For the past week, I’ve been waking up with thoughts of Christmas. I’m expecting to hear Santa with the familiar “ho, ho, ho” greeting.

It’s because of our cat’s weight loss.

Many years ago, we accidentally made our cat obese. This was through our own ignorance as we had been told that cats graze so we should always leave food out. While this may be true of most cats, ours is slightly more primitive and has a strong instinct for survival. From a cat’s perspective, it makes more sense to make sure it eats everything in sight as it may not know when the next meal is going to be. This is the way the big cats seem to survive and this thinking created a big domestic cat for us.

Since realizing this, our cat has been on a weight loss program. Nothing drastic, it’s just eating less and getting the occasional exercise when the dog decides that she’d like a bit of fun. His diet needed to change recently too due to some bladder issues but I’d rather not embarrass him with the details of that period of his life. Suffice to say, he can now only eat this prescripted brand of biscuits and absolutely nothing else because it would kill him. He misses meat – I can tell every time that I’m cooking it; I have a dog AND cat at my feet.

He has now slimmed down to the point where he has a waist. The poor thing could do with a tummy tuck as he has quite a bit of loose skin that wobbles back and forth as he walks along.

With his svelte new self, he seems to have found extra confidence and now he is ready to make some new friends. Last weekend, we were sitting outside so the cat came out to join us. As we watched, he walked through the bars in the fence into our neighbour’s yard. This is the first time he’s been out and about in HK and he appeared ready to explore.

Our yard backs onto some bush area too where there are feral cats. Knowing what curiosity does to cats, we thought we’d better take some immediate action. We bought him a collar, name tag and bell.

At least everyone / every thing could hear him coming and know who he was when he got there – he’s never had to introduce himself before and he has the social skills of a peanut.

He is an early riser. He likes to greet us in the morning to remind us that he needs breakfast as it has been at least ten hours since he last ate. This happens before our alarm clock goes.

Now, before I hear him meow, I hear this jingle, jingle, jingle. It is the exact sound that Santa’s sleigh makes.