We hope everyone is having a happy holiday season! Here's our Christmas card to everyone. It's a letter from our cat Sammie. If you still haven't received yours in the mail and want to read the printed version, then stop reading now! However, make sure you visit us again since there are some great photos on here that aren't in the printed version.
Have a very Merry Christmas and a wonderful 2010!
December 2009
Hello, everyone! It’s Sammie Ann Beutke DeVito writing this year.
You might not know me very well since Dolly has always written this letter, but I know she’s mentioned how wonderful I am on multiple occasions (or at least that’s what she told me!). I don’t want to dampen your holiday spirits, but the reason I’m writing this year’s letter is because my very brave, older sister Dolly Bouffard Beutke DeVito is now an angel in heaven.
She left us in May after fighting a courageous battle with kidney disease. We all miss her very much, but it’s nice to know she’s watching down on us. (Although, I don’t think she was watching down on Tim Tebow and the Gators when they played those fat Alabama elephants a few weeks ago!)
In an effort to make sure I didn’t feel too lonely without Dolly, my parents decided to bring another feline into the house after a couple of months. I think they did it more for them than for me. My mom found a black male neutered cat on Craig’s List (craigslist.com) on the Internet in July. I don’t know who the heck this Craig person is, or why he’d have a list of cats available, but thanks to him and his wonderful list, I now have my younger brother, Cash. Can you sense my sarcasm…I mean thankfulness here?
Anyway, Cash’s previous family loved him very much, but they had to move in with other family members who didn’t care for pets (how rude!). He had another name before he joined our family, but my parents realized they had never named their own cats before (except when they were kids and named their dogs, but dogs don’t count!), so they decided to name him Cash after legendary musician and the man in black, Johnny Cash, who is from Tennessee.
Did you know it’s actually a requirement if you live in Tennessee and have at least two children or pets that one of them must be named Peyton after UT football star Peyton Manning? My parents were able to get around this since Cash is an acceptable alternative. Thanks goodness!
Cash is very loving, and even though his previous family said he wasn’t a lap kitty, he now loves to sit on my mom’s lap (while she is grading papers) and brush up against Dad’s legs. He has been very helpful with taking care of his younger brothers…the fish. He loves to watch Dad feed them, and just after Cash arrived in our house, he managed to roll the container of fish food from the living room to underneath the bed in the spare bedroom, open it and eat it. Cash has tried to eat Styrofoam, wood, plants, plastic holly berry decorations and who knows what else.
He also likes to talk to himself, and he has these episodes when he runs around the house and acts crazy followed by periods of sleep. My parents have said this is typical behavior of Ph.D. students, and I guess they should know.
We love being in Knoxville for the holidays. We already experienced our first snow in early December, and we’re expecting more this weekend.
I hate being outside in it, but Cash loves it. He tried to eat as much snow as possible on the back porch and got upset once it melted. Crazy Cash!
My mom is in her final year of the Ph.D. program in communication at the University of Tennessee. She is working on this really long paper called a dissertation and will graduate in May. Dad is teaching chemistry at Pellissippi State Community College, and his students love him, although some of the excuses they come up with for not being in class crack him up. How many “family emergencies” can one student have in 15 weeks? You’d be surprised!
My mom had a funny experience earlier this fall on UT’s campus. It was raining one evening as she was leaving, and she happened to see UT football coach Lane Kiffin walking in the rain without an umbrella. She suddenly realized the only umbrella she had in her car was a Gator umbrella! She thought about stopping to lend it to him, especially since it was the week before Tennessee played the Gators in football, but she didn’t. That’s my mom!
My parents made three trips to Florida this year. The first one was for Aunt Allison and Uncle Matt’s beautiful wedding in March. It was great to see everyone in the family!
Then in July, they secretly traveled to Florida for Grandpa Amos’ 70th birthday surprise party that Uncle Jason and Aunt Kristen had planned along with my parents. He thought he was going to someone else’s surprise birthday party, so he had no clue all those folks had gathered for him.
While my parents were there, they met my first cousins, Mattie and Mia (Jason and Kristen’s puppies!)
In September, my parents flew to Orlando for Grandma Bouffard’s 80th surprise birthday party. She thought she was going out to dinner with just a few family members, so imagine her surprise when all of her six children and sixteen grandchildren showed up to help her celebrate! It was actually the first time in a while that EVERYONE was together!
We’ve also had all the grandparents visit us this fall. Grandma Sharon and Grandpa Amos came up in October, and it was really cold for their visit. Cash gets a little nervous around new people, and it takes him a day or so to warm up to new folks, but a few minutes after they arrived, I was already sitting on Grandma’s lap while she worked on her word jumble from the newspaper. That woman can’t get enough of those jumbles.
We had a historical Thanksgiving since it was the first time we hosted someone for any holiday in our home. Grandpa Sam visited us on his vacation. He drove from Florida and stopped in Georgia to visit family before heading our way. It was chilly again, and Grandpa Sam was so cold that he wore his jacket in our house. I sat on his lap to keep him warm.
Just last weekend, Grandma Betty, Grandpa Jean-Paul, Grandma Bouffard and Aunt Allison drove up to visit us. Cash and I loved seeing all of them since they brought us toys, which Cash has managed to eat, hide or destroy by this point.
Grandma Betty and Aunt Allison in my kitchen. Wish they had bothered to feed me! :)
Dad grilling with Grandpa JP. They didn't give us any! :)
Cash and I are on Facebook like our mom. We have Catbook profiles, so please check us out at facebook.com/allydevito. Also, my mom loves to blog about us and everything else happening in our lives, and she is going to post more photos of us along with this letter on her blog at allydevito.blogspot.com. You can also follow her on Twitter at twitter.com/allydevito. Our dad doesn’t believe in socialism…I mean social networking, so you won’t find him on these sites.
During this holiday season, we hope your spirits are high and that you weren’t friends with Bernie Madoff. Remember, if you have pets, have them spayed or neutered. (My parents volunteer at the Young-Williams Animal Center in Knoxville and get to see the over-populated pet problem first hand.) I never watch “The Price is Right” like Dolly did, but Mom and I are still upset that “Guiding Light” went off the air in September. It was the longest running show on television and even older than Grandpa Amos!
Merry Christmas! Happy New Year!
Love,
Sammie, Cash, David, and Allyson DeVito (allydevito@gmail.com or dmdevito@gmail.com)
P.S. I do not share the same love for Florida football quarterback Tim Tebow as Dolly did. I’m a Riley Cooper kitty. I’ve also watched some UT football games this season, and I heard some folks call the coach Lame Kitten instead of Lane Kiffin. That’s an insult to cats everywhere! Go Gators! Go Vols!
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