Why Evolution is True is a blog written by Jerry Coyne, centered on evolution and biology but also dealing with diverse topics like politics, culture, and cats.
This is very sad, as there will be no photos on the third day of Koynezaa. We are at rock bottom, kaput, tan muerto como una roca, mort et bien mort. I have none in the queue save a few singletons, and that bodes ill for the future of the feature.
BUT, if you have good wildlife photos, send them in pronto.
Here are a few penguin and landscape pictures I took in Antarctica in 2022, just so you’ll have something:
A chick:
Welcome to CaturSaturday, December 27, 2025: the third day of Koynezaa, the sabbath for Jewish cats, and National Fruitcake Day, the day you are supposed to receive one—which you’ll pass on to someone else. The only subspecies I like is Italian panettone. This Welsh one, from Wikipedia, reminds me of an elephant dropping, and may well taste like one. . . :
It’s also Visit the Zoo Day, which reminds me of Mencken’s great essay on zoos (1918): A quote showing their scientific uselessness, which still holds:
. . . . But zoos, it is argued, are of scientific value. They enable learned men to study this or that. Again the facts blast the theory. No scientific discovery of any value whatsoever, even to the animals themselves, has ever come out of a zoo. The zoo scientist is the old woman of zoology, and his alleged wisdom is usually exhibited, not in the groves of actual learning, but in the yellow journals. He is to biology what the late Camille Flammarion was to astronomy, which is to say, its court jester and reductio ad absurdum. When he leaps into public notice with some new pearl of knowledge, it commonly turns out to be no more than the news that Marie Bashkirtseff, the Russian lady walrus, has had her teeth plugged with zinc and is expecting twins. Or that Pishposh, the man-eating alligator, is down with locomotor ataxia. Or that Damon, the grizzly, has just finished his brother Pythias in the tenth round, chewing off his tail, nose and remaining ear
Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the December 27 Wikipedia page.
Da Nooz:
*According to the WaPo, a scientific article now distinguishes, by lumping together symptoms into clusters, four distinct types of autism. I haven’t read the article yet but I’ll link to it below.
This summer, a team from Princeton and the Flatiron Institute released a paper showing evidence for four distinct autism phenotypes, each defined by its own constellation of behaviors and genetic traits. The dense, data-heavy paper was published with little fanfare. But to the Eastons, who are among the thousands of families who volunteered their medical information for the study, the findings felt seismic.
“This idea that we’re seeing not one but many stories of autism made a lot of sense to me,” Cristina said.
. . . For decades, autism has been described as a spectrum — an elastic term that stretches from nonverbal children to adults with doctorates. Beneath that vast range lies a shared pattern of social communication and behavioral differences, long resistant to neat explanations.
Now, advances in brain imaging, genetics and computational science are revealing discrete biological subtypes. The discoveries could one day lead to more accurate diagnoses and treatments — raising profound questions about whether autism should be seen as something to cure or as an essential facet of human diversity.
There are a few high-impact mutations that alone appear to lead to autism. But researchers now suspect that the majority of cases arise from a subtler genetic architecture — common variants scattered throughout the population that, in certain combinations and under certain environmental conditions, can alter development.
You can read the article for free by clicking below
Here’s a figure I pulled showing the frequency and direction of different types of behaviors in the four identified “clusters” (“DD” is “developmental delay”).
I haven’t yet read this, but it’s always useful, especially given the history of psychiatric diagnoses and the fact that this malady appears to usually reflect the action multiple genes of small effect, to be skeptical. As always, the conclusions will be vetted and tested by other groups of workers. Stay tuned. Oh, and if what was previously recognized as a “spectrum” is now four fairly discrete classes, perhaps this will prompt people to recognize that biological sex is not a spectrum, either, but falls into two easily-recognized classes. Naah, won’t happen.
*In October of 2022 I gave a very enthusiastic to the novel Hamnet by Maggie O’Farrell, and I’ve simply forgotten about the book, which is terrific. It’s a fictionalized account of Shakespeare’s composition of Hamlet (he did have a son named Hamnet, who died young), but the bard himself makes almost no appearance in the novel, which largely recounts (with a bit of magical realism) the doings of his family while Shakespeare was away in London. Now it’s apparently been made into an eponymous movie. And, according to Sarah Wildman of the NYT, a very good movie, as we can see in her op-ed, “This is why ‘Hamnet’ made me cry.”
And yet some of the best art is art that does precisely this sort of imagining, refusing to look away from the very human condition of grief.
This season, the standouts of such work are “Hamnet,” the film directed by Chloé Zhao and adapted from the magnificent book by Maggie O’Farrell, and the surprise best-selling novel “The Correspondent,” by Virginia Evans.
“Hamnet” is an imagined narrative surrounding the death of Shakespeare’s 11-year-old son, in this telling, to the bubonic plague. In Ms. O’Farrell’s mind, it is this death that inspired “Hamlet,” the tragic play. But the brilliance of both book and film is to focus on the pain not of one of the world’s most famous men, but that of Agnes, Shakespeare’s wife.
. . . As heart rending as the scenes of illness and death are — and they are remarkable, in their rendering, the full-bodied scream of a mother who has released her own child from this mortal coil — part of the reason “Hamnet” had me still sobbing in my seat as the credits rolled is how well it captures the lingering drudgery of grief, the dull way in which it silvers the hair and deadens the eyes, the way in which time means so little. It captures completely how the very fact that a person could be here one day, and simply gone the next, scrambles sanity.
“I may run mad with it. Even now, a year on,” Shakespeare says to Agnes, both in the text and the film. “A year is nothing,” Agnes replies, dry-eyed, dry-toned. “It’s an hour or a day. We may never stop looking for him. I don’t think I would want to.” And then it all makes so much sense to see the ghost of Hamlet onstage, to hear the famous soliloquies rendered as not a call for applause but instead, perhaps, a means of resurrection.
In approaching “Hamnet,” novel or film, you know you are preparing for a story both about creation and about loss, about child death and about creativity.
Wildman also extols, for different reasons, the recent novel The Correspondent by Virginia Evans (you can read the archived piece here). The book is, says Wildman, “lauded for its remarkable depiction of a septuagenarian woman seeking to find her way in the world, through her own adoption story, her estrangement from her children and her former husband, and finding (however belatedly) new love.” I’ve ordered it via interlibrary loan.
And I will definitely see the movie “Hamnet”, for, says Wildman, the movie rivals the book in quality, and I see that the reviews are nearly all positive. Here’s the trailer:
*I’d never hjeard of Rook T. Winchester before, but reader Barry sent me a link to his piece on the Substack site Closer to the Edge, where Rook is an editor. The piece is called “A letter to Bari Weiss” (the subtitle is “The only thing you pulled is the mask off yourself”) and it’s a passionate attack on her decision to hold the “60 Minutes” segment about the U.S. sending Venezuelan immigrants to captivity at the notorious CECOT prison in El Salvador. Winchester does seem to think that the episode was pulled after it aired, though, which is not the case. Even in Canada, it aired only on the CBS app before it was taken down; it was never aired in the U.S.
Winchester:
Your explanation for pulling the 60 Minutes CECOT report wasn’t just weak. It was the kind of weakness that tries to pass itself off as seriousness, mistaking hesitation for wisdom and calling it leadership because admitting fear would be too honest.
