January was a delightfully quiet month. As most probably do after the holidays, we really needed it. We found homes more or less for all the Christmas gifts. We worked on art projects. We worked on 2023 vacation planning, which is always fun. In short, we took a breath.

Maya painting her new stone dragon. We need to find a home for him in the yard.

Our high level vacation plan for this year was as follows: spring break in Los Angeles, Memorial Day week visiting the kids’ grandparents, Fourth of July week (maybe more than a week) visiting Boston and Maine, and Thanksgiving week in Mexico. Due to a lapse in memory for booking a much-desired excursion, the trip to Maine will need to be postponed till next year. No word yet on what a backfill will be, though we’ve discussed several options for a driving trip.

Ian is gentle enough for Lumos to tolerate from time to time.

The real shake up came around mid to late month. One of Sean’s coworkers had two cats, one of whom became sick with FIC. To reduce the stress on her sick cat, she began searching for a home for her other cat. We are, as always, suckers for a hard luck case. And so we became the caretakers of a fourth cat – Cheech.

Cheech! Big Chungus! Chungus Among Us! Chicharron! Bustopher Jones!

Cheech is a sturdy fellow; he’s clearly not missed many meals. Maya almost immediately took to calling him Big Chungus. I almost immediately took to calling him Chicharron. After being utterly terrified by his radical shift in lifestyle and venue for a couple of days, Cheech decided he wanted attention. He danced around for scratches and pats. He played with the toys his person had left with him.

Two extremely cute things we’ve discovered about Cheech … 1 – He likes to snuggle himself under the bedclothes. Often, we’ll find a lump in our bed, sometimes butted up against one of the other cats who are sitting atop the blankets, and there’s Cheech, snug as a bug. 2 – And this is a good one – dude plays fetch. He’ll wander the house with a toy in his mouth, mrowring for all he’s worth (can’t get out a proper “meow” with a mouth full of toy), and drop said toy by your feet. You chuck it across the house, and he tears off after it, and then, astonishingly, he brings it back and drops it at your feet to do all over again. Velvet used to bring you a string toy so you’d play with her, but never did she play fetch. This is new for us.

Here, little bitty Nox isn’t allowing Cheech to exit the office

Cheech is still settling into the house. I can’t tell if he wants to be friends with the other cats or not. We’re 90% sure he’s not being aggressive, but, as Sean puts it, Cheech has no boundaries and doesn’t pick up on social cues. He wants to check out Lumos’s favorite hiding spots, but he hasn’t picked up on the fact that her hissing means she doesn’t want him there. It’s caused a bit of unrest in the household, but hopefully time will even that out. Cheech has learned that he should be wary of Nox. His fellow black cat is half his size, but she tolerates very little and has made this known often enough that Chicharron seems to have gotten the message.

Disney pin boards and a Hank in a box

And honestly, that’s our January. Resting up from our October, November, and December and welcoming a surprise new cat into our house. Heads up – I’m not sending holiday cards out this year. It just became too much on top of everything else and so I just didn’t do it. If you didn’t get a card, don’t take it as a personal slight. Maybe I’ll get a wild hair and send cards out at some other random time of the year. Maybe not!