My wife pointed me at this site for a song called “The Cat Carol”. The lyrics of the song go, in part:

Basically, the song is about a cat who, on a cold snowy night, cries to get into a family home for warmth and comfort. The human family, evil bastards that they are, don’t even hear the cat’s cries, and she’s left in the snow. But then a tiny mouse comes by and the cat, instead of catching and eating the mouse like any sensible predator would do, decides to protect the mouse and keep it warm. When Santa comes by, the cat has died, but the mouse is still alive. And Santa says to the mouse:

The entire lyrics of the song can be found on the Cat Carol Website.

Personally, I don’t think the song goes far enough. With just a little tweaking, one could make this the Utterly Perfect Christmas Song, and no one would have to die. We can keep the mouse, but the cat gets to live because a puppy comes along to keep the cat warm.

But this doesn’t end our quest to turn this into the perfect Christmas song. Remembering the true “reason for the season”, we can have a tiny little child come along to keep the puppy warm, who keeps the cat warm, who keeps the mousie warm (and I think the mouse ought to be keeping someone else warm, too, just to keep the Circle of Life going). Can you guess the name of the tiny child who keeps the puppy warm? That’s right, it’s the Baby Jeebus!
And then maybe someone in the house sees the error of their ways and prays to God to keep the tiny baby warm (because in the world of this sort of smarmy glurge, people respond to tragedy not by helping out the unfortunates but rather by praying), and then angels descend to keep the Baby Jeebus warm.

Could be, though, that I’m just a bit more cynical than is healthy this time of year.