing to have to happen right before I started a new job. So

it was really great that all of you clearly heard him on multiple occasions and loved him

and recognized him making noises out here in my apartment when he wasn't supposed to.

Second of all, if you've been wanting to hear a particular disaster on the podcast, you can do so for a $25

or more donation to the GoFundMe, which is linked through the podcast Facebook page.

I'm still accepting requests for disasters to cover on the podcast as soon as I can.

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