Breaking Cat News by Georgia Dunn for December 10, 2023

I imagine this scene:Ora Zella is making her first report, and it goes something like: “This is your Chaos Commander, Ora Zella, coming to you LIVE INSIDE THE BOWL OF POPCORN and I can confirm that it is covered with buttery goodness. Back to you Pucky Bear.”

OT-The Minister’s Cat-Elvis

Christmas spirit is around! But unfortunately, the virus hit me. Hopefully I will be better within a few days. But, happy holidays to you all!

I love the detail that Ora Zella and Iggy are classed with “the Children”.

Iggy is a very good boy, in a lap. Ora Zella is a very bad girl, in the popcorn bowl!

I love the way Iggy is tucked in under the boy’s arm in the second panel, and then how the boy is resting his hand on Iggy in the last panel.

On the first Christmas special my true love gave to me

A purple universal remote.

On the sec…>click<…

I always pull out my expanded edition of Vince Guaraldi’s soundtrack right about this time of year.

Is a bowl of popcorn the equivalent of a ball pit for kittens?

The only way to watch Christmas specials and movies is to wear pajammies, eating popcorn, with mugs of hot cocoa and whipped cream. Extra perfect if it’s snowing outside.

Sunday Funday

I see pengo, does the girl have a plushy?

Popcorn is a cat toy. With a cat like OZ, everything is a cat toy.

I love that both The Girl’s and Ora Zella’s jammies have frilly bits at the shoulder.♥

So are they going to watch the long versions? Like the original Rudolph one where Yukon Cornelius keeps throwing his pick into the ground and then licking it to check for gold or silver?

Puck, that’s Popkitten, not popcorn. I hope it’s not buttered.

Miss Kitty, my dearly departed tuxie girl, loved popcorn, but she never jumped right into the bowl.

Universal and Warner Bros. released a (nearly) complete Rankin/Bass Christmas special Blu-ray set this year. 18 specials (including one that’s technically a feature film)!

OT:

Happy birthday to Maizing!!!! And many more, hope you have a great day and an even better year. Hugs!

CUTE METER ALERT! RUN TO YOUR, AWWWWW, SHELTER!

“Merry Christmas, Charlie Brown!”

For Sparky.

Now I’m imagining all the BCN cats dancing to “Lucy and Linus.”

https://www.youtube.Com/watch?v=00gXEn1ehDg

The Girl is starting to look like her aunt the Intruder.

When I was a kid, I absolutely loved Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, and not just the classic Rankin/Bass special. My mom thinks it’s because I could relate to him.

I have two favourite Christmas specials I don’t see any more: one starred Richard Chamberlain as an angel showing a young man the true meaning of Christmas; the other starred Toller Cranston skating various roles as the Befana also tried teaching a boy the meaning of Christmas. I wish that they would be shown again.

Both of my favorite Christmas Specials are both old and rarely if ever shown these days. One is A Christmas Memory, produced in 1966 for Television based on the short story by Truman Capote. It was remade in the 90’s with Patty Duke, but the original version is, to me, the best version.

The second one is Star In the Night. This was a short film produced in 1945 and was widely shown in theaters as a pre feature short film. Turner Classic Movies will often show Star in the Night a couple of times during the Holiday Season, but they rarely feature it, so you have to watch for it to be on.

Both are available on YouTube, however A Christmas Memory is shown in pieces. It has been many years since I last saw A Christmas Memory on television.

I also have a rare recording of the Charlie Brown Christmas Special. Not the one shown on TV sometimes today, but the original full length version complete with the Coke Cola placement ads.

It can’t be Christmas until I watch a Charlie Brown Christmas. The other Christmas-time tradition is Amahl and the Night Visitors. Our local classical music station plays it at this time every year.

My favorite Christmas special is Mr Magoo’s version of A Christmas Carol.

Meanwhile, Back on the Nile

At the Luthier’s workshop at the oPyramid

Mandy: We do have some wood scraps for you, Ora Z. You can use these pieces to make castanets.

Ora Z: And then I can bang them together to make noise?

Lynn: That’s right. You can be as loud as you please.

Iggy: Elvis is not gonna be happy about this.

Lynn: How about we keep the instruments here so they don’t get broken?

Ora Z: Why not?

Mandy: You don’t want to run out of wood, do you?

Ora Z: I guess not.

Lynn: Maybe you would like to try our new invention. It has strings, and you play it by pressing these keys and strumming the strings.

Ora Z: I could run across them! Like a car!