Calling a fully vetted, corroborated investigation into torture “not ready” because the alleged torturers didn’t get enough airtime is not editorial judgment. It’s hostage negotiation with yourself. You didn’t uncover errors. You didn’t dispute facts. You didn’t challenge a single sworn testimony. You just decided that reality needed a permission slip from power before it could be broadcast.
That’s not journalism. That’s customer service for monsters.
. . .And the hypocrisy. My god, the hypocrisy. You made a career out of lecturing institutions about cowardice, censorship, and the moral rot of elite gatekeeping, then walked into one of the biggest newsrooms on earth and reenacted the exact behavior you built your brand trashing. Free speech, it turns out, is sacred right up until it becomes inconvenient for your job title. When the pressure arrived, courage was suddenly “not ready.”
Here’s the funniest part, though. It didn’t even work. The transcript exists. The testimony exists. The evidence exists. The reporting exists. The only thing you successfully buried was your own credibility. You didn’t protect CBS News. You stapled your name to the moment it flinched. History won’t remember the delay. It’ll remember who grabbed the wheel and swerved.
So let’s drop the pleasantries. If you can’t stand behind your newsroom when it publishes verified reporting that implicates power, you have no business running a news organization. If your first instinct when faced with documented human rights abuse is to ask whether the perpetrators feel sufficiently heard, then you are not an editor. You are a liability with a press badge.
For the sake of CBS News, its journalists, and the public that still believes journalism is supposed to punch up instead of bow down, you should resign.
It’s a bit over the top, but does make the point that no facts are in dispute, and asking yet another White House employee to badmouth the report adds nothing to what was already scheduled to be aired.
*Several editors of the Free Press give their funniest news items of the year. (I swear, the only reason to subscribe to this site is for the humor, and that mostly from Nellie Bowles). Here are two:
Oliver Wiseman, Deputy Editor
It has been a heavy year in news, but 2025 was not without its lighter moments. After all, this was the year someone known as “Big Balls” briefly held a very important government job. And the year that the leader of the free world sprayed an Islamist fighter turned Syrian president with cologne and asked him how many wives he has. And the year that FIFA, an organization charged with running international soccer tournaments, launched its own “Peace Prize” and awarded it to—who else?—Donald Trump.
But my personal favorite moment of levity this year came in September, with the publication of Kamala Harris’s election memoir, 107 Days. The book is not supposed to be funny, but it is. As I wrote at the time, the former vice president’s day-by-day account of her doomed White House bid is a petty burn book. It is strangely authentic. She roasts assorted senior Democrats (an odd thing to do if you plan on running for president again, as she seems to). When she’s not outwardly aggressive, she’s spectacularly passive-aggressive. And no one is spared, including her poor husband, Doug. The most entertaining entry in the book is for October 20, 16 days before the election and Harris’s birthday. The former vice president gives a detailed rundown of all the ways in which her poor Doug failed to meet the moment that was her 60th. It is amusing. Whether she meant it to be, I’m not so sure.
Another funny thing: The book tour is still happening. Harris has recently added dates through April next year, featuring a few stops in swing states. How will this work? Will she go straight from plugging 107 Days into the Iowa caucus, where she can start gathering material for the sequel?
River Page, Reporter
On Black Friday, a raccoon broke into an Ashland, Virginia, ABC store, got wasted, and passed out in the bathroom. There’s no footage of the incident because, apparently, the little guy—nicknamed “Rocky” by county officials—came in through the ceiling and “took the cameras down with him.” However, there is a hilarious and, for some of us, relatable photo of him passed out next to the toilet. Sadly, Rocky, after sobering up, was rereleased into the wild.
He doesn’t belong there.
Just a month before Rocky’s drunken escapade, researchers at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock published an article claiming that raccoons are beginning to show early signs of domestication, like reductions in snout length. Rocky, as well as many of his compatriots, clearly wants to join our society—and he and they should be able to. Yes, Rocky has his issues. But there are resources available. He can go to Alcoholics Anonymous and smoke cigarettes in the basement of a Methodist Church. I have an uncle who did that and it kind of worked. The point is, it’s Christmas, and nobody should be left out in the cold, even raccoons. If you’re craving eggnog, they’re craving eggnog. Let them in.
*It’s the holidays, not much is happening, and I want to put in a bit more upbeat news until 2026 comes crashing in. One upbeat item from the Associated Press is the successful completion of a pregnancy that’s not only rare but usually doomed: an ectopic (or extrauterine) pregnancy.
Suze Lopez holds her baby boy on her lap and marvels at the remarkable way he came into the world.
Before little Ryu was born, he developed outside his mom’s womb, hidden by a basketball-sized ovarian cyst — a dangerous situation so rare that his doctors plan to write about the case for a medical journal.
Just 1 in 30,000 pregnancies occur in the abdomen instead of the uterus, and those that make it to full term “are essentially unheard of — far, far less than 1 in a million,” said Dr. John Ozimek, medical director of labor and delivery at Cedars-Sinai in Los Angeles, where Ryu was born. “I mean, this is really insane.”
Lopez, a 41-year-old nurse who lives in Bakersfield, California, didn’t know she was pregnant with her second child until days before giving birth.
When her belly began to grow earlier this year, she thought it was her ovarian cyst getting bigger. Doctors had been monitoring the mass since her 20s, leaving it in place after removing her right ovary and another cyst.
Lopez experienced none of the usual pregnancy symptoms, such as morning sickness, and never felt kicks. Though she didn’t have a period, her cycle is irregular and she sometimes goes years without one.
Lopez experienced none of the usual pregnancy symptoms, such as morning sickness, and never felt kicks. Though she didn’t have a period, her cycle is irregular and she sometimes goes years without one.
. . . . Shortly after the game, Lopez began feeling unwell and sought help at Cedars-Sinai. It turned out she had dangerously high blood pressure, which the medical team stabilized. They also did blood work and gave her an ultrasound and an MRI. The scans found that her uterus was empty, but a nearly full-term fetus in an amniotic sac was hiding in a small space in her abdomen, near her liver.
“It did not look like it was directly invading any organs,” Ozimek said. “It looked like it was mostly implanted on the sidewall of the pelvis, which is also very dangerous but more manageable than being implanted in the liver.”
Dr. Cara Heuser, a maternal-fetal specialist in Utah not involved with the case, said almost all pregnancies that implant outside the uterus — called ectopic pregnancies — go on to rupture and hemorrhage if not removed. Most commonly, they occur in the fallopian tubes.
A 2023 medical journal article by doctors in Ethiopia described another abdominal pregnancy in which the mother and baby survived, pointing out that fetal mortality can be as high as 90% in such cases and birth defects are seen in about 1 in 5 surviving babies.
But Lopez and her son beat all the odds.
On Aug. 18, a medical team delivered the 8-pound (3.6-kilogram) baby while she was under full anesthesia, removing the cyst during the same surgery. She lost nearly all of her blood, Ozimek said, but the team got the bleeding under control and gave her transfusions.
Since then, Ryu — named after a baseball player and a character in the Street Fighter video game series — has been healthy and thriving. His parents love watching him interact with his 18-year-old sister, Kaila, and say he completes their family.
With Ryu’s first Christmas approaching, Lopez describes feeling blessed beyond measure.
“I do believe in miracles,” she said, looking down at her baby. “God gave us this gift — the best gift ever.”
