Gung Hay Fat Choy!

Happy New Year, 4706!

Today marks the beginning of the year of the Ox. (This year is also known as the year of the Brown Cow, which we can only take as an auspicious sign.

We've also discovered why cats and rats have such enmity:

The story behind the legend is that the Buddha of the sky decided to hold a competition for the animals' places in the zodiac sequence. What would happen is that the first animal who reported to the Buddha would be placed first in the sequence and so on. Originally, the rat and the cat were friends, and agreed that they would wake each other up on the day of the competition so that they would have a head start ahead of the other animals. However, the rat was rather conniving, and decided to sleep in the ear of the ox. The rat knew that the ox was accustomed to waking up early. The next morning, the ox woke up very early, traveled across ponds and charged through valleys and just before they arrived in front of the Buddha, the rat jumped out of the tired ox's ear and gained first place in the sequence. The other animals followed, and you can see that the laziest animal, the pig, won the last spot in the sequence. The reason that there is no cat in the zodiac sequence is because the cat never woke up. This is the reason the cat and rat are enemies to this day.