Christmas Cats

I love my cats.  They love me as long as I feed them.  Otherwise, they gravitate to whomever shakes the kibble bag.  Or pops the top on their Fancy Feast.  But even if ours is a relationship of convenience, I’m nothing if not a sucker for a furry paw and fishy breath. 

I love to take pictures of my cats.  I have more pictures of cats than pictures of family members.  At least cat pictures are always cute; family members not so much.

 

Lily thinks I won’t find her behind the tree.

I hated to tell her the gift wasn’t for her.

I told her to get from behind the tree. She doesn’t know which way to go.

Lily’s Favorite Place – Behind the Christmas Tree

Lily and Rosie in the same frame

Rosie still for a few seconds under the tree

 

Rethinking the Christmas List

I got almost everything I asked for on my Christms list.  As I opened gifts, I mentally checked them off.  There’s the Homer Laughlin book; the Garden Claw; the black gloves; the black peacoat; the Felco secateurs; the external hard drive; the gift cards.  All neatly checked off.  But no heart shaking surprises.  No opening a gift and getting a huge surprise…”For meeeee?  Ohhhhhhhh how did you know?  How did you guess?  It’s the best thing ever!”  Nope; none of that.   Actaully opening gifts was rather anticlimatic.  I know that isn’t something that the gift-giver wants to hear since I got exactly what I asked for.  That’s the purpose of wish lists, right?

That’s sounds ungrateful, doesn’t it.  It isn’t meant to be.  I’m thinking of past Christmases.  Perhaps Christmases too long ago.  Perhaps back to Christmases when Santa brought one toy.  And we received one gift from Mama and Daddy.  And one gift from my older sister.  There was  more excitement and anticipation then.  And absolutely no sense of expectation.  I never even sat on Santa’s knee and told him what I wanted because I was scared to death of him!  And you know WHY he frightened me?  Because.  Mama always told my brother and me that if we weren’t in bed and asleep by 8:30PM on Christmas eve night, that Santa would bite our ears off!  Talk about PTSD.  It’s a good thing I don’t believe in Santa.  Now that I’m a grownup and everything, I know why she did it.  She just wanted us from underfoot so they could get the Santa stuff going on.  But try telling that to an overly sensitive and literal 8-year-old.  No wonder I grew up so ambivalent towards Christmas!

But the point of all of this is just to question if Wish Lists are a good thing.  The whole point is a list of things we wish for; not a list of things we actually get.  Or is that just wishful thinking?  Nevertheless, I hope Santa was good to you and yours.