I gave him my manger

Dogs and cats have been in the news recently. Last year, local residents in Yakutia, Siberia, found a puppy frozen in permafrost. Various tests since the discovery have revealed that the doggo was male and around two months old at death. And he’s spent 18,000 years in that frost.

Scientists are continuing to examine and run tests on the pup they named Dogor (“friend” in the Siberian language); he may be a bridge between wolves and dogs. And he’s such a good boy, yes, he is.

Also recently reported, scientists have spent a lot of research on determining what cat owners pretty much already knew: you can’t tell what a cat is feeling merely by looking at its face. (We actually get cues from sounds and body language. And whether the cat in question has puffed up like a fugu.)

So let’s have a seasonal piece about animals, shall we? I couldn’t find anything specifically about dogs or cats, although there were plenty of dogs and cats “singing” Christmas songs on YouTube. But animals featured in the Nativity, and “The Friendly Beasts” is about them. The carol itself dates back to the 12^th Century and is from France. The English lyrics were written in the 1920s.

Here’s a choir from Salt Lake City singing it.

P.S. I learned yesterday that in Iceland there’s a giant feline called the Christmas Cat. If you’re a naughty child, the Yule Cat eats you. End of.