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili, out on the veranda with Szaron, shows some literary acumen:
Andrzej: What are you guys doing here?
Hili: Waiting for Godot to let us in.
In Polish:
Ja: Co tu robicie?
Hili: Czekamy na Godota, żeby nam drzwi otworzył.
*******************
From Give Me a Sign:
From Things With Faces; a sprouted potato looks like a duck:
From Cats Doing Cat Stuff:
Masih is quiet but here’s J. K. Rowling not writing on sex. (I have enough socks, thank you, and they all match because I buy just one type.)
Yesterday my son pulled a box of new socks out of his stocking and said ‘ah, this is great because I’m down to only two matching pairs.’ I had no idea we failed to teach him that socks can be purchased by the prospective wearer themselves. https://t.co/mSkoca5bAL
— J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) December 26, 2025
So you thought math couldn’t be corrupted by sacralizing indigenous culture? Think again:
& what *is* indigenous math?
U count to 10 & then deliver a religious sermon
Specifically, tell kids that “Sky Woman” will save everyone from the apocalypse…but only if they accept the Good News of Sky Woman’s “creation story”
literally flat out creationism
Thanks @CBCNews pic.twitter.com/aYYYXfG9Vo
— Jonathan Kay (@jonkay) December 25, 2025
From Malcolm, a tweet about the good side of barnacles. Sound up!
Listen to the barnacles sounds
[📹 its_mad_science]
pic.twitter.com/rkenSpQXM6— Massimo (@Rainmaker1973) November 21, 2025
Two from my feed. First, a sad kitty:
🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣 pic.twitter.com/7bXcvOZmYd
— LAnDo NIFFIRG™️🇨🇦 (@llandoniffirg) December 26, 2025
Arrant ignorance, but you don’t need to go to college to learn this stuff.
Still one of the best videos made here.
I’m sure that even today most people at these universities don’t understand what they’re shouting about and why they hate Jews. pic.twitter.com/JUWXpW2IpP
— Eli Afriat 🇮🇱🎗 (@EliAfriatISR) December 26, 2025
One I posted on The Auschwitz Memorial:
A rare survivor, and I can’t find a record of his death. If he’s still alive, he’s 101 today. https://t.co/DMJsAJBMEF
— Jerry Coyne (@Evolutionistrue) December 27, 2025
Two from Dr. Cobb. I used to post about treehoppers because they are plain weird (we don’t know what these shapes are really for), and here’s a weird one:
Brazilian treehopper, is a small, bizarre-looking insect known for the cluster of hollow, ball-like appendages on its head, which are extensions of its pronotum. These growths likely confuse predators, making the insect appear larger or harder to eat.#science #biology#Entomology
— Tim Edwards (@timzero4.bsky.social) 2025-12-26T18:58:46.394Z
Matthew asked me if this were true, and I said “YES!” Though it’s less common now than it used to be. This is from a whole Wikipedia article on the subject.
— depths of wikipedia (@depthsofwikipedia.bsky.social) 2025-12-24T15:37:52.333Z
Here is a specimen of the well-known podcast “Ask Haviv Anything”, with the moderator being Haviv Rettig Gur, described in a Sam Harris podcast as “a veteran Israeli journalist who serves as the senior analyst at The Times of Israel. He has covered Israel’s politics, foreign policy, and relationship with the U.S. and Jewish diaspora since 2005, reporting from over 20 countries. Since October 7, he has been touring the English-speaking world — the U.S., Canada, Australia, and the U.K. — to discuss the war in Gaza, resilience, and antisemitism.” In this 70-minute video, Haviv interviews Ashley Rindsberg “an American writer and a senior editor at Pirate Wires, an American online media company. He is the author of Tel Aviv Stories and The Gray Lady Winked: How The New York Times’s Misreporting, Distortions & Fabrications Radically Alter History.”
The subject is how Wikipedia, as well as reddit, have distorted the facts about Zionism and Israel by adopting a progressive, left-wing, and, yes, antisemitic stance. As I wrote a few days ago:
Wikipedia’s main “Israel” entry now declares that “following the October 7 attacks… Israel began committing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza,” placing a blatant lie in the lead section meant for basic, non-contentious context.
As evidence, I heard from a reader who, upon sending me the video, added this:
As an example, a friend of mine noted that the Wikipedia article on Israel states that Israel started a genocide on Oct 7, 2023. She decided to try and edit it. She jumped through several hoops and I will share a quote from what Wikiedia sent her:
In short, you are not permitted to edit any page on Wikipedia related to the Arab-Israeli conflict until your account is 30 days old with 500 substantive edits (not edits made simply to reach 500). I will tell you that the current wording of the article was reached after extensive discussion and deliberation amongst Wikipedia contributors; you are free to review that discussion yourself, it may be accessed from Talk:Israel (see the FAQ at the top). 331dot (talk) 19:38, 23 December 2025 (UTC)
Edit requests are permitted if they are wholly uncontroversial (something that no reasonable person could possibly disagree with) and do not require extensive discussion to reach a consensus. 331dot (talk) 19:48, 23 December 2025 (UTC)
And it’s not just Judaica. Rindsberg notes that Wikipedia is also determined to ensure that the “lab leak theory” for the origin of covid remains a “conspiracy theory” (I myself am agnostic about the issue), and to the denigration of Trump.
The lesson: crowdsourcing does not ensure neutrality, and there is no chance to defeating a dedicated group of ideologue editors who dominate some topics. Rindsberg does discuss how to fix the problem of bias in Wikipedia, which is really a serious problem for some topics since Wikipedia is automatically given a #1 search rating by Google, making it the go-to source for people seeking information. The fixing begins with the kind of outing of sites instantiated in this discussion.
I am averse to long podcasts, but the eloquence of the discussants and my own interest in the topic kept me listening to the end. Even if you think Israel is committing genocide (and Ceiling Cat help you if you do), you will at least learn some things about the biases promulgated by one of the world’s most important sources of information. (Note the shorter discussion near the end arguing that reddit does the same thing.)
The piece ends with criticism of AI. Bogus AI writing and its bogus claims have apparently made their way into the scientific literature. Then these claims make their way back into popular culture when people cite “scientific information” that was actually written by AI in the first place. That doesn’t mean that we should stop using AI and ChatGPT, but that we have to carefully check any of their factual assertions.
Last June I went to the Heterodox Academy’s annual meeting, this time in Brooklyn, New York. I had been asked to be on a panel, “The Duties & Responsibilities of Scholars”, which included, besides me, Jennifer Frey, Louis Menand, and John McWhorter. The introductions were by Alice Dreger and Coleeen Eren.
I knew of two of the panelists—Menand (a Harvard professor of English, distinguished author, and writer for the New Yorker), and McWhorter, (a Columbia University linguist, writer, and columnist for the NYT who’s been featured regularly on this site). That was enough to intimidate me, so I spent several months reading about the topic beforehand, concentrating on academic freedom and freedom of expression. Some of my thinking on these topics was worked out in posts on this site that you might have read. Along the way, I realized that the “clash of ideas” that is touted as essential (indeed, perhaps sufficient) to guarantee the appearance of truth, does not produce any kind of “truth”. (This clash, discussed by John Stuart Mill and Oliver Wendell Holmes, is often said to be the reason why we need freedom of speech.) But the clash doesn’t home in on truth unless you put into the mix some empirical evidence, essential for finding the “propositional truths” defined in my article below.
