Christopher the Cat and Miho

Christopher loves to spread joy.  He thinks he was born to be a joy-spreader.  Actually, his mother told him as much nearly every day as he was growing up.  He spreads joy by whistling as he walks and smiling very genuinely at people as they pass him by.  He picks flowers and attaches little notes to them that say "the birds thank you".  Then, he leaves them on park benches where he knows older people will be feeding the pigeons.  He is known for his hugs which give people warm-fuzzy explosions inside themselves.  He's Christopher the joy-spreading cat.

Miho is studying very hard to be a Geisha.  Her mother is a Geisha, and Miho thinks her mother is the most beautiful, graceful woman to walk the Earth.  Miho is clumsy, so she is having difficulty learning the proper dances, but she plays the shakuhachi very elegantly and this makes her feel good about herself.  Miho has a pet kitten, Yuki, and she practices dancing in front of her.  Yuki is very supportive.  

Speaking of joy-spreaders, I ran into one at the grocery store the other day.  I was in this special grocery store called the Sahara Mart.  I like it there, they have a large variety of coffee with interesting names like "Midnight Magic".  I was looking for chocolate to send to my friend Alice, and there was an older woman there, also in the chocolate aisle.  We had to kind of dance around each other to look closely at the chocolates, and she turned to me excitedly and said, "Isn't this fun?" and I thought it was, so I told her yes.  I asked her what was good (she looked experienced) and she picked out the most surprising choices.  She said that she really liked the chocolate lavender, but that day she was gong to try the chocolate bacon.  I thought maybe she was joking, but that really exists, and she really was going to eat it.  It was really fun talking chocolates with this woman, and it made my day.