BISMARCK, N.D. (KFYR) – The North Dakota Senate chamber has an additional unique visitor this session. A nonpartisan “therapy cat” has actually been appearing on various desks with within jokes to bring some comical relief.
A packed cat may be the last thing you’d anticipate to see in the Senate, which’s the response it receives from senators like Kristin Roers.
“Oh no, what? What is it for? So, it’s for a bill that was one of the first bills that was passed through both the Senate and the House and the governor signed, on increasing the THC limit for medical marijuana. And so there’s a little catnip on my desk now,” said Kristin Roers, R-Fargo.
There are a number of ladies who got the custom going, calling themselves “the front desk force.” They were motivated by a senator and got imaginative with props and poems.
“Well, the first thing was, Senator Meyer from Grand Forks brought the cat in. And it started out as a therapy cat, and so, he put a note on it and put it on the next senator,” said Sonja King, Senate journal press reporter.
To make the cat requires something being a within joke, something winding up being questionable, or simply a huge life occasion taking place for a senator.
“And when someone gets it, all the senators have to huddle around and going, ‘You’ve got to go over and see the cat,’” said Said Kim Schneider, Senate billing and recording clerk.
During their breaks, the cat gets great deals of various responses and stimulates laughter.
“This is the part of session where you need some comic relief. And so it was one of those things where I wasn’t stressed out, but had I been, it would have been, it would have been a good thing to help lighten the mood,” said Roers.
“And then Senator Kannianen had a baby during session, so the cat had a litter of kittens during that time and that is also when we had the diaper tax bill at the same time, so it helped him out with the diaper tax,” said said Shanda Morgan, secretary of the Senate.
They’re unsure if the cat basket will end up being a custom, however they’re having a good time with it.
To follow in addition to where the cat goes next, a lot of the senators publish updates on their social networks.
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