How Christmas Changed Forever
I have always loved the Christmas season. I always had a real tree (love the smell, especially walking into the house), old fashioned twinkle lights (big bulbs, deep, entrancing colours) and decorations (delicate hand blown glass, shiny crystal orbs, tinsel). I had lights in every window, just because I could. I had at least one poinsettia in every room. Candles, love candles! I bought my tree on the weekend closest to the 15th of December and kept it up until the last possible day, with just enough time to make the recycling pick-up.
My son was exposed to this his entire life; my heart-daughter from the first year she was with me.
Both the kids are grown and gone, making their own traditions and following their own elf instincts. And when they left, things changed…
I adopted a rescue cat.
I was never a “cat person”, but dogs? I love dogs and when life allows me to stay home more and work less, there will be dogs, mixed in with the cats! But back to the cat…
Turns out that Jezebel was only the first — when daughter left home, she got a kitten from the local shelter. Sweet little kitten, that loved her. Son followed suit, but picked an adult cat, somewhat independent but very enthralled with him (I think she picked him, actually). I went with the boy to pick up his new friend, and was cruising the cat room, petting and cuddling as I went. As I leaned down to see who was in a bottom cage, a little white paw impudently grabbed my braid from above and, well, yelled at me! She made this big noise, that loudly said “here I am”. I cautiously stood up, disentangling her from my hair, and looked at first little girl cat that I would love.
Her cage was tagged with “do not let out” and she had a list of medical “stuff” that I couldn’t even pretend to understand. Bottom line, she couldn’t go to a forever home, until her current round of antibiotics for her herpes was finished. She was about a year and half old, had a heart murmur and had been in heat when she was brought to the shelter, 6 months prior. Nobody had even put in an application to adopt her. Fast forward 3 days, and she was on her way to see my vet, before coming to her forever home.
Within the space of just over a year, Jezebel went from being an only cat to part of the herd. My home, and heart, expanded to add Jynx, Karma, Lyric, Symphony and Miracle. Each broken in their own way (like me) and each needing someone, badly. When Jezebel crossed the rainbow bridge earlier this year (the heartbreak of love), Mazikeen found her way home. With each addition, my traditional Christmas moved farther and farther away from my reality.
The corner used to showcase my tree? Now filled with cat climbers on the wall and a cat tree (one of three) taking the available floor space. The lights that graced the tree and windows? Carefully packed away, as Jezebel and Jynx thought it was a great game to jump up the windows to swat at the pretty sparklies hanging there. The only twinkling light left is the red LED penlight that Mazzy and Mira love and demand multiple times per day. The ornaments? Cat toys in the making (and dangerous to little paws when shattered on the ground). My decorations now consist of sleeping cats, standing cats and posing cats (and not one of them willing to wear a Santa hat or reindeer antlers, by the way). Poinsettias? Poisonous to cats. Candles? After a couple of singed tails (all my cats are proudly “tail up” babies) and close calls, as Karma went kamikaze across the mantel and coffee table, I put them away. I tried leaving them out, unlit, but found it irritating to have to crawl under the couch to retrieve them, every morning.
As we get closer to Christmas Day, I will cherish the past memories of all things traditional. As I sit at my computer, with a cat on my lap, one on my printer stand (sans printer as it was replaced by a cat bed) and four others, languidly lounging within fairly close proximity, I acknowledge that Christmas could never be better than it is and my heart is both content and full.
