I concluded several years ago that the holiday season doesn't really end on New Year's Day, or with the MLK long weekend in mid-January. It ends with the Super Bowl, a day that most Americans proudly devote to our national pastime of planting ourselves in front of enormous TV screens and consuming mass quantities. At 50K we tried to do our part, with french fries, avocado-topped nachos, beer, and white wine. And we were happy to see the cheese-makers inherit the earth.

With the Super Bowl over, weary Americans trudge into a stretch of gray, wintry days that blur together across a wasteland of road-sand and plowed snowpiles turned black with grit.

For two or three weeks, anyway, before hope appears on the horizon… March Madness!

So we and the Divers are into a routine week. They get to run free beyond the villa for an hour at breakfast and two-plus hours around dinner time. Oggi wastes no time in trying to pilfer whatever human-food is at hand, like a granola chunk in the morning or a spinach leaf at night.

We're trying our best to train O and G to stay away from the cooking surfaces and the house plants, and we're making g-r-a-d-u-a-l progress. Part of the challenge is that after spending the whole day lounging in the villa, they're ready to rock and roll when we finally let them out during our meal times.

But this looks like a short-term issue because… (drumroll)… Oggi and Gigi are going home! Two couples came to visit them last weekend, and the Divers won over the couple with children aged 11, 13 and 15. The other couple decided to adopt Homeward Trails tuxedo kittens Mork and Mindy, which is also a great match.

Martha and I did the home visit for HT, and everything went well. The Divers are going to have hallways to sprint and stairs to race up and down – and when they want to relax, they can watch tropical fish in a 200-gallon saltwater aquarium! With colorful clown fish, antenna-waving shrimp, glass-gripping snails, and other cool stuff!

And it goes without saying that they'll get lots of time and affection from their forever family. We couldn't be happier with how things are working out for two of our all-time favorite kittens. It took some time, but they're getting the home they deserve.

And maybe just in time, because it looks like our weekend weather forecast is "cloudy with a chance of furballs."

filed by: TS