Sure it’s nerdulicious, but Mr T is just the perfect spokesman for anything popculturey. There’s also a William Shatner one, but he’s not being Denny Crane, so it’s not that great.

Force a page refresh (F5) to see our festive header. Fun fun.

If you feel it somehow excludes you because you don’t celebrate Christmas… it does. Because you don’t. But happy whatever to you too.

There’s this certain meow cats have, you may have heard it. It’s persistent, a little shrill – a staccato chirruping crying kind of meow. You don’t want to hear it at 2am on a stormy morning.

It is the call of the mighty hunter, proudly bringing the prey back to his family.

It would be different if the fat git had managed to bring down a gazelle or a bewilderedbeast or something. But it’s somewhat depressing when the bounty is a small water-logged bird, still not old enough to have all its feathers, obviously blown from its nest. Easy pickings for the great orange one, who made me get out of bed to let him in, dumped the bird on the rug, growled at Fizzgig then watched quietly as I picked the poor thing up and put it outside.

Of course it didn’t survive the night, but at least it didn’t meet its end in Bee’s cavernous maw. It would have died even if he hadn’t brought it in, but at least I wouldn’t have known about it and been sad.

So pointless.

OK, it was good.

Enjoyment only slightly tempered by the knowledge of what went into it.

Look! A pohutukawa angel! The tree went up today and is looking mighty sexy in a red and gold kinda way. Soon I shall start playing Christmas music. Oh yes, I shall.

And of course, this is Ms Gig’s first festive season. So far she has:

1. Chewed on various branches
2. Chewed on the base
3. Pulled off a papier mache ball and swatted it around the lounge
4. Played with and hidden a small red plastic apple
5. Attempted to eat a glass ball
6. Swiped at the beads
7. Bitten me on the foot while I unravelled stuff

It can only get more exciting. Although in deference to the fact she’s essentially an ambulatory mouth, we have gone without the big icicle strings this year. Don’t really fancy running her to the vet to have a tangled tinsel ball removed from her capacious gizzard.