That led to my realization that the purpose of universities stated by many people is incomplete. As I say in my new Quillette piece (click on the screenshot below, or find it archived here):
Likewise, the common claim that the most important purpose of colleges and universities is to expand, preserve, and promulgate new knowledge—to find consensus truths—is also wrong. Finding truth is not the purpose of the literary arts like literature and poetry, the visual and graphic arts like film, painting, animation, photography, and the performing arts like theatre, dance, and music. These fields cannot find truth because that is not why they exist nor why they are taught. (Other areas like economics and sociology, often considered part of “the humanities,” can find truth insofar as they engage in empirical study of reality.)
It’s not just art that can’t find truth without evidence, but also philosophy. (I won’t deal with math here, as I’m still thinking that one over). I don’t deal with philosophy in the article, but I haven’t yet found an example of philosophy coming up with a testable propositional truth without dragging in empirical evidence. But this doesn’t mean I think that philosophy (or the humanities in general) shouldn’t be taught in college. As I say in my piece:
First I should address the anti-art bigot charge. Just because I see art as a source of something other than the kind of truth uncovered by science does not for a moment mean I’m dismissive of art. My undergraduate education included courses in Greek tragedy, Old English (I can still read Beowulf in the original), modern literature, ethical philosophy, and fine arts, creating in me a desire to keep learning, to keep being inspired, to keep discovering art. I have derived and continue to derive extraordinary pleasure and betterment from art and other branches of the humanities. Science gave me a career, but the arts have given me at least as much in life as science has. But what I’ve gained from art has not been truth.
The rest of the piece, which I won’t expend on as you can read it at the link below (you might have to give Quillette your email address, but you can accces it for free) explains, at least implicitly, why I still think that the humanities (which includes all forms of art) should be taught in schools, for the purpose of such instruction, while not finding truth, is to give us a hunger to expand our experience. One more sentence:
Finding truth is not the purpose of the literary arts like literature and poetry, the visual and graphic arts like film, painting, animation, photography, and the performing arts like theatre, dance, and music. These fields cannot find truth because that is not why they exist nor why they are taught. (Other areas like economics and sociology, often considered part of “the humanities,” can find truth insofar as they engage in empirical study of reality.)
. . . The real value of art, then, is not that it conveys knowledge that can’t be acquired in other ways, but that it produces emotional and cognitive effects on the receiver, usually conferring an experience of beauty. Art can enrich how we think about ourselves and other people, and, crucially, allow us to view the world through eyes other than our own. Through reflection, this expansion of experience can enhance our knowledge of ourselves. But that is subjective rather than propositional knowledge.
I showed this piece to a friend this morning, who asked me this: “Your argument is basically ‘the humanities have other uses so we need to keep them in universities.’ So it begs the question — why should they be housed in universities? You seem to suggest the answer is because it makes people feel and think in other ways. Is that kind of personal development something university resources should be dedicated to? A lot of administrators and politicians these days answer no.”
But my answer is “yes“. As I wrote her:
Yes, you ask a good question and I should have answered it. It’s sort of implicit in the piece when I relate how much I’ve benefited from learning about the arts personally, and that is from the arts (literature, etc.) having awakened my desire to learn more. The arts are one of the great areas of human endeavor, and for that alone should be taught in universities. As I said, it sparks the desire to think about oneself, or learn other perspectives, and while that’s not truth in the scientific sense, it should be taught for that alone. Ditto philosophy. Ethical philosophy was an important course I took in college, and without that I wouldn’t know about the history of people’s ideas on morality, even though morality turns out to be subjective.In the end, I think that colleges should stay the way they are, save for the elimination of teaching religious dicta, as in some divinity schools, and that the purpose of a college education is more than just the expansion, production, preservation, and promulgation of (propositional) knowledge. Why AREN’T universities the place for absorbing the artistic endeavors of humanities? Where else would you learn about it?And I added that philosophy, which I still don’t think can find truth on its own, is one of the most valuable tools we have for sorting out dreck in arguments, and helping us home in on the truths by thinking logically. Ethical philosophy, in particular, was important to me as it made me think about exactly why I thought things were moral or immoral, and why—a quest I’m still on. So of course philosophy should stay in the college curriculum. The only thing that should be eliminated is the teaching of religious dogma (as opposed to the history and content of religion), dogma that is often promulgated in divinity schools.
The video discussion above is long: 75 minutes, but if you want to listen to the bit on truth in humanities, and see McWhorter and Menand try to tar and feather me, start about 22 minutes in and listen for about six minutes. It’s in that section that I think McWhorter made an admission that undercut both his and Menand’s argument—an admission I note in the last paragraph of my Quillette piece:
Curiously, I think that perhaps my art-isn’t-truth stance is not as extreme and unreasonable as my eye-rolling, shoulder-shrugging friends in the humanities imply. As I mentioned, at the Heterodox Academy panel Menand and McWhorter were the eye-rollers and shoulder-shruggers, but I see that they too have run up against the objective/subjective issue in their own thinking. For example, in an exchange about whether Leonard Bernstein’s symphonies are greater than his musicals, McWhorter wound up admitting, “There is no truth: it’s a matter of informed opinion and opinion on what you have decided you value in art.” Agreed!
McWhorter makes his claim starting at 27:55. You don’t have to watch the video, but do read the piece, which at about 2000 words is short.
Well, thanks to Susan Harrison we have a reader’s wildlife contribution today, but that’s about it for the queue. So, during the holidays, please think about sending in your good wildlife photos.
Susan’s captions and IDs are indented, and you can enlarge her photos by clicking on them.
A few more Belizean birds
Here’s a third and last round of birds from my recent Belize trip. First are three of my favorites from the scrubby coastal forests in and around the Shipstern Conservation & Management Area.
Yucatan Jays (Cyanocorax yucatanicus), yellow-billed youngsters begging from their dark-billed elders:
Brown Jays (Cyanocorax morio), a more self-sufficient youngster feeding with an adult:
Ferruginous Pygmy Owl (Glaucidium brasilianum) sitting quietly in the open (and making me very happy, since it’s the last of the 19 species of owls found in the U.S. that I’ve been fortunate to see and photograph):
Next are three large tropical birds that are heavily hunted by humans, and are best seen in well-protected tracts of forest. We saw all three of them strutting around the grounds of La Milpa Lodge in the Rio Bravo Conservation Area, the same place where on our very first day, a large male jaguar crossed the road in front of us (Jerry posted its photo as a singleton).
Ocellated Turkey (Meleagrus ocellata), a truly spectacular species found only in the Yucatan region:
Crested Guan (Penelope purpurascens):
Great Curassow (Crax rubra):
Next comes a selection of the many smaller birds that we worked to catch glimpses of in shady forest understories. It’s a biased sample, of course; these are some of the most colorful ones.
Tody Motmot (Hylomanes momotula):
Slaty-tailed Trogon (Trogon massena):
Black-headed Trogon (Trogon melanocephalus):
Rufous-breasted Spinetail (Synallaxis erythrothorax):
Olive-backed Euphonia (Euphonia gouldi):
Red-capped Manakin (Ceratopipra mentalis):
Finally, here are a few of the generalist birds that we often saw in semi-open areas, such as at the edges of pastures and other clearings.
