Dear Santa,

I know for the past few years I have asked you for a real live baby dragon. Okay, last year I agreed to forgo the baby dragon if you would just bring me a Finisher (which you did not, by the way). But this year I am going to pass on the baby dragon, and the self-cleaning house, and the dark chocolate that makes you lose weight and, also world ambivalence. Because this year, all I really want is for you to bring her back.

I know I'm asking for the impossible. But there has been a big huge hole in this house since she left us and sometimes, when I am alone in the house and I am curled up in a chair and I let myself think about it, sometimes I still cry.

All the other cats are friendly and affectionate and we love them all dearly and I would not want to have lost one of them in place of her. But when she left, she took a big piece of my soul with her. Someone told me once that they believed that if we are very lucky, we will have a pet this is truly a part of us; a pet who is our external self in furry form. And since she has been gone I have realized that that's who she was. She embodied all the attitude and bitchiness and annoyance that builds up inside me all the time, except that she could let it out without saying or doing something she would regret later, tearing around the house, muttering under her breath, lying in wait to smack a person or a cat before running off to do it all over again.

I miss her. Oh, how much I miss her. This house is not the same. And the hole she left behind doesn't seem to want to go away.

So please, Santa. That's really all I want. Just please find a way to cheat death, just this once, and bring my little girl home.

Happy Holidailies