Happy First and Last February Second of 2024! Maurice and his confrères welcome you to the new. Cats love new years. They love them so much, they celebrate them on a rolling basis. But cats hate resolutions. They hate them so much, they are here to save us from them, at great personal cost.
Take one melon-round head. Plunk it onto a plug of a neck; attach a body shaped like a sausage (more accurately, a “saw-seech,” per my grandmother). Pin on four stubby legs. Expand belly repeatedly. Congratulations: you have built yourself one Sadie.
We came. We marched fourth. We marched thirty-first, even. And now, we shall April.
Ages of sages haven’t been able to answer this question: why does your eyebrow sometimes twitch? Or, if your name is Sadie Rosenberg,* why does your entire little grey face squiggle with spasms?
At the risk of offending every cat who ever thought he was the sun, I have an announcement to announce. It’s not all about us.
If yesterday was gras, today is grey. Faithful folk worldwide are walking around with smudges of ash on their foreheads, representing repentance to God and the start of Lent. Faithful cats, on the other hand, have been wearing ash grey in and out of (liturgical) season. Never mind that felines don’t do repentance.