Pale-billed Woodpecker (Campephilus guatemalensis):
Squirrel Cuckoo (Piaya cayana):
Rufous-tailed Hummingbird (Amazilia tlacatl):
Red-lored Amazon (Amazona autumnalis):
Welcome to Friday, December 26, 2025, known in the British Commonwealth as Boxing Day, a name whose origin is unclear. But for cats, it is clear, as this picture shows:
It’s also the Second Day of Koynezaa, which extends until December 30. This picture was made by reader Stacy:
Finally, it’s also National Candy Candy Cane Day and National Whiner’s Day. Which reminds me of a Jewish joke:
Sol visits Abe and sees a dog in the house.
“So what kind of dog is this?” asks Sol.
“It’s a Jewish dog. His name is Irving,” says Abe. “Watch this,”continues Abe as he points to the dog. “Irving, Fetch!”
Irving walks slowly to the door, then turns around and says, “So why are you talking to me like that? You always order me around like I’m nothing. And then you make me sleep on the floor, with my arthritis…You give me this fahkahkta food with all the salt and fat, and you tell me it’s a special diet…It tastes like dreck! YOU should eat it yourself…And do you ever take me for a decent walk? NO, it’s out of the house, a short piss, and right back home. Maybe if I could stretch out a little, the sciatica wouldn’t kill me so much!”
Sol, amazed, tells Abe how remarkable this is, to which Abe replies, “I don’t know, I think this dog has a hearing problem. I said fetch, and he thought I said KVETCH!……..
Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the December 26 Wikipedia page.
Note that the dialogue will be truncated for a few days as I get up to speed after Christmas.
Da Nooz:
*Trump, angered because he heard that ISIS was attacking Christians in Nigeria, ordered US strikes on the terrorists.
The United States launched a number of strikes against the Islamic State in northwestern Nigeria, President Trump announced on Thursday, the latest American military campaign against a nonstate adversary — in this case, Islamic jihadis who the president asserts have been slaughtering Christians.
Mr. Trump said in a post on Truth Social that “the United States launched a powerful and deadly strike against ISIS Terrorist Scum in Northwest Nigeria, who have been targeting and viciously killing, primarily, innocent Christians at levels not seen for many years, and even Centuries!”
The strike involved more than a dozen Tomahawk cruise missiles fired off a Navy ship in the Gulf of Guinea, hitting insurgents in two ISIS camps in northwest Nigeria’s Sokoto State, according to a U.S. military official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss operational matters. The operation was done in coordination with the Nigerian military, the official said.
In a statement, U.S. Africa Command said its initial assessment concluded that “multiple” ISIS terrorists were killed in the strik
“U.S. Africa Command is working with our Nigerian and regional partners to increase counter terrorism cooperation efforts related to ongoing violence and threats against innocent lives,” Gen. Dagvin Anderson, the commander of U.S. Africa Command, said in a statement. “Our goal is to protect Americans and disrupt violent extremist organizations wherever they are.”
Well, I guess we’re the world Christian Police, and these sudden strikes in different countries worry me. Would Trump be striking ISIS if it were attacking some other group? Is this some way that Trump is trying to get the Nobel Peace Prize? Because believe me, he wants that more than anything else.
*Again, nothing new in the Epstein files, of which a million more have been found. But they have dispelled the rumor that he was killed in custody.
He had been denied bail and, at age 66, was facing a potential 45-year sentence if convicted on all charges. The day before his death, federal judges in a separate civil lawsuit had unsealed 2,000 pages of records containing allegations of his sexual abuse of girls and young women.
Six days after his death, New York City’s chief medical examiner, Barbara Sampson, whose office had conducted an autopsy of Epstein’s body, issued a finding that he had hanged himself.
Ever since, a wide range of people, including members of Congress and some prominent supporters of President Donald Trump, have challenged that conclusion, asserting with no evidence that Epstein was killed and proffering theories about who might have done it.
Nope.
. . . The documents released so far provide no support for those theories. They do offer additional evidence for the conclusion reached by previous investigations — both by the Justice Department and media organizations — that jail officials failed to properly monitor Epstein even though they had previously put him on suicide watch.
Two jail staff members were charged after Epstein’s death with failing to watch him. Prosecutors said they slept through part of their shift, whiled away time shopping online and falsified log books to conceal their failure to conduct rounds every 30 minutes. They ultimately reached a deal to avoid trial. Jail officials also left Epstein alone in his cell, despite strict instructions not to do so.
. . . After struggling to stand him up, staff members put Epstein in hand and leg restraints and carried him out on a gurney, the report said. A medical assessment found redness and abrasions around his neck. Photos in the report, time-stamped 1:45 a.m. and labeled “possible suicide attempt,” show a disheveled Epstein in a blue anti-suicide smock, his skin faintly red above the collarbone.
Another conspiracy theory down the tubes. Epstein had the time and certainly the motive. The most parsimonious theory is suicide.
*The U.S. Coast Guard is still chasing that big empty (but sanctioned) oil tanker fleeing in the Caribbean. So far it hasn’t caught it, which is a puzzle.
A Coast Guard vessel was slicing through the Atlantic Ocean, with its target in sight just a half mile away, when a realization set in. The crew was going to need backup, U.S. officials said.
The Bella 1, an oil tanker far larger than any Coast Guard ship, has been fleeing the U.S. blockade of sanctioned vessels heading in and out of Venezuela. Sanctioned for allegedly shipping oil to U.S.-designated terrorist organizations, the Bella 1 made an unusual move last weekend, executing a U-turn, refusing to be boarded and racing away from Venezuela at full speed.
Now, more than five days into the pursuit, the Coast Guard and U.S. military are assembling more manpower and weapons to forcibly board the vessel, the U.S. officials said. Among the units they are moving to the area is a Maritime Special Response Team, an elite force trained to board hostile ships, the officials said.
The hunt for the Bella 1 marks potentially the most dangerous moment yet for the U.S. in its nascent quarantine of the Venezuelan oil industry, part of a campaign to squeeze the country’s leader, Nicolás Maduro, whom the Trump administration accuses of flooding the U.S. with drugs. Maduro denies the charges and accuses Washington of naval piracy and trying to steal his country’s natural resources.
It isn’t publicly known why the Bella 1 is refusing the Coast Guard’s demands. The Bella 1’s owner, Turkey-based Louis Marine Shipholding Enterprises, didn’t return calls seeking comment.
Most commercial seafaring vessels, even those carrying illicit products, are staffed by crews with little incentive to disobey the orders of the U.S. armed forces.
The U.S. has sanctioned it for allegedly carrying black-market Iranian oil on behalf of U.S.-designated terrorist organizations aligned with Tehran—the Lebanese militia Hezbollah and the Houthis, the rebels who have controlled swaths of Yemen for more than a decade. The U.S. Treasury Department says the Bella 1 has links to the Quds Force, the foreign arm of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, a powerful paramilitary and business entity.
“They are probably getting orders from somewhere,” retired Rear Adm. William Baumgartner, a former judge-advocate general in the Coast Guard, said of the unusual behavior of the ship’s crew. “These are owned by very bad people trying to make money in a particular manner.”
The U.S. will get it, though. Is it carrying some other prohibited cargo?:
. . . . There is no rush to conduct an operation against the Bella 1, a slow-moving vessel that can’t outrun U.S. forces now that its location is known, U.S. officials said. That has given the U.S. time to deploy the appropriate units, explaining why the chase has stretched over several days.
