As we enter the sprinting months toward Christmas I was reminded of a story that I had forgotten about. My family tradition is quite simple, yet we held to it, Christmas eve we had a dinner and friends over and I always got to open all my presents that night. Christmas day was actually about Christ. We are not, and were not avid church goers, but I was raised with church values and beliefs.
This one particular party was quite rememberable for a rather amusing cat. Now Bancroft's animals like cats and dogs seemed at times to be another whole community. It was our homeless and hobo's rolled into one. In fact the back porch of my house seemed to be an at least nightly stop for two to three dogs. You also had the cat roamings that seemed to be our nightly gangs. It was rather odd to go a night without hearing a couple of cats duke it out. During the day you could always find a battle scarred cat.
Well this evening started like most me begging my mother all day and early evening to open a present or two, despite the fact every other kid had to wait another whole day. Just shows no matter when you let them open stuff it's never soon enough. It had snowed the day before and was really cold at night. The roads were cleared by afternoon, but the snow had stayed on the grass. That evening we had another inch or two before it got too cold to even snow.
Everyone was over and we were chowing down on the delicious food. Usually someone would come as Santa for the kiddies (HAHA yeah I was at the age that I didn't believe in it). After we ate, the grown ups usually played cards or a personal favorite Balderdash (great game). Well I was in the kitchen and happened to look out and see a cat in the yard. He was by an old concrete well we had in our yard and he was standing like he/she was walking and then heard something. I thought me coming to the window might have startled him/her into stopping. I thought nothing of it and went back to being a pest to the adults trying to play a game.
A few hours had went by and my uncle noticed this cat too. I went and looked again and he/she was in the same position! Yep! Frozen solid! To go from walking to frozen solid is rather, well, hard to believe and we have long speculated that someone planted that cat in our yard like that.
