Cat Deck The Halls

For Patrick

I think, you know, it is the innocence. A violent dog-eat-dog world, a murderous world, but one in which the very young are truly innocent. I am always amazed at this aspect of creation, the small Eden that does not last, but recurs with the young of every generation… We lose our innocence inevitably, but isn’t there some kind of message in this innocence, some hint of a world beyond this fallen one, some place where everything was otherwise?

– Loren Eiseley, All the Strange Hours: The Excavation of a Life