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Come April every year, at businesses and corporations around the U.S., you'll hear the excited chatter of little girls taking part in a neat event called "Take Our Daughters To Work Day." It's meant to show young girls they are valued as much as boys, and give them an introduction into the work world. I think the idea is great, but I have a dilemma. My daughter, Colleen Fiona, is a cat.

That doesn't mean she couldn't profit from the experience. Like many feline females her age, Colleen Fiona has problems with self-esteem. For instance, when I give her brother, Nolan Nolan, extra shrimp, she often gets her whiskers out of whack. She thinks I favor him because he's a male. She doesn't realize I do it because if I don't, he'll sit in front of my computer monitor and howl as though his tail were caught in a blender.

Fact is, like most little girls, my Colleen Fiona needs reassurance she's important, loved and can grow up to be anything she sets her sights to be. And there's the rub. Colleen Fiona has no career focus. Ask her what she wants to be when she grows up and you get a blank stare. Try to get her excited about journalism and she yawns. Mention the word "profession" and she curls up in a ball and goes to sleep.

As if that weren't bad enough, she has a hard time comprehending why anyone would want an occupation, period. Indeed, sometimes I get the feeling she thinks I should stay home with her and play games all day. Sometimes I think she resents the fact that I have to earn a living.

How else to explain the theatrics when I'm leaving in the morning? I can see her now, up at the top of the stairs, all teary-eyed, waving a tissue and sniffling, "Adieu, adieu."

Maybe if she comes to work with me for a day she'll finally understand that when I go to the office, it's just temporary. That I will always, God willing, return. And that, even though I'm as busy as an ant at a picnic, she and her brother are always uppermost in my mind. Maybe the photos all over my office will convince her. She may be embarrassed at first, when she sees her face plastered all over my wall. But at least she'll know for sure her Mommy's not ignoring her.

Business trips may begin to make sense to my daughter then, too. And if she learns the relationship between them and the crab legs I put on the table, she might quit giving me the deep freeze when I come home from out of town.

I think a day at the office would do my Colleen Fiona a world of good. She would come to realize her Mom's a professional, and (dare I dream?) start looking up to me as a role model. If nothing else, she might take my job more seriously. Maybe then she'd only text me in an emergency, and not just because her favorite mousie is under the couch and she can't reach it. She'd also recognize at once how embarrassing it is for her to post photos of her and her empty kibbles dish on Facebook, like it's an everyday occurrence.

I'm confident Colleen Fiona could learn a lot. For example, at lunch, we'd go for a nice meal in the cafeteria. She'd notice, then, there are no "take out" facilities and that it isn't always easy for Mommy to put an order of blackened tuna in an expandable file to bring home. If Colleen Fiona came to work with me she'd pick up other things, too - like how angry the man at the "help desk" gets when he discovers bird feathers in my laptop. Or how much easier it is for Mommy to read her Daytimer if there are no hairballs stuck on the pages.

Though she can sometimes be blas, I think Colleen Fiona would enjoy Take Our Daughters to Work Day. She could have fun walking over my computer and I could help her edit the results. We could create her own "Chatty Cat" podcast, or set up her own "clawpage," with tips on where to find the juiciest fat garden snakes and what items make the most noise when you swipe them off a table. We could make a video of her chasing the red dot at my Powerpoint presentation and fax it to her brother.

But best of all, she'd get a chance to see Mommy's proud of her little Princess. See, we may not look like other moms and daughters. But when it comes to purr-fect (sorry) love, we sure have a lot in common.

- Allia Zobel Nolan

Allia Zobel Nolanis the author of the newly published second edition ofThe Worrywart's Prayer Book. She is an internationally published author of over 150 traditionally published children's and adult trade titles. Her books reflect her two main passions, God and cats, and include such varied titles asCat Confessions: A Kitty Come Clean Tell All Book, Whatever Is Lovely: a 90-Day Devotional and Journal;andWhat I Like About You: A Book AboutAcceptance. She lives and worries, with her husband, Desmond, and their two feline children, Nolan Nolan and Colleen Fiona Shannon Nolan. In 2018, she collaborated with the Erma Bombeck Writers' Workshop on the humor anthology,Laugh Out Loud: 40 Women Humorists Celebrate Then andNowBefore We Forget.