2018 Christmas Letter

My name is Teaky, and this year I became the proud cat-owner of the Lutfey family. My modest kingdom consists of big-male-human named Omar, big-female-human named Katherine, two small-female-humans named Isabel and Samantha, one big-male-dog named Maury, and one small-male-fish that I call a tasty snack when the opportunity arises. While the big-humans understand the proper protocol for addressing cat-royalty, the small-humans feel it is completely appropriate to touch me or try to pick me up when I’m preoccupied with critical tasks such as hunting dust particles in the living room. I’ve looked into replacing the small-humans, but apparently there is an enormous amount of paper work needed to be filed with the Human-aine Society. The big-male-dog doesn’t pose any challenge to my authority as he seems to focus on pretending to be asleep 20 hours a day only to pounce on the chance to eat human food left momentarily unprotected.

It has been brought to my attention that an annual event summarization must be filed with the proper authorities. While in the past this task has fallen to big-male-human, my arrival in the household has clearly altered the structure of authority. Hence I will now be in charge of the annual Christmas letter.

Big-male-human continues with his daily ritual of dressing up in brown clothes, driving away, and returning later in the day smelling of sweat, diesel fuel, and various random dog-units. On days when he stays home he likes to stay in his bedroom well past the completely appropriate wake up time of 7 am. When this happens I have to jump on the bed and stick my nose in his ear to make sure he is still alive. Sometimes he accidentally closes the bedroom door and I have to sit in the hallway and meow to revive him. Fortunately I’ve never been unsuccessful in reviving big-male-human. In a related note, he doesn’t seem to appreciate everything I do to make his life better such as clearly announcing that the sun will be rising in two hours.

My attempts to expand my domain proved unsuccessful when I acquired a small-baby-bunny and deposited him in the office near my litter box. This resulted in much commotion among the big-human units that included significant yelling, texting, and rearranging of furniture. Fortunately small-baby-bunny was quite adept at playing hide and seek, so he was able to avoid capture for more than a day. Unfortunately he received significant trauma when being relocated from his nest and died the next morning. After the small-baby-bunny was disposed of I was not allowed to freely play outside anymore. Hardly an appropriate manner to treat your superior, in my humble opinion.

Wow– this is a lot of work, and these windows aren’t going to stare out of themselves. I hereby delegate this work to big-male-dog.

Hi! This is Maury. The cat told me to finish this letter. I was busy taking a nap, but I’ll make sure to catch up on my sleep tomorrow. First of all, Teaky is totally correct that I spend all my time trying to get food that I know I’m not supposed to have. Have you ever tried the food they give me? A scoop of the same brown pellets in the morning and again at night gets old after a while. Now don’t get me wrong– I scarf it down like I haven’t eaten for a month, but why is it so wrong to want a taste of all the great food in the rest of the house? My proudest moment was getting a chocolate chip muffin from the kitchen counter. Now to be honest, I was pretty sure that Mom’s special silicone muffin wrapper wasn’t food, but I just didn’t want to take the chance. And I don’t know why they made such a big deal about it– she got it back a few days later. I do have to say that silicone slides through my digestive tract like nobody’s business.

Aside from the muffin incident, the biggest thing that happened to me this year was getting sent off to doggie heaven. I made it through so many things such as swallowing countless tiny pieces of so-called indestructible dog toys, constantly running into the corner of the kitchen island at full speed, and leaving half a corn cob in my stomach for six months. I couldn’t, however, survive the diagnosis of “cancer everywhere.” Doggie heaven is great– the toys are the best and everyone loves it when you fart. While, yes, time is an artificial human construct not defined by the laws of quantum physics, I am a good reminder that while it may not always seem to be the case, yesterday is not the same as tomorrow.

So to wrap things up I’ll share a few things I’ve learned over the years. Introduce yourself to everyone who doesn’t look like they could eat you as a snack, be insanely excited when people you know come home, and ALWAYS make a play for the food on the counter.