Season's Greetings

Mrrrr Friends,

Happy Holidays!

This is my first year with a festively decorated holiday tree, and I wanted to share it with all of you.

I’m very excited to join in this quite awesome human celebration of trees, giving, and peace. Cats don’t naturally celebrate the December holidays of humans – some of us adopt them of course. I have cat friends celebrating Eid al-Adha, Christmas, and Hanukkah – all in December this year.

For the most part, we are big fans of Winter Solstice, otherwise know as Catsolstice. All cats celebrate that event every year – think of it, the longest night of the year, any cat’s favorite time of day, maximized! Catsolstice party events usually include all night caterwauls and cat prowls, a big feast and a cat sporting event – tree climbing being a big favorite.

And, given this thousands of years old cat tradition, you can imagine how challenged we are – especially when we are just kittens – to see our first tree come into our peoples home, get decorated with twinkly lights and shimmery decorations, soft sewn ornaments that look like they might have catnip in them, and, thanks to the foolhardy among you, ornaments that are actually edible. It’s just sitting there…begging to be climbed, jumped into, swatted at or laid under. Fortunately for me, the trunk of our tree is really quite skinny, not something I aspire to scale.

Alex and I swat quite a bit, but our people are prepared for this and keep ornaments out of easy reach. They are happy to let us lie under the tree and look up into the lights and ornaments, occasionally napping a bit, and they do not get perturbed when we play with one or more of the three wise teddies and the panda that sit on the blanket of snow that wraps the tree stand. They say they did get a bit perturbed, though, when Alex tried to drink the tree water, but she seems to be off the sauce this year.

I helped decorate this year. We did lights first. Then we did glass and tin ornaments, and that was exhausting, so I had to sleep after that. The next day the rest of the ornaments went on, and you see the results above.

All in all, this looks to be a very fun week ahead. Alex and I want to wish all of you a very happy Catsolstice, Christmas, Eid, and a belated happy Hanukkah. But, most importantly, we wish you and your furry, feathered, and scaled companions fun, health, joy, silliness, excellent food and friends, and peace in the coming year.

Please consider putting your tree out for the birds and other critters when you are done.