In addition to relocating elite forces, Baumgartner said, the Coast Guard might also be bringing in a captain qualified to pilot a ship of such vast size—about three football fields long and almost 20 stories tall.
Once everything is in place, he said, the U.S. would have the right under international law to use force to board the Bella 1, beginning with a graduated series of warnings that could include warning shots.
“They will have multiple helicopters, they will fast-rope into the tanker, and they’ll go up to the bridge, and they’ll take control of the vessel,” he said about a likely scenario.
I’m amazed that they can just fly in a captain, unfamiliar with the ship, and he or she can simply take over the ship, bringing it to the U.S. It may be a nasty fight when the Coast Guard finally boards the vessel.
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili has gone quiet (sort of):
Andrzej: You’ve been silent recently.
Hili: True, but it’s a very expressive silence.
In Polish:
Ja: Milczysz ostatnio.
Hili: Tak, ale to jest wyraziste milczenie.
*******************
From CinEmma:
From Strange, Stupid, or Silly Signs:
From Ginger K.: a happy cookie.
From Masih: an Iranian woman violates the law, big time:
Taraneh Alidoosti is a globally recognized, Oscar-associated Iranian actress
For years, she worked within the Islamic Republic’s strict rules, wearing the mandatory hijab and surviving a system built to control women.In a new documentary, she speaks plainly: even for her,… pic.twitter.com/Ou76scX6Jh
— Masih Alinejad 🏳️ (@AlinejadMasih) December 25, 2025
From Luana, who says “F**k: another one!” We’ve met Beans Velocci before, pushing this same dumb idea. You can read about Beans (they/them) here.
Duke University Press: Sex Isn’t Real
“Sorting of bodies into male and female persists not despite but because of sex’s incoherence… it is not c*s people who fit the categories; it’s the categories that flex to make them fit.”
Right. pic.twitter.com/vq4zCzZ637
— Rona Dinur (@RonaDinur) December 22, 2025
Reposted by J. K. Rowling (aka Satan). Remember, the Taliban said they would not curtail women’s education when they took over Afghanistan.
These girls graduated 6th grade in Afghanistan. With tearful eyes, they said goodbye, knowing they may never sit in a classroom again. The Taliban’s cruel ban on girls’ education beyond 6th grade has stolen their dreams and futures. 💔 pic.twitter.com/HX7V8vz3E0
— WDI.Afghanistan (@WDIAfghanistan1) December 18, 2025
From Malcolm: TAKE HIS ORDER!
«Bartender, a bottle of milk, please!» 🍼pic.twitter.com/KF4N6yruzB
— Massimo (@Rainmaker1973) November 21, 2025
One from my feed. Sound up, of course:
I am genuinely obsessed with the sounds coming out of this bird. What a little legend 🐦 pic.twitter.com/Bvivz3GAOr
— Curiosity (@MAstronomers) December 25, 2025
One I reposted from The Auschwitz Memorial:
This French Jewish boy was killed with cyanide gas as soon as he arrived in Auschwitz. He was three years old. He would be 87 today had he lived.
— Jerry Coyne (@evolutionistrue.bsky.social) 2025-12-26T12:38:48.949Z
Two from Dr. Cobb. This first one seems eminently possible to me: a predator deterrent:
Today I have something really special for you guys! Not too far from the caiman I posted recently, I found something MIND BLOWINGThis is a butterfly pupa, and it mimics the head of a snake. And not just any snake, but specifically the head of a boa snake!!! Probably Opsiphanes, an owlet butterfly.
— Gil Wizen (@wizentrop.bsky.social) 2025-12-24T16:17:38.294Z
Matthew tells me that he simply doesn’t know how to take selfies:
This is *exactly* my expression whenever I take a selfie.
— Matthew Cobb (@matthewcobb.bsky.social) 2025-12-24T17:04:27.776Z
Merry Christmas and happy First Day of Koynezaa! We’ve collected 64 photos of cats from readers, and we’ll introduce them with two images. The first, clearly depicting a Jewish cat, was sent in by Stacy (not her cat, but a meme):
And an introductory greeting from Laura:
We don’t currently serve as a cat’s staff, but we’re out in Palm Springs for a few days. and saw this bit of graffiti art:
NOW FOR THE READERS’ CATS:
Andrew Petto’s cat, Grace. wreathed in a wreath:
Grace was rescued by our granddaughter from a barn as part of a litter abandoned by their mother. She was the last one unclaimed. After waging war against pathogens from at least 3 phyla, Grace thrived and grew to the contented feline she is today.
From Dave and Brandie Aylsworth:
Here’s is a picture of Andy and Emily, 1 year-old sisters who we starting serving after a friend moved and couldn’t keep them. They’re enjoying their first Xmas with us in Tampa on their new tower.
From Rachel Sperling:
Gloria (orange) and Cordelia (brown tabby) enjoying their cat-safe menorah on the last night of Hanukkah last year. Gloria is three and Cordelia is seven; they love everyone except each other (but they mostly get along).
From Linda Taylor:
Maxi and Milo spend the summer in the catio under a tree so naturally they spend Christmas under the tree. I only meant to have one kitten but when I went to pick him up I discovered they came as a two pack, like milk at Costco.
From Kurt:
Neo the Cat arrived at his permanent home from the animal shelter in November 2024. This photo was taken on either 25 or 26 of December 2024 showing that the then 5 month old Neo had decided that the bowl on the Christmas table was a purrfectly fine location for a nap.
From Wesley Segarra:
Here is a picture of one of my cats, Finn. He loves sleeping under the tree because he finally learned to not sleep in the tree.
From Kira Heller:
Gitel of the Tetons investigates our Chanukah sagebrush before booting it off the windowsill.
From Sarah Nunes:
Stanley is a 14 yr old shelter cat; my daughter volunteered with the shelter her first summer home from college and convinced us to adopt him. He remained with us when she left home permanently after graduation.
From Naama Pat-El:
This is Kiki, the most recent addition to the TexasLinguist tribe. She definitely knows who the real present is.
From Miriam Meyerhoff, yet another Jewish cat:
Honu was a rescue cat, now 14 years old. She came from a house with eighteen cats and was very shy and prone to biting when she came to live with us, nearly three years ago. She didn’t purr and didn’t like being touched at all. My husband’s extraordinary patience with her has worked wonders. She now likes to curl up with you on the couch, plays with toys and will come and meet strangers. ‘Honu’ is Hawaiian for ’turtle’. We know she’s a calico and not a tortoiseshell, but it’s a good name for a cat.
From James Blase:
I don’t celebrate religious holidays (except Dec 25; which is my birthday – I’ll be 75), but here is the late Flats Cat Blase, helping celebrate “Festivus” on Dec 23 of last year:
From Terry McLean: my favorite species and my favorite beer:
Here is my Christmas cat photo contribution. Thought you might appreciate a ginger cat / Timothy Taylor’s Landlord combo. Ruby adopted us 5 years ago and is now the Landlord. A perfect angel. I think she has realized that she can’t fit in the Christmas tree anymore.
From David Brunsting:
Here is a photo of our kitten Hazel insinuating herself in our Christmas tree. She is our first cat and I am almost 70! Your blog inspired us and we are so glad to have Hazel in our lives!”
