SUSAN LOESCH

CATS IN THE STACKS

We are going to make it, I think! There is just one more day of school after today for me and for Alex, this is the last day before his vacation starts. Tomorrow SnuggleBunny will get to be Head Library Cat for a day.

Alex has been busy the last couple of days. Yesterday he got a really close look at his TWO Christmas stockings, which are hung alongside one each for Piper and SnuggleBunny. They are filled to the brim with toys and treats.  Hope held him up to take a good long peek and sniff and she reminded him that all the goodies have to wait until Christmas.

He tried on Big Footsie’s stocking cap and looked like he had “settled down for a long winter’s nap” as his eyes closed while Mary petted him.

I have the most fun book called A Cat’s Night Before Christmas, by Mary Beard. It was a gift to Big Footsie four years ago from his friend Conall. Every year I read it to my cats on Christmas Eve.

I’ve tried ALL day to read it to some of my older kids. My senior boys said they’d rather watch their assigned video on Money Matters. I got a weak, “that sounds interesting” from one of my seventh graders. That’s OK.  I bet SnuggleBunny and my fifth and sixth graders will listen to it tomorrow!

“’Twas the night before Christmas, and all through the house, not a creature was stirring, I’d killed the last mouse.”

“For there by the gutter, at rest on the ice, I espied a sleigh drawn by eight pairs of white mice.” Saint Kitt had arrived!  “And as they flew off with a crack of his rat-whip, ‘Merry Christmas!’ he called out, ‘and lay off the catnip!’”

After receiving so many nice gifts this year Alex got to be on the giving end today.  He had picked out orange tabby ornaments for Trinity and Mary, my work study students.

“It’s an Allie ornament!” exclaimed Trinity. “It looks just like you.” He was rewarded with lots of petting.

That wasn’t his last treat for the day, though. At noon our Nutrition Department served the staff a great Christmas lunch.  Alex couldn’t go down to eat with me, but he did get some turkey, delivered right to his bed on a holiday napkin.

Sleep, eat, get gifts; that is a pretty good life, isn’t it?  I bet when Alex sleeps he has visions of roasted chickens and baked turkeys dancing in his head!