Hello Furiends,
I hope you had a purrfectly wonderful New Year’s celebration. The holidays at our house have been a bit whacky. The Human’s family arrived in full force. They celebrated Christmas and New Year’s together and will soon be celebrating a wedding. Good grief, The Human lives a fairly sedate social life and suddenly she’s turned into a social butterfly!

While she was galivanting around Lily, Oliver and I held a Feline Opines staff meeting and decided that we needed to get our points of view out in this blog so we have created some spots for all three of us to share our views of the world with all of you, Here is our first stab at this new endeavor, we hope you like it. (We are not abandoning our #WalkThroughTheWebWednesday feature)

Well furiends, we made it through this holiday season-barely. While The Human was dancing around to family social engagements we were left to fend for ourselves. Because of this dereliction of duty, we made sure to demand extra treats on a regular basis (evidently this technique had consequences as my collar is now a little tighter.)

In The Human’s defense, she did order us some nice things from Chewy and there were lots of skritches when she finally got home from her soirees. Still, when she was here, she was completely absorbed in finishing her book. She was maniacal in her maniacal quest to get the job done and despite our skepticism she actually did it!

When we innocently requested a kitty tale for the new year, she decided to tell us a Christmas story about Jólakötturinn, (Yule Cat) an Icelandic Christmas story. If my brief recap gives you the desire to learn more you can go to the Icelandic Folklore website, a research project managed by the University of Iceland. Oh my whiskers was that request a mistake!!

Jóhannes úr Kötlum, an Icelandic poet, wrote about the Yule Cat in his book, Jólin koma (Christmas is Coming), published in 1932.

The poem tells the tale of a huge cat with eyes that glow. This frightening feline roams the country, looking for children that are not wearing the new clothes they got for Christmas. Good grief, this is a bit of an overreaction, don’t you think? I guess if I were a little human in Iceland I’d be sure to wear every piece of clothing I received for Christmas!

As for this feline, I strongly object to a story that makes us the bad guy and scary to kids. Everyone knows kitties are furiends to all children…as long as they don’t pull our tails or treat us cruelly.

This story, along with all the fireworks going off outside at midnight, gave Oliver quite a fright. Lily just stayed buried under the covers until it was all over.

The Human has advised us that we’re in for quite a bit of snow in the next few days. We felines will sit by the fire and enjoy the view from the dining room window.

We all wish you a 2024 full of blessings and treats!

Purrs and Head Bonks,
Alberto, Oliver, Lily and The Human