Howie Neufeld doesn’t have a holiday picture, but did send in an awesome cat:
My favorite photos of my son, Ross, when he was 3 in 1991, with his cat (found in my backyard when I lived in Oregon, breed unknown). The cat was named Oscar, because he was a slob in terms of cleaning himself when first adopted (was so small then I had to feed him with a plastic syringe of milk). But he was a gentle cat. When we moved 5 miles away in NC to a new home, he disappeared for 6 weeks, only to show up at my former home. We were fortunate to get him back. Oscar died around 1995, young I admit, but the vet thinks he got into some bad food on his journey back to his original home, and that unfortunately shortened his life. A great cat – he would walk with us just like a puppy when we took hikes in the nearby woods. And never once scratched anyone.Ross received his MS in cybersecurity policy from Ga Tech on Saturday, where he works as a cyber security expert.
From Carl Morano:
Angel with ceramic tree. Angel was a stray kitten that appeared in our backyard 2 years ago. After a week of visits for food, we took her in.
From Paul T.:
Apollo was checking out the newly-placed presents. Thankfully, the indoor tree has never been much of an interest to him, nor to our greyhound.
From Lucinda and Stan:
Here is a picture of our cat Frillybear, who loves to “help” with all chores, especially ones that make enticing noises.
From Cathy Hamm:
This is Wrigley, “The Great Destroyer of Christmas Trees.” We adopted him from our local cat shelter as a kitten. He is almost two years old and this is the second Christmas tree he has expertly dismantled. The tree is now back in storage under the stairs. It’s a good thing we adore Wrigley, and he is still getting his favorite toys for Christmas. Just not under the tree, LOL!
From:
Yeti (white Birman-ish lady on left) and Jessie (Turbo torby on right) waiting to share their morning fancyfeast. These girls started life in a feral colony. Were captured and neutered in a cat-ice raid, and adopted as “bonded pair”. Supposed to be siblings but the odds?
From Anne Lear:
The attached photo is of Tigger, a dedicated foodie, sidling across the table at Christmas dinner and aiming to approach the plate on the right without being noticed. He had already been slipped pieces of turkey and was having difficulty waiting for his share of the scraps.The house rule is ‘no cats on the table at mealtimes’, which the cats have interpreted as meaning ‘at least one foot on the chair’.Tigger was adopted as an extra to his brother Rusty because he was being bullied in the kitten cage at the vet. He was an ebullient character and an excellent mouser, but afraid of rats – one evening he sat beside me and watched a rat as it ran over my foot and into the bushes. Unfortunately he lived only 9 years before dying of renal failure of unknown cause.
From Amy Perry:
Our sole outdoor Christmas decoration every year is this lighted star of Bethlehem in our front window. The black cat in the back, Circe, is 100% black and so skittish that she rarely lets us touch her. The cat in the front, Ella, a dilute tortoiseshell, frequently asks to be petted and we oblige her.
From Ginger K., another Jewish cat:
Attached is a Catnukkah photo of my friend’s cat from 2024. Kitteh’s name is Jackson and he is about 3 years old. He is a Very. Big. Kitteh. Not a chonker, but a tall and large-framed kitteh. He is cautious around strangers, but once he gets used to you he’ll allow you to pet him.
From Divy we get Jango:
KitKat extraordinaire, Hili lover and master of his staff. [JAC: Jango is enamored of Hili and gazes at her photos often.]
From Donna Harris in Winnipeg:
This photo is not the very best pic I’ve taken, but it has the most meaning. We adopted Brillo 2 years ago. Pretty much feral. He’s also FIV positive. It’s taken him a long,long time to get used to us and our other 3 cats. But he’s come a long way. We still can’t hold him and pick him up. But, he loves getting his fur brushed!This pic was a surprise. He found a new place to nap recently!!
From Alex Skucas:
This is Oreo. Also known as The Great Fox Chaser. When he is not actively hunting chipmunks, birds, squirrels, rabbits, snakes, and mice, he is lying in wait behind a tree or bush hoping for a fox to pass by. When a fox gets close enough, Oreo will spring out and chase the fox over quite a long distance. It is a game for Oreo and neither he nor the fox seem to realize that there is a significant size discrepancy between the two that actually favors the fox. Here is Oreo in the morning after a night of predation.
From Tamara Sharoff, whose cat apparently wrote the entry:
My name is Squirt, a name I acquired when rescued as a young kitten 18 years ago outside a cafe in California. I spent my first 16 years living the good life as a barn cat. Now retired to the indoors. Not super crazy about the 2 leggers, but I’m slowly warming to them and their craziness like this weird thing behind me.
From Regina Jammen:
Here is Max, our orange tabby cat. When he is not gazing out the window here in Boston, Max loves decorated trees, lengthy books read to him, and lots of hugs.
From Tom Steinberg:
You’ve met Sparkle in her apple tree from the photo I send last June that you kindly featured. I was touched and honored by that. Here she is in her Usual Spot in Eugene with her orange highlights (hence the name), and one coy white paw. Her paws, belly, and chest are white.
Sparkle is helping me wrap a present to a granddaughter. And this was last minute! I took the photo ~ 15 minutes before Deadline.
From Kevin Henderson in New Mexico:
Iris, Jules, Lyra. Waiting for Advent calendar salmon treats.
From Pamela we have “Freddy, the Atheist Cat”:
From Mary Lou and Jim Mayfield in Iowa:
“Tuxedo” dresses his best for the Holidays!
From Dave McCrady:
Say hello to Murphy the tomcat, circa 1975 or so. A rescue, with us since he was a kitten. Murphy was part of our family for the next 14 years or so. He loved a good tussle and knew that when I put on the heavy mitt, claws were allowed. He would latch on with all four feet.
From David Jorling:
I would send a video with the train running but the cat, named Mia, would knock it over. The train is a model of the Milwaukee Road’s “Cannonball”, which was the only commuter train in Milwaukee that ran from Watertown WI to Milwaukee.
As you will see from the photo, I have an HO scale train around my holiday tree. Last night we had guests for dinner and I turned on the train. After dinner I went into our living room and Mia was on one of the chairs looking at me and yelling (meowing) at me like she had never done before. I turned off the train and she immediately went across the tracks under the tree and curled up. She was yelling at me to turn off the train so she could cross the tracks, apparently.
From Steve:
Mabel is the 8th kitten we’ve fostered this year. We were a little sad when the previous kittens were adopted, but they went to good homes.
When my wife left 40 years of breakable ornaments in storage and started putting plastic ones on the tree, I went to the shelter and filled out the paperwork. Termed a ” failed foster”, Mabel has found her forever home.
Addendum: “Mabel takes just one ornament off the tree every day.”
From Darrell Ernst:
This pic is of Princess Leia, relaxing after rearranging the Christmas Village to her liking.
She is one of three cats we currently share our home with. We found her at the local Humane Society when she was about three months old. She was a stray trapped with some litter mates then handed over to the HS.
She is the archetypal cat, lithe, strong and pure grace in every movement. When playing she often stops the other cats in their tracks with an impossible seeming maneuver. Like a ballerina ninja. She is also possibly the sweetest creature I’ve ever known.
From Jay Lonner in the state of Washington:
Attached find a photo of Fitz and Ollie, our ~7 year old mackerel tabbies that we adopted as a bonded pair from the local humane society. They’re sweet boys who, despite their destructive tendencies, are a constant source of joy and love. What I find interesting about them from a biological perspective is that they are basically wild type cats — no pedigrees here! They are phenotypically indistinguishable (at least to my untrained eye) from African wildcats, and I appreciate the combination of chaos and cuddliness they bring to our otherwise staid lives.