Lynn: But cars haven’t been invented yet.

Iggy: You could still call it an autoharp.

Georgia may think the kids will not age in-universe, but it looks to me like The Girl is growing up against Georgia’s will. :)

I just took another look, and The Boy also.

My favorite is It Came Upon A Midnight Clear. Starring Mickey Rooney. He had plans to take his grandson to New York to experience Christmas there. But he dies. But he was able to talk his way out of it and came back to life and got to go on the trip. Have tissues ready

is Pengo getting a piggyback ride on the Boy?

Seems like Boy and Iggy have chosen each other. As well as the Girl and Ora.

We watched the Muppet Christmas Carol last night. I had never seen it! Just wonderful.

“Special report: I have inadvertently fallen into this bowl of popcorn. My only hope of survival is to eat my way out.”

Twelve shows in a row is more than my ADHD can handle.

Love that they were watching Charlie Brown – the only Christmas cartoon where they mention Jesus!

OZ drinking hopefully milk, Iggy and his wonderful fangs with the boy. OZ in the popcorn and Iggy on the boys lap (still with his wonderful fangs).

Long ago, we watched the “Charlie Brown Christmas Special” every year, despite being Jewish. I still do every few years, just for nostalgias’ sake.

Right you are, Puck! That’s what makes holiday specials very captivating.

My favorite Christmas special is so rarely shown that very few people I’ve met have ever heard of it – The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus. It’s a stop motion production, similar to Rudolph, from the 80’s (I think) that is based on a book by L. Frank Baum

Long live the Peanuts Christmas Special!

Ora Zella helping herself to the Girl’s whipped cream.

And nesting in the popcorn!

Ora Zella: everything, everywhere, all at once.

This year I’m the assistant director for two performances of Amahl and the Night Visitors. Studying the score shows me how complex Menotti’s composition and lyrics are.

OT: Update on Trouble

O. Z. is licking whipped cream. She appears to be enjoying it.

Ora Zella’s tiny little tongue.

This reminds me it is time to get out my DVDs of the animated specials I remember from childhood to watch. I have A Charlie Brown Christmas, How the Grinch Stole Christmas, Santa Claus is Coming to Town, The Year Without a Santa Claus, Rudolf the Red Nosed Reindeer, Frosty the Snowman, ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas, The Little Drummer Boy, and Nester the Long-Eared Christmas Donkey. I would like to also have The Little Drummer Boy Book 2, but I have only ever seen it with other specials I already have. So I don’t quite have 12 and I won’t watch them all in a row.

As far as our family is concerned Anything is a great excuse for Popcorn Pucky! Dogs or cats both love it, when the humans aren’t hogging it all.

Ora Zella’s just getting all the treats! I also enjoy Iggy in panel 2.

Is there a 2024 BCN calendar?

OT: Fans of The Chosen

My all-time favourite Christmas movie is “A Mom for the Holidays” (made-for TV movie). That, and of course, the very classic, “It’s a Wonderful Life.” ❤

“A Charlie Brown Christmas.” I have loved that one ever since it came out! ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️

https://wwwDOTinstagramDOTcom/p/C0o0IhcJAxG/?igshid=MTc4MmM1YmI2Ng==

It seems as if several of us are in this mood lately.

Popcorn! The true meaning of Christmas!

I like the Twilight Zone episode “Night of the Meek.” Especially where he gives the manager a good talking to about the people in his neighborhood living in poverty and starvation (Christmas should be for them) — and when he first sees the Santa sack he thinks it’s an ordinary trash bag until OF COURSE A CAT KNOCKS IT OVER! And all the gifts are already wrapped. Now that’s my idea of a good Christmas special.

Real Life Adventures has a good one today that BCN people should appreciate: https://www.gocomics.Com/reallifeadventures/2023/12/10?ct=v&cti=76520

I also recommend George and the Christmas Star. I first saw it a couple of years ago in one of those cartoon collections on YouTube. Another long-lost classic is How the Animals Discovered Christmas. They ran it at my grade school back in ‘63 and it took me forever to track it down. You can see the 1983 version on Archive.Org – it’s a little different from the 16mm original.

I like the string of Christmas lights in the window with the old-school, big, C9 bulbs, in the 2nd and last panel

OT Only in Australia

Ora Zella nooooooo

They must have Apple+. Or, the VHS.

Oh, I just remembered a really cool Christmas made-for-TV movie about, of all people, A.C. Gilbert, the guy who invented the Erector Set. It’s called The Man Who Saved Christmas.