Da Buddies Eclectic: Happy Holidays from the New Crew!

Still miss Reggie.

Just wanted to get that out of the way.

Oh heck, we still miss all of them, and even more so on Christmas. Never have you seen a couple go so all-out for their buddies, every Christmas of every year. Stockings, wrapped presents, you name it. Our cats grew to love it. Honestly, I think they liked all the paper that was created from the unwrapping part best, but no matter.

Christmas around here this year has been a much more understated affair, for several reasons:

1.) First, we only had a Christmas tree up for four days before we had to take it down. Why? Because this guy:

kept LICKING the tree:

Yep, since the last time I wrote, we adopted Lionel. Lionel has decided he is an honorary dog. He eats like there's no tomorrow and licks everything in sight. Unfortunately, considering most faux Christmas trees are probably slathered in flame-retardant, we decided that perhaps licking the tree wasn't the healthiest thing for poor Lionel to be doing. The terrible thing is that we usually only put ornaments on the tree that could withstand the onslaught of an overly-effusive kitty army, so we thought we were all set. But Lionel had other plans.

Something tells me there will be many more hilarious Lionel stories as we go along--this is a cat who doesn't have much of a filter and doesn't do much holding back.

2.) So we have this new business, and we thought it was in our best interest to not buy a lot of stuff for the buddies this year. We bought them each one small gift (okay, Cooper and Ferris each got a big dog toy to rabbit-kick), but we did get them this:

https://www.catastrophicreations.com/product/cat-mod-deluxe-fort/

I'll post pictures after it's all set up.

Oh, perhaps I should explain that "Ferris" part.

After the ginormous Coco-as-Shop-Cat Fail, we tried another one in August: Ferris. Ferris was a rescue from the Hilton Head Humane Association, and we thought we would be fostering him so he could find a new family while getting lots of attention and love at our store. He'd been at the shelter for over a year and a half when we got him, so we figured he was probably getting overlooked. Since we had Reggie at home at the time, we didn't think it was a great idea for him to come home and join the family, so he stayed at the store every night. It took some adjustment, but he settled right in and eventually became the world's most perfect shop cat. We finally reached a point where we realized we couldn't possibly send him off to a new home if people were interested (which they were). In the meantime, Reggie passed away, throwing Cooper into a tailspin for being the only boy in the house. Long story short, we ended up adopting Lionel and Ferris the same day, even though Ferris is still our shop cat. So, here's Ferris, being a buddy at work:

We take him back and forth from the store to our house every night in a soft-sided carrier. Cooper thinks that the carrier is an amusement park ride and likes to crawl in it and be carried/swung around the house. Ferris finds it a lot less fun but enjoys being both at home and at the store, so it works out well.

So those are really the two reasons why Christmas was more understated this year. It didn't matter--everyone just seemed to enjoy getting "fancy" mush for Christmas Eve and Christmas Day (canned chicken and sardines, respectively), and being all cozy-warm in the living room while a frigid below-50-degree day commenced outside.

I'll catch you all up on their shenanigans and who-gets-along-with-whom in some later posts. (Suffice it to say that Zelda and Coco have been giving Lionel the cold-shoulder but they both love Ferris and may have a wee crush on him.)

Some things never change, though. As I write, Ferris is crying piteously for Sean to hurry up with making the morning mush. Cooper's still a play hound and Zelda's still a sweet baby.

It's weird though...this new crop of cats is starting to seem less like Da Buddies Eclectic and more like something completely different. We call them all "boo" now, so it occurred to me that "the Boo Crew" might be more appropriate. I'm going to mull that one over and see what I think.

Happy Holidays from all of us at the Dennis household (i.e. maybe the Boo Crew?)!