Cakes and Pets

While my children were young, they did not have dogs or cats as pets. Instead, we had goldfish and, our favorite, turtles. There was a reason for that...dog and cat hairs do not combine well with cakes, especially wedding cakes. When I got too busy for all of the orders I was getting, I went looking for someone I could refer my customers to. So I found this one lady, went over to meet her, to check out her work and her home, and decided that she was a safe bet as a referral. To my horror, the first customer I referred her to for a wedding cake (a friend) called after the wedding and asked me not to refer any more customers to her as they had cat hairs in the wedding cake. I apologized profusely, but at that point, there was nothing I could do. I had not seen any cats when I went to check her out. Needless to say, I did not refer this lady, or anyone else, to anyone ever again. I just told them I was too busy.

Another time, a customer picked up a full sheet cake the night before to take to work in the morning. It was, of course, in a box. She put the box on the kitchen counter. That night, her cat decided to climb up and sit on the box, which destroyed the cake. She called me up in tears the next morning. I told her to bring the cake over and I would repair it as much as I could. Of course, it was not the same cake as I had given her the night before.

My latest run in with a pet was the wedding cake delivery I had last Saturday. The family had a pit bull. First of all, I was met at the table by this dog, and had to ask that someone take him outside while I was setting up the cake. Then I was informed that the dog would be inside (where the cake was set up) while everyone was at the ceremony. I did not know whether the cake would survive the pit bull or not. I just made sure that I took a picture of the cake before leaving, and I let them know that I was not responsible for anything that happened to the cake after I left. I'm not sure what they did to protect the cake, but apparently, it survived as the bride said she was happy with the cake. By the way, this was an interesting cake...check out the picture. The "black" fondant strips were made with the special dark ccocoa, and the red strips were airbrushed so that the back of the strips were still white where they touched the cake. The top had large silver dragees, which I found out have been the scrutiny of law suits. So I had the customer sign a release form before I left the delivery site.