The Legend of Christmas Kittle

We once had a cat.

Or should I say,

She once had we?

(With apologies to Lennon/McCartney and the song Norwegian Wood)

Our favorite cat, although dead for seven years now (not unlike Jacob Marley in A Christmas Carol) lives large in our memories.  Her legend has grown, and to us she has become the greatest cat to have ever graced the Earth.  Little wonder why we’re in no big rush to go find a replacement; what mere cat (not meerkat) could live up to such high expectations?  I’m certain that our next fur-child will be a dog, as we have no baseline to judge one by.

Kittle, whose name started as Brittany but was pretty much renamed by a friend of ours as “the Kittle”, wore many hats.  She would assume different personalities for different roles she would acquire.  We had nicknames for all of these personas, but the only one I will address today is that of “Christmas Kittle”, which is fitting being that this is Christmas Day.

As you can see in the above photo, when the Christmas tree went up in December, Christmas Kittle was reborn and would take her rightful place under the tree.  This became her headquarters until the tree would come down after New Year’s Day.

If we ever wondered where Kittle was when we came home from work, we had to look no further than underneath the tree.  When we’d plug in the tree’s lights in the dark of night, she would take her place under the tree in a spot where the lighting gave her a soft, saint-like appearance.  “Peace on Earth, Good Will Toward Mice,” she’d appear to say. 

And she was kind to mice.  She would bring them in from the cold, and then drop them in our nice, warm house. Then it would be up to me to chase them around with a shoe and try to bash their little brains in before they scurried under some furniture or cabinetry to take up residence in our home.  Thanks a lot, Kittle.

As I close this short post, I can’t help but wonder how many of you have your own special memories of pets and people from Christmases past? For those of you who do… hold onto them!  It’s amazing how a Holiday such as this can bring back thoughts of friends and family that you’d otherwise store deep within the memory vault.

To leave you with the words that Christmas Kittle would speak to us from under the tree, “Meow”.  I’m not sure exactly what that translated to, but with the look of contentment on her face it must have been something good!  Meow-zy Christmas, everybody!