So what is Advent anyway?

Clementine was torn between feeling miffed that she was being left home alone and glad that she had undisturbed computer time to work on her new blog.  The yarn lady had gone out early this morning to go to a movie and then come home only long enough to pack up her knitting before leaving again.  She did, to her credit, make sure that the crunchy food bowl was full before she left. Clem was sad though that she’d been gone for hours and hours again.  

The first thing Clem had done when the yarn lady left for the movies was to check today’s door on her online Advent calendar.  She’d heard about Advent calendars from the yarn lady, when she’d told Clem that she’d tried to find one just for her, but that the Toadstool didn’t have any cat ones.  She had her own online calendar from a thread company where every day gave her a new pattern or part of a pattern, so Clem decided she’d look for her own.  

It had taken a lot of searching, but she finally found an online Advent Calendar that featured pictures of Bengal cats.  Today’s cat was named Sandy Spots and had lovely coloring.  Most of the other online calendars she’d found were for children and featured things like colorful drawings of elves and balls with hooks coming out of the top and dolls.  As she sat looking at Sandy Spots she tried to figure out what the connection was between drawings, cats and sewing patterns.  She wasn’t even sure what Advent was, other than it had calendars.  Time for some research.  

Wikipedia’s article was confusing, with all sorts of information about liturgical seasons and colors, but at least she figured out it had something to do with Christmas.  It didn’t say anything about presents though, and Clem was sure that was what Christmas was about.  So, she tried another website that also talked about Christmas, but it said that Advent was a time of expectation and preparation.  That made a little more sense to her, as you are preparing to give presents to other people, and expecting presents yourself.  

Noticing that it was starting to get dark, she figured she’d better do her blog entry for the day, in case the yarn lady came home early.  She’d decided she would give a wide selection of items for the yarn lady to choose from.  There was no way Clem would get them all, but hopefully she’d at least get some of them.  Today she’d chosen a really cool combination scratcher/tunnel/nap place.  It would be a heck of a lot more fun than the one she had now.  What fun was a bunch of glued together cardboard that just lay there on the ground?  The only reason she used it at all was that the yarn lady gave her treats when she used it.  She never got treats from her at any other time, which she considered quite unfair, but she’d scratch there if it would get her cat treats.  

She posted the blog entry and realized that it had probably been at least two hours since she’d had a nap.  That was way too long, so she closed all the windows she’d been looking at, cleared her browsing history and headed over to the red blankie for a nap.