Christmas Mewsic

      It's no secret that I'm not fond of the Christmas season, but I stumbled on these pictures today in a way that bordered on pleasant irony. The pics are old now-- Blake, the babyish orange cat, long since passed away-- but they provided a strange kind of relief for what this season should be all about. Trouble, for all intents and purposes, was Blake's father-figure, and there's an utter adorability to these two going through their shenanigans, and making better use of Christmas paraphernalia than most humans do.

  

Then, of course, there's the other aspect of Christmas, what should be one of charity. Again, leave it to Trouble, always the crank and would-be feline John Wayne. Yesterday morning, there was much wailing and mewing from said crank as another cat, presumably but not necessarily a stray, who had taken to milling about the front porch. Like Trouble, he's a crank, and a loud one to boot, so the two carried on some sort of equivalent to a back-alley catversation. But the poor thing was starving (from momentary hunger, not long-term), so I fed the little guy.

  

For such a yawper, he's surpisingly timid, even antsy. It seems that every year as the weather gets colder, one cat in the neighbourhood moves in on us, and suckers that we are we end up feeding him/her for the rest of the season. Strangely, this always seems more Christmas-y than all of the silly gift-exchanging and platitude-spouting than invariably mires the holidays in mud-like pretense. This guy has such fascinating eyes, though the pictures are poor. I'm suspecting he'll be our quadrupedal Baby Jesus for a while. I wonder if like our past attendants at this feline inn he'll eventually start cuddling up with the innkeepers, sidling up with ravenous glee each time we open the door. Our last temporary boarder came to let me hold him and carry him, and even to sleep within the house for a few hours now and again when the weather became especially brutal, as Canadian winters are wont to do. He stuck around for several months. Makes me wonder whatever happened to him-- and what will happen with this one. The previous one was more like Blake: very sweet, very goofy, and perpetually hungry; this one seems more like Trouble, mouthy and independent and slow to trust, though Trouble is actually a big baby once he does trust. We shall see.

      Yeah, yeah, yeah: there's a patent silliness to all this, but this is also more of what I think Christmas should be about than all of the ludicrous stuff soon to make its way down the pike. And for that, Trouble's got exactly the right idea for how to handle it.



Oh, the wisdom of cats. Now if only I could do that-- without my back into a thousand calcified shards. Oh well. Fa la la la la and all that jazz. Relatives are on their way today for Friday's wedding. I wonder how much whiskey I can go through with alley-cat avarice. We shall see. Cheers.

      UPDATE: Yes, our new cranky little friend came by this morning again. Surprise, surprise.