Two weeks before Christmas, my dogs woke me before dawn, urgently wanting to go outside. As I often do before letting them out each morning, I glanced out my back window. I saw two strange things that morning. One, there was a huge cat sitting in my backyard who was staring at our house, and two, this cat was sitting there staring at our house out in the rain.

Before letting my anxious dogs out, I went out there myself, and now this poor cat still sat there in the rain, staring at me. I immediately decided that he must be injured, so I started to approach him. Suddenly, he got up and slowly led me back to my outdoor dog kennel. Once there, he crept inside it and sat down again. “Are you hungry, my friend?” “Are you injured?” I asked him. He now just sat there in the dog kennel, morosely staring back at me.

I quickly went back into the house, got some cat food, and brought it out to the kennel for him. And now, he ate ravenously, as if he had not eaten in some time. And after he dined, he closed his eyes and fell fast asleep. He didn’t seem to be in any hurry to leave. He stayed there in my outdoor dog kennel for the next two days, seeming quite content, as I brought him frequent meal deliveries. But the poor guy really looked beat up, battered and bruised, and ill.

On the third morning after his arrival, I placed his morning meal into a cat trap, and he very calmly walked right into it. And now, I drove him to an animal hospital where they soon discovered that he had a severe respiratory infection and four broken infected teeth, which they had to remove. They also neutered him while he was under sedation.

And very sadly, they also discovered that my feline visitor was FIV Positive. They estimated his age to be about five, and we all decided that this poor guy had had a very rough time out there on the mean city streets. “What will you name this street orphan?” they asked me; and I answered “Kris Kringle – The Cat Who Came For Christmas."

And Kris Kringle will now be with us for both Christmas and for New Year’s, since he needs to be given antibiotics for his respiratory infection for the next two weeks.

Christmas is not as much about opening our presents, as it is about opening our hearts. ©December 2015, Mr. Ed