To “The Nine Lives of Christmas” With Love

(Yes, I’m about to do this. Yes, you can make fun of me. No, I don’t care.)

November 21, 2021

Dearest Nine Lives—

For years, I have wanted to write a recap & review about you. I’ve started and stopped. I’ve rewatched, taken notes, gotten screenshots, only to stop again. It’s hopeless, really. There is too much pressure to make it perfect, and you only deserve a perfect recap, so I’ve given up and decided to make a fool of myself in the way of a love letter, O my sweet—

😟

Oh yikes. Oh geez. Okay…I can’t do the love letter either. Seriously, what the heck was that? Referring to a movie as you made me want to throw up onto my keyboard, so I will blog the only way I know how—with run-on sentences, sentence fragments, an excessive amount of punctuation, surely a typo or two, and random sets of bullet points. A picture here and there. Perhaps a doodle. 

I guess I’ll begin again.

The Nine Lives of Christmas: A Love Story (????)

Well, hot dog, I’m just going to say it!!!! The Nine Lives of Christmas was the first Hallmark movie that I fully loved. That I truly loved. I had already watched many of these movies for some light-hearted holiday entertainment, but mainly to make fun of them to the point of being a straight-up turd. Then, one day, a promo ran that turned my life upside down. 

It was for a Hallmark movie. ABOUT CATS. But not just that—about CATS AT CHRISTMAS!!!!

I was then, and will forever be Miss Christmas, but in 2014 and many years before that, I was also a full-on cat lady. I had been told that I was too weird and I would end up alone with only my cats to love me—which was super rude, but thankfully untrue. When The Nine Lives of Christmas premiered, one November night, I snuggled up with my husband (take that, jerks!) on the couch to watch what would turn out to be one of my most cherished movies.

I was so excited about the premiere that I took it to Twitter. And it most definitely wasn’t the last, but it was my first time live-tweeting or even tweeting about a Hallmark Channel Christmas movie. I about fell on the floor when I saw that @hallmarkchannel immediately retweeted and liked it, and I genuinely (embarrassingly) thought I was the luckiest and most talented person on earth. At least until I saw that they do this with most any favorable tweet. And it was a favorable tweet—and very dumb and very stupid. I logged into my old private account to dig it up. Here it is, in all its glory:

Forgive me!

The second the movie started, I was hooked. It was a pretty surreal experience. Like I said, to these movies I was a giant villain turd monster, and would make fun of them from the first musical notes in the opening credits. But this movie was:

• legitimately funny
• charming
• cat-filled
• dreamy
• cozy as all get out!

I remember my husband and I being like “We like this lead, right? She’s awesome, right?” From the ones I had seen, female Hallmark leads at that point were a little too perfect and put-together, either so warm or so cold that they felt like a Christmas card illustration or a department store mannequin. Marilee, thanks to the wonderful Kimberley Sustad, felt like a real, approachable person! She was driven, awkward, smart, and funny. There’s a casualness that Kimberley brought to Marilee that took away the distance I had felt to a lot of Hallmark characters at the time.

And Brandon Routh as Brown Eyes? C’mon, now! Like, how unfair to cast a superhero? Like, how smart and wonderful, but so extraordinarily unfair. I mean, of course we will root for sweet Marilee to end up with this firefighter calendar model. Of course we will be in pain if carpenter Superman kisses this aspiring vet under the mistletoe and then gets cold feet and makes her sad. Of course we will want to throw our televisions into a river when we learn that when we finally get a sequel THEY HAVE BROKEN UP and haven’t been happily married all of this time. But, as always, I have gotten ahead of myself.

(But, after much thought, I’m not too upset that the love birds have broken up. ONLY because it means that we aren’t getting a wedding planning sequel. Because, those are usually the worst.)

My favorite parts of Nine Lives:

• Marilee and Zach’s meet cute. They talk about cat diarrhea. There’s a jumbo ice cream tub. They discuss shades of white interior paint. They are adorable and it’s gross in the best way possible.
• Gregory Harrison is a dream. A dream! Every scene he’s in, my heart grows three sizes.
• The date where they eat at a food truck, but the tacos are in not so well hidden Taco Bell wrappers.
• Just any Marilee/Zach interaction. I mean, really!
• AMBROSE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

But, we do need to talk more about Ambrose. No offense to Queenie (who is lovely), but that boy is a star. His face! Have you seen it?! Quick personal story that I promise will mean something and tie back to Ambrose in the end: I have had cats my entire life. But, when I was in my third trimester with my kid, my cat of sixteen years passed away. I can’t think of a crueler time for that to happen. Around half a decade later, I found myself still without a pet. I had gotten used to it, my horrible germophobia had loved it. I was okay never having a pet again. But, I read the book the movie was based on, rewatched the movie, and something inside me budged. I saw Ambrose’s cuddly face, his mischievous antics, his aw look at that little buddy companionship, and I was changed. I wanted a cat, and I wanted a cat now!

So, meet my new kitten.

I desperately wanted to name him Ambrose, but the name didn’t fit this little guy. So, we named him Brandon Routh!

Okay, no, that would be WEIRD. In a move after my own heart, my daughter named our new kitten Arthur. Yes, after Arthur Read 🥰

Arthur is getting his own bulleted list! He

• is a snuggly, cuddly, lap cat
• carries half of an Easter egg around in his mouth
  • (as well as my hair ties, a Cat Dancer, and a little black cat toy that looks just like him)
• is sweet to my daughter
• randomly sprints and zooms and jumps out of nowhere
• is such a little buddy just like Ambrose!

We are so happy with our new family member, and I owe him all to Ambrose and this perfect little beauty of a movie.

I don’t know how to end this. But I will, because I refuse to let this be 2,000 words. I wrote less than 500 words for my book today and here I am writing 1,300 words about a made-for-tv movie. Is this a problem? Eh, who cares. I’m having fun.

In some sort of conclusion—I love The Nine Lives of Christmas. Love it so much that I made a little doodle in a campaign to get a sequel (Hi, Amber! Thanks for including me in it!). And I have that doodle on a shirt. AND we are getting a sequel. Seven years later and I still love the movie, and am so happy that I am able to keep on celebrating it!

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Thanks for reading! Do you love The Nine Lives of Christmas as much as I do?

lol. enjoy my husband’s basement Rural King Crocs peeking in the background. k bye!