Hello, everyone! It's time for our annual Christmas email and once again, we have to get the sad update out of the way first. For those who don't already know: our social ambassador, the king of holiday cheer and the best Therapy Dog ever left us in August. Crash never met a stranger and he wore every outfit like a boss, and he is very very missed.
And so Domovyk has had to go solo on our holiday excursions this year. He wore his flannel jammies to see Santa (it was cold out!)
And he stood in for Crash at the annual Dauntless Winery Christmas party - but he refused to wear his ugly sweater.
He did get to meet one of Crash's best buddies! He and Tavor got along quite well.
Meanwhile back at home, everyone enjoyed the Christmas decorations that I finally got to put up, especially Oookie, who has found a new place to do his creepy child of the corn thing.
We even got a rare photo of all three of them together with Drizzle the reindeer!
The main floor of the house is completely finished all the way out to the backyard which makes me extremely happy and means we can finally decorate for Christmas and go back to hosting First Friday dinners!
But none of that is what you're here for. It's time for the tradition that we started almost 15 years ago - we were torturing dressing up our pets and taking pictures for the annual holiday email long before anyone else. Way before Photoshop and AI let everyone pretend to do this, we were doing it. And we're still doing it the old fashioned way: real cats, wearing real costumes, really glaring at the camera. And this year (drumroll!) Eeek finally participated! We dressed him up and we took pictures and he maybe purred once?! So let's start with our new star Eeek! Formal attire wasn't really his best look:
We hoped that he would finally be the one who looked good in the snowman costume.
Nope.
Maybe he's a natural born Santa?
Maybe, but those costumes were a little big for him. What about this one with extra legs? Eeek needs more legs since he only has three that work:
Pretty sure he's trying to give us the finger here.
But a whole bucket of participation awards for Eeek! We ended with the simple hat and lots of treats.
Historically Oookie has been our feline star. The last few years his luminous blue eyes and angelic face have lit up our holiday email. This year he was adorable in Jack's jammies:
until we ruined it by adding the hat, which transformed him from adorable kitty in jammies to seriously creepy vibes
{shudder}
Okay, we quickly transitioned to a glamour shot using the famous turtleneck Santa sweater that hasn't been shown in years. The fit was a little questionable but the look worked...
until I couldn't help myself and had to add the Christmas unicorn headpiece. Maybe it's the squished ears, or maybe it's the expression, or maybe Oookie is just creepy.
On to our shining star, Domovyk (or Doodoo, as we mostly call him - no dignity allowed around here). Since we're finally bringing out some of Jack's old favorites, we decided to try two of the most challenging outfits. Doodoo of course immediately got feisty-pants which made it even more interesting trying to dress him up as an abominable snowman. As always we start out without the head gear and he was pretty okay with that.
Then we added the googly eyes headpiece, and it was all downhill from there (laughing all the way).
And this is him saying "Seriously, get this off me."
Seriously.
But the best part was when he said, in his best Cartman voice, "Screw you guys, I'm going home" and left... taking Santa with him 😂
We relocated him long enough for one more resentful glare and then let him escape. Being the sweetest cat in the world, he was back on my lap purring within minutes.
Hopefully our real photos still stand up to all the crap out there on the interwebs! This email is prepared with love and we hope everyone enjoys it. Those of you new to this tradition can read the previous 13 years of holiday emails in the links below.
Merry Christmas and happy holidays and a wonderful New Year to everyone!
Dan and Robyn Beagle.
