MERRY CHRISTMAS, EVERYBODY! ENJOY THE DAY, HUG YOUR CRITTERS AND AVOID CALORIES

For this weekend and for Christmas Day, we’re celebrating the umpteenth edition of Let Sleeping Dogs Lie & Napping Cats Nap with some holly-jolliness and “Tinsel of the Mind.”
I’m not sure “Tinsel of the Mind” is an actual condition, but I’ll cop to it.
That’s our boy Griffin (Griffy or Big G), a quite large cat. Quite large.  Griffin Oliver Powell was enjoying a nap once upon a time under the Christmas tree at our old house in Dallas.

[LARRY ASIDE: I once heard that when the North Pole operations were looking for a place that could handle mass manufacturing and swift overnight global distribution, Dallas was in the top two “likelys” until somebody pointed out that sleighs would need their runners refitted with yet-to-be-developed multi-climate tires and that reindeer have trouble landing on roads with potholes. Wouldn’t be able to get car insurance — Texas doesn’t recognize sleighs as vehicles. Anybody else hear that?]

Our reach in this edition of Let Sleeping Dogs Lie & Napping Cats Nap goes from the summerish yule in the Metrosprawl to the actual wintry conditions at our Eastern Seaboard Bureau on Indian Lake in Denville, N.J. -- see the ducks on the pond? There’s some Tinsel of the Mind at work there, too. It’s aided by that layer of snow that fell on Denville on Christmas Eve — photo by noted broadcast and print journalist Andrew Fisher, our Eastern Seaboard Bureau Chief. That’s what it looked like Friday from the deck of the bureau. In a few paragraphs we’ll get to Andy, wife Annie (the first pickleball player I ever encountered) and Chloe the Cat who serves as the Eastern Seaboard Bureau Personnel Manager. 
Back to Tinsel of the Mind:
TOTM is the kind of thing that happens to people who really love the holiday season — symptoms are (a) easily distracted by flickering lights, (b) drawn to “SALE!” signs and open parking spaces and (c) inclined to make a list and check it twice. 
I’m one of them —I’d love Tinsel of the Mind even more if Lotto Texas could see fit to drop the right six numbers on Saturday night! There’s yer merry Christmas!
But, moving along…
Back to this big orange cat, Griffin Oliver Powell, an Oak Cliff stray we picked up after a rainstorm when he was a kitten — that was in 2003 and the big lovable angel went on back to Heaven in 2015. 
He loved the Christmas trees. One year, my focusedspouse Martha snapped the photo of the rascal in a yuletide nap under the tree. He was a gift and still is — photos and memories and sometime I almost think I can hear his basso profundo purr coming down from Heaven when insomnia has me wide awake in the “lateness of the hour.” Could just be a routine window-rattling household snore — many suspects in our sometimes quiet home!
Now, Dear Santa, I’ve been a really good boy this year — got all my vaccinations and a flu shot and something else I can’t remember — oh, yeah, my LCV shot (lycanthropy control vaccination) to control full moon episodes. I’m kidding about that last one. Look, I rescued a kitten and he needed a lot of help. My yulespouse Martha and I have a history of rescuing cats and dogs. And that is how these two couch-snoozers became the spotlight of our Christmas Day/weekend edition of Let Sleeping Dogs Lie & Napping Cats Nap.
You see two scenes. One is mere months-old kitten Captain Hastings Streetboy, a rescue, backed up to the backside of the veteran sleeping canine Porche Noel, a rescue. I picked Capt. Streetboy up off Hastings Street in Duncanville -- not even a full handful of kitten, blind with goop on his eyes and starving. Porche Noel is maybe a decade older than Hastings and she got the name because we found her on our front porch at Christmas.
A few minutes after I took the hip-to-hip photo, I captured them in their actual sleeping poses. Porche won her end of the couch and Hastings established a napping domain on his end.

As you may suspect, Martha and I love these two. Heck, we love ‘em all. Even animals we haven’t met and may never meet. Save 'em all, you know. It’s a Tinsel of the Mind thing, maybe. Could just be the morally right thing to do.
At our Eastern Seaboard Bureau there’s this calm and loving cat, Chloe. This is Eastern Seaboard Bureau Personnel Manager Chloe taking a management look at the bureau’s Christmas tree. Andy quoted her as saying, “Yeah yeah. Pretty tree. Big deal.” I think he paraphrased.
He also reports that Chloe has good wishes for Christmasses future and Andy writes, “Things are looking up — like this angle on Annie’s beautiful tree.” Yep, Bureau Chief is third in power and influence at the Eastern Seaboard Bureau. Andy, however, can write a good explanation. For example, regarding adopted-rescue Chloe, he writes, “Chloe got over her love of the mean streets very early; she’s content to watch the birds and squirrels out on the deck and run the house, which is a very big job.”
Andy included his photo of gesturing Chloe explaining that she was saying firmly, “Move that chair a little to the right, OK? Why? BECAUSE I SAID SO!” [LARRY ASIDE: She may be up for Personnel Manager of the Year in New Jersey, I think. Not sure who the other nominees are. It’s a working honor, not a political position.]
And that reminds me, Dear Readers (and the Bureau staff — big Christmas bonus in the mail!) , to thank you all from my heart for your contributions of photos and stories to readlarrypowell.com's daily editions and our weekend feature that celebrates the love you have for your animals year round. We've been publishing Let Sleeping Dogs Lie & Napping Cats Nap since May 5, 2005. It continues to be a weekly joy to see how much people love their dogs, cats, birds, horses, reptiles, amphibians and an occasional in-law.
Now, in a full-on outbreak of Tinsel of the Mind, Merry Christmas to you all and to all some genuine Peace on Earth and Good Will Toward All. [LARRY NOTE: By “all,” we don’t mean the unchanging bad guys who could use some time contemplating the lack of Tinsel of the Mind in their twinkle-free existences.]
And that closing photo is the lad Hastings Streetboy enjoying a full-on Christmas Eve nap with his mentor, my personal counselor in all manner of political, professional and personal matters, The Senator, a veteran napper. Hastings has learned quickly. The Senator has not let his time in a "swamp" stifle his ability to teach the younger among us.
— Offer peaceful tips or ideas for late gifts by clicking on ‘comment’ below or by emailing [email protected] and put ‘NO! NO! LARRY! NOT THE CHIMNEY! Thanksgiving to Christmas is a bad spell for my diet. —-