Dear Friends, Family, Pets, and Nigerian Princes,

We hope this email finds you while you’re resting comfortably with your family and/or loved ones (I realize these are not mutually exclusive), or as you’re awkwardly checking your smartphone at a party to avoid talking to your weird cousin (we all have one) (No, I’m not singling out any of my cousins right now) (Except Tansen) (JUST KIDDING) (No, I don’t use parentheses correctly).

This letter is a bit of a rush job, so let’s just run briefly through all the members of the family. Sable just stood up, which is a pretty big accomplishment. Chopin, who is best friends with Wai-gong, is off sulking because he won’t let her sit on his bed until later in the afternoon. (Breaking news: Sable just sat down again) In terms of the humans, I suspect you interact with at least one of us on a somewhat regular basis, so as you know nothing radical has happened in the past year. I will now proceed to bore you with details of our lives.

Change of plan: I’ve just been told that doing that would be cruel and unusual punishment, so we’re going to put it all in one sentence: Wai-gong turned 90 this year and the rest of us did not.

Forgive the extra bit of detail, but in honor of his 90th birthday, he returned to China, and they welcomed him with open arms and a parade with elephants. He was given a pleasant reminder of Chinese “democracy” when his neighbor came up to him and told him rather matter-of-factly that since he was gone during elections, she did the thoughtful, neighborly thing and voted for him. So that’s not weird at all.

We weren’t kidding when we said this was going to be short. My mother promised me that if I wrote this letter, she would stop being nosy for 3 days. Luckily, she didn’t think about setting a length requirement so I can technically stop it right now.

Happy Holidays,

The LaiHuangCats (we’re a melting pot)