A Yuletide Invasion – Prepare to be Shocked To begin with, all was seasonal sweetness and light at the Post Office. Festive decorations hung from the computer monitors – even the inbox was be-tinselled. Most of the Post Staff were out shopping. Bel was sipping her coffee and composing a poem, while I mulled over the question of how best to organise the plethora of holiday goodies the contributors had sent in. Should I put the Advent Calendar in with the latest on the Bikini Competition? Natch. What to do with all of these gorgeous pictures, groovy poems, and fascinating personal accounts? I absently sat on my British English dictionary, just as absently got up again, was lost in thought.
Someone must have left a window open. (I suspect the Prof. I heard him muttering about 'pigeon pie'.) Suddenly, I heard a loud 'meow' in my ear, as a very large orange cat jumped from the bookcase onto my keyboard, turning the image on my screen sideways.
'Clancy!' I yelled. 'Stop doing that! How did you get here, anyway?'
I looked: Clancy had brought company. His housemate Buzzardina, of course, but a number of other kitties of literary and internet note: Garfield, looking like Clancy before his diet, Crazy Cat (minus Ignatz for the moment, he probably didn't have enough bricks to go around), Mehitabel, queen of De Nile, and a few felines I didn't recognise. All of them purring, mee-rowring, and generally making noise as they walked, stalked, sprang and climbed all over the office furniture.
'Grosser Gott!' exclaimed Bel, and locked herself in the supply closet. She refused to come out, too, because Bel doesn't care for cats in crowds.
Employing ninja techniques for which I would hardly have given them credit, the adorable furballs managed to immobilise Your Editor by entangling him in large quantities of Christmas ribbon. I had to sit and watch what followed through a red-and-green latticework of Berwick Splendorette. Kitties typing. Kitties chuckling…kitties talking, in their own special language.
At Christmastime, so the legends go, beasts of the field may speak. Beasts of the city and suburb may well do the same. They may also write GuideML. Here, then, is the h2g2 Post 2011 holiday issue, as guest edited by the moggies.
May your passage into the New Year be a joyous one. I think I'll be out of this ribbon by 9 January, 2012… 
Dmitri Gheorgheni
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