That’s my response to a communication from, of all people, the Porch Kitty Fan Club. In the lovely Christmas card was a quotation–you know the one about the power of the pen– and giving notice that a donation had been made to the Portage APL in memory of Barry Vancura. He would have loved it. So would his “Princess”, Portia the Rescue Cat (She was named for one of the Ugly Stepsisters in “Cinderella”–the Rodgers & Hammerstein version. There were two of them, of course, Portia & Joy, but Joy turned out to be “Joey” when we all got better acquainted and he got off the pumpkin much before Portia did; she’s buried in my back yard, has her own stone and everything. The Fan Club, having seen the porch itself during the Christmas Walk, mentioned that the Porch Kitties seemed to have adequate accommodations and lacked only individual sweaters (In angora, no doubt). The Kitties probably would have welcomed such garments during the recent untimely cold snap/polar vortex/”bomb” cold/blizzard/whatever that ungodly cold was, but they did stick pretty closely to the insides of their kitty kondos. I hardly saw even their noses during the worst of it. The heated water bowl, given at an earlier holiday, was just barely able to keep from freezing solid. I went out and knocked off the ice rim, so we all survived.
The later warming trend had them all out and sunning themselves on the porch rail and the miscellaneous chairs available. Numerous Christmas Walkers have commented upon the kitty kondos. These were all created from styrofoam boxes used by the Omaha (Didn’t some QB in times past use the word to change directions at the line of scrimmage?) Steak Company to ship their major meat orders…large ones. I’m thinking that I should take a picture of the boxes–perky decor and all–then send it to the company. Maybe we could get in a commercial! Maybe they’d send a boxful of burgers, gratis, for human consumption, natch. Maybe I could actually learn how to send pix on my phone!
Anyway, some kind soul has left two new styrofoam boxes by the mailbox, presumably for the kitties, but they’ll have to wait until Spring or Summer to get any use; they’re a little small (the heating pads do not fit.) but might do admirably as Summer cottages while the current ones get a rest and refurbishment–might keep them — the kitties, that is — off of the chair cushions and confuse the raccoon visitors, something greatly to be wished.
Assuming that we have just had our “January Thaw” early( It typically starts somewhere around the 25th of January), I went looking in the Old Farmer’s Almanac to get a hint or two as to what the weather is looking to be for the rest of the month. This early interest in all things meteorological hinges on the fact that the Garfield Quiz Bowl team, 2022 champs, has been invited to an invitational (duh) competition on the weekend of January 27. Great! Right? Well, yeah, except that the tournament is being held in Glasgow, KY. I told the organizer of this affair that traveling down…and up, and down and…up…and you get the picture… to the hills in the dead of Winter, was not something that I would, ordinarily, look forward to. No problem, he says. He’s not the one driving. Anyone else want to volunteer? The nearest OFA comment for this time period went, “Clear and frigid, everything rigid.” Something to look forward to. Right?
You could start prepping for the Chinese New Year (01/22/23–I think that it’s the year of the Rabbit), having put Twelfth Night and Epiphany (01/05/23, 01/06 23) behind us. You could, of course, prolong the whole celebration thing just by being Orthodox, any one of the several permutations of that particular stream of Christianity, where they celebrate Christmas on Saturday , 01/07/23. Go, Wise Men!
Then there’s the Full Wolf Moon, Martin Luther King, Jr Day and Elvis’ birthday, Benjamin Franklin’s too. What festivity!
You could commemorate as well, the date, January 14, 2019, when 40,000 pounds of liquid chocolate flooded I-40 near Flagstaff, Arizona due to an overturned tanker. Supply chain issues for Hersheys? What a clean-up !!!
Start collecting your paperwork for income taxes…coming right up.