From Debra Coplan:
This is Peaches trying to help celebrate Hannukah as best as she knows how. Latkes were out of the question.
She is about 14 now. Adopted about 6 years ago after her owner died. I found her in an ad in the newspaper.
Happy Hannukah to all!
From Reese Vaughn:
Cider and his sister Razz (short for Raspberry) survived Hurricane Harvey in 2017 so they are eight years old. Thus is as Christmasy as they get.
Also from Reese:
This is Razz enjoying a Christmas treat from a hand-painted oyster shell, a traditional Texas Coast ornament. No, she didn’t eat the elf; she’s just blocking his body in the photo.
From Simon:
Balian (foreground) and Harry (headshot in the background) are now 3 and a half. In the ten days since this picture was taken they have been selectively removing labels from gifts put under the tree as well as a number of the lower decorations. No evidence of climbing it yet. They are about to be joined by our kids, their spouses and an 18-month-old grandson who enjoys a fraught personal relationship with his parents’ cat. He has yet to meet these two, and I anticipate a strong disapproval from the cats. And keen interest from the kid, from whom the first distinguishable work that I heard was “kitty”
From Susan Harrison:
Boris is seen here making a polite request: “When will my ornaments be up?” He and Natasha are always pleased to have the tree brought in, adding visual interest to their domain. Luckily, though, at age 13 and with their laid-back Ragdoll personalities, the two of them are not much of a threat to dangly breakable objects.
From Bob Woolley:
This is Lucy, a few years ago. The festive garb stayed on her for less than a minute, because she found them incompatible with her comfort and dignity. I think you can see her displeasure in her face.
From Peggy:
This is Minnie (Minuit) on a well-deserved rest after helping me put all the candles in for the last night of Hannukah. She is 16 and this is her 15th Hannukah; her first was spent in a Michigan barn with no Jews around). Still, I told her she cannot help me light the candles. Despite her Hebrew name, Minnie’s sister Tula (תולה is short for חתולה) wanted nothing to do with the menorah.
From Kathleen Vincent:
Perspicacious is his name. But we call him Percy.
From Bobbie Mason-Gamer:
We adopted the appropriately-named Noel from a shelter about a month ago. She likes the Christmas tree, alternating between naughty (batting the decorations) and nice (resting underneath). It must be a big surprise for a cat to suddenly find an indoor tree covered with things resembling cat toys, so I can’t fault little Noel for wanting to play with it!
From Steven Eakman:
Here is our holiday cat photo for this year. It features a new addition to our family:This is Neville*. He is the successor to our beloved Nigel, who appeared in several prior holiday photo postings. Nigel was the benevolent ruler of this household for 17 years but, sadly, left us last February.Neville is about to turn six months old and is a pure feline chaos generator. Boundless kitten energy and the classic “who, me?” cattitude. In the photo he sports a bow/ribbon that he pilfered from a holiday package and subsequently had great fun playing with. The photo was taken as evidence of his guilt, not that he was at all repentant…*No, Neville is NOT named after Chamberlain, Longbottom, or any other real or fictional human of that name.
From Ashleigh G.:
This is my cat Grace who died last october. Here she is in her Christmas dress:
From Susan Wearn, who calls this “not much of a holiday cat.”
Here is my pitiful contribution of Murphy, the neighbor’s visiting cat, with a German incense smoker in the background. Feel free not to use this! I tried to take his picture under the tree, but he was having none of it. He behaves very much like the male orange cat he is.
From Roz:
Mendel and Yoda bundled in a shawl on their heated blanket. (We do winter rather than holidays over here—too dangerous to light Hanukkah candles with Devon Rexes around.)
Happy Hanukkah and Merry Christmas.
From Erik Levin:
This is Schrodinger. The bag is his holiday bag from a friend, with tube treats and a new blanket. He is fifteen years old, arthritic, and kidney stage three, as well as a true smuggler lap boy for life, and still a fierce bug killer and winter mouser. They find a way in when the temperature drops below -10C.
From Ursula Goodenough:
Edith in her Christmas stocking, a gift to her lover Ursula
Another Jewish cat from Michele Miller:
Photo of my Yiddish cat, Meshuggah—she earns her name (‘crazy’ in Yiddish) as she is quite the hyper scaredy cat also known for wild zoomies. If you look carefully, you will notice her left ear is ’tipped’ showing she was once part of a feral colony. Usually ferals are tipped after TNR (’trap and release’ neutering) but for some reason she was taken in by a rescue where I adopted her at 9 months old—I work professional with quite a few rescues and end up taking home the ones no one else wants to adopt.
Here’s Matthew Cobb’s cat Harry next to “an Xmas bauble the children painted to resemble Harry.”
Harry is 10, born on Halloween when a heavily pregnant stray cat walked into a neighbour’s back yard. She had 3 kittens. The first we heard about this was when they escaped at about 7 weeks old and the neighbor went nuts looking for them. They were up a tree. [Matthew took one who became Harry.]
From Elizabeth Leahey-Martinez
This is Lulu, full name Louise. She appeared one day in our parking lot late November 2 years ago and was quickly a foster fail as we fell in love with her. This is her favorite time of year as there is a tree in the house covered in toys!
From James Joy:
On July 4, 2021, my wife and I returned from a family get-together to find a very small kitten on our patio, all alone. We of course adopted her, making her the tenth rescue cat in our household. We named her Coco, but as time went on she earned the nickname Punky. A few months later, we tried to put a Santa hat on her to take a photo for our Christmas card. She refused to wear the hat, so this photo was our Christmas card.
From David Riddell, a Kiwi:
When our cat Kifi was little she used to climb up our old tinsel Christmas tree (an heirloom from my wife’s family), and she still gets very excited when it goes up each year. She loves Christmas time -always lots of new boxes to check out for size!
From John Wilson:
Sunspot is dressed up as one of the holiday lions guarding the Art Institute of Chicago (it was his Halloween costume).
From Taryn Overton:
This is Hitchens. He joined me in my second year of vet school and has been my sidekick through five states and seven moves. He’s 15 years young. Favorite pastimes: zoomies around the home, sunbathing no matter the temperature, and batting the eyelashes of his staff at 3:30 am when he’s hungry.
From Greg:
This is a photo of Perry. He is patiently waiting for Santa.
From Stephanie: Another Jewish cat, and with Hanukkah gelt (traditional foil-wrapped chocolate coins).
Lulu is a Jewish cat, of course, but isn’t sure whether she wants to try the gelt because she thinks the foil on the outside might irritate her fillings. Just kidding, she doesn’t have many teeth because she had most of them pulled (she probably could have used some fillings).
From Iain:
I hope this gets to you in time. Here’s Jemima. She is floofy and likes to sit in her scratching box. She also has a rumbly purr and can hold a full conversation with her humans.
From Julia:
This is our ginger bit of fluff, Marlowe. Named after Shakespeare’s friend Christopher Marlowe for his colouring and our suspicion that he will also meet his end in a tavern brawl. Here he is meeting Santa with my daughter. A bit of a scared kitty.
From Wendy:
Gracie! Peace on earth, or at least in bed.
Happy holidays from PCC(E) and, I presume, all the cats.
