If you’re having a wonderful holiday season, you may want to skip these links. (Except the cat ones.) But if you are feeling cheerless, depressed, or snarky, try these links.

Guaranteed to make you smile: Oh come, all ye felines.

Bertie’s Christmas Eve, by Saki. Bertie, a “black, unkindled cinder” in the glow of festivity, nevertheless manages to enjoy an old-fashioned English Christmas.

When the Cloud Comes to Claim Them. Heart-felt notes on seasonal depression.

Today from dailyrumi:

Last year I admired wines. This,
I’m wandering inside the red world.

Last year I gazed at the fire.
This year I’m a burnt kabob.

Thirst drove me down to the water
where I drank the moon’s reflection.

Now I am a lion staring up,
totally lost in love with the thing itself.

Don’t ask questions about longing.
Look in my face.

Soul-drunk, body-ruined, these two
sit helpless in a wrecked wagon.
Neither knows how to fix it.

And my heart, I’d say it was more
like a donkey, sunk in a mudhole,
struggling and miring deeper.

But listen to me: For one moment
quit being sad. Hear blessings
dropping their blossoms around you.
God.

version by Coleman Barks

more animals