This lemony year has taken many things from us, while simultaneously hoarding all the sugar and Splenda so as to prevent us from making lemonade.
But what do Tabby’s Place kittens do with lemons?
They throw them out the window and make some righteous tuna salad.
We are, all of us, learning to improvise. The floor keeps shifting; the paper towelpocalypse keeps reviving; and we keep on keeping on, carrying on, carrying each other even when we can’t touch each other.
So we can’t pass the green bean casserole; maybe we secretly always thought that was vile criminal swill to begin with.
So we can’t hug our funkiest uncles and raddest aunties; maybe this year we can send creative hugs in the form of wacky weirdo gifts of laughing love. (My own funky uncle owns a dress shirt he insists is decorated with “maple leaves.” They are clearly leaves of another sort, recently legalized in our own New Jersey. I think he requires a second shirt of such splendor, especially in a year like this. But I digress.)
So we can’t all get together and squeeze the cats together. Maybe that’s been taken away, for a time, anyway.
But ya know what they can’t take, dare not take, won’t take without a fight (ready the lemons and day-old loaves for throwing)?
GRATUITOUS CAT PHOTOS.
Those of you kittens who have frequented this blog in past winters know: come late November, I’m too busy doing My Actual Job(TM) of raising money for Tabby’s Place to do My Favorite Job of writing drivel for your enjoyment on this blog. That means my words will have to largely give way to something that is actually far better.
Gratuitous cat photos.
If my usual blogging is green bean casserole, gratuitous cat photos are gingerbread.
If my too-many words are wilted asparagus, gratuitous cat photos are sweet potatoes (without marshmallows, because marshmallowing sweet potatoes is worse than treason on the high seas, go ahead and fight me).
If our usual programming is unbuttered white rolls, gratuitous cat photos are the most golden challah heaven you’ve ever hunked into.
You get the picture.
And now, you get the gratuities, starting with one perpetually festive Crunchwrap.
As you’re feeling the crunch in the days and weeks ahead, remember (a) we love you, enough that it should make you a little uncomfortable; (b) Crunchwrap never intended to live inside a squishy donut, but here she is rocking it, and; (c) we’re actually, definitely, individually and collectively going to be OK.
Crunch on, my little loaves of love. Let’s show this season what we’re made of.
Actually important PS: We do not dress Crunchwrap as a pineapple because we think it’s adorable, although we do and it is. We dress Crunchwrap as any number of fruits because she has serious skin allergies that otherwise cause her to scratch her neck silly.