SUSAN LOESCH

CATS IN THE STACKS

After our busy week of partying in the library, this week is pretty calm. Elsewhere on campus, things are rockin’.

Tonight our secondary kids have their Winter dance; elementary kids will meet Santa tomorrow; our choir is practicing for their program and our seventh graders are…carrying around babies! Not real ones, of course, even though they are supposed to be treated as though they are real as part of a program called “Baby Think It Over.” Naturally Alex has to meet the babies! Two of my boys showed theirs to Alex and he was not impressed…they didn’t smell like catnip or anything to eat!

I don’t think the seventh graders are all that impressed either. They are finding out how much trouble a baby can be. “Hey,” I called to one, “You can’t leave your baby on the table while you go to your locker.”

Alex had started the day with yummy chicken and tuna canned food and about an hour later ate enough treats from one of our littlest students to add at least one kitty pound and maybe two!

One of my fourth graders came in with an ornament he had made for Alex…an Alex-colored kitty in a blue and red stocking, which he had painted himself. I got a piece of ribbon so we could put it on the tree. Nicholas started to put it on our black cat tree – Big Footsie’s tree – and then stopped.

“It can’t go here, can it?” I said it sure could go on Footsie’s tree, that it is a very special ornament. “And Alex is special,” he said, “Because he was Big Footsie’s friend.” So he put the ornament on the tree and then brought Alex to see it.

The next period brought the second graders, and they and Alex watched “Jumanji” together. Actually, Alex watched the video, and the girls watched Alex.  And then they took pictures with my cell phone of him watching it!   So much for “books before cats”, but after all it IS Christmas! We can’t be serious ALL the time.

After all that food and activity Alex headed to my office and took a nap on my keyboard! And it was only noon.