Top posting to save the entire story. I love it! Thanks for sharing that
rather exhasperating adventure!

Jill

CatNipped wrote:
Cast of Characters:

Sammy - 7-month-old female kitten
Mommy - MUCH older female human

After much contemplation and mental anguish, Mommy decides that she
will not let Sammy's, er, boisterousness prevent her from the joy she
gets in putting up a Christmas tree.

At 2:00PM in the afternoon of November 24th, Mommy locks Sammy in the
bedroom so she can open the garage doors to bring in the tree she and
Daddy just purchased. Sammy wails loudly the whole time as she
suffers the indignity of being confined to only one, albeit large,
room. Mommy and
Daddy wrestle the (formerly) live pine tree into Mommy's sitting room
and
set it up in the stand. Daddy, hearing Sammy howling, starts to
say, "For gawd's sake.", but then gets a glimpse of the look Mommy
gives him and quickly stops speaking. Daddy decides to go upstairs
to pop the popcorn for stringing.

Mommy lets Sammy out of the bedroom. Sammy starts to pounce on
Mommy's
ankle for a quick bite when the scent of pine suddenly distracts her
from
her prey. Sammy runs over to the tree and springs up into the lowest
branch to investigate this new toy Mommy has brought home for Sammy.
However, unbeknownst to Sammy, Mommy has added a new weapon to her
arsenal in her continuing war with Sammy's bad behavior - a squirt
bottle!!

Mommy snatches up the squirt bottle and sprays a stream of water at
Sammy. Sammy, who has a very thick coat of Maine Coon hair does not
even feel the water as it beads up and slides off her back. Mommy
changes her aim and squirts water on Sammy's cheek, and this *does*
get Sammy's attention.
Sammy turns around and starts licking and batting at the stream of
water coming her way and heads higher up the tree in order to get a
better perspective on this fun new game Mommy has invented. Mommy
tries one more time to squirt Sammy out of the tree, but it is soon
clear that Sammy loves playing with the water and is not at all
perturbed by being squirted. Mommy sighs and puts down the squirt
bottle.

Mommy goes over to the tree to try to disentangle Sammy from its
branches. Pine needles are very pointy! Between the pine needles and
Sammy's claws, Mommy's hands are quickly becoming bloody and Mommy
starts saying bad words. Daddy, on his way downstairs with a large
bowl of popcorn, hears Mommy
saying bad words, quickly sizes up the situation, and decides that
caution
is the better part of valor. Daddy heads back upstairs to pop more
popcorn.

Mommy finally manages to get Sammy out of the tree and sits down to
try and figure out a strategy for *keeping* Sammy out of the tree.
Mommy sees movement out of the corner of her eye and starts laughing.
Daddy has tied a string to the can of "Keep Away" and has lowered it
down to the first floor from upstairs (where he is safely out of the
action). "Keep Away" is the spray that people put on furniture to
keep cats from scratching it.
Although all Mommy and Daddy's owners use their scratching posts and
not the furniture, Mommy has used this in the past to spray on
electric cords to
keep Sammy from chewing them and it has seemed to work (since Sammy
is still alive and the cords are still intact).

Mommy takes a last big whiff of the delicious, heady scent of pine in
the house then starts to douse the tree with "Keep Away". Mommy
sighs when the smell of pine is finally overpowered by the smell of
"Keep Away".

Mommy goes into her office to open the closet where she stores the
Christmas decorations. Mommy picks Sammy off of the boxes and sets
her gently down on the office floor. Mommy starts to pick up the
first box then sets it back down so she can pick Sammy off of the box
and set her gently down on the office floor. Mommy quickly snatches
up the box before Sammy can spring
atop it again, but as she is lifting it, it suddenly becomes twelve
pounds heavier and Mommy drops the box to the floor where Sammy sits
on top of the box and grins up at Mommy wanting Mommy to "do it
again!" Mommy cringes as she hears the sound of breaking glass
ornaments - ornaments that have been
in the family for generations. Mommy sighs. Oh well, it isn't a
good idea to use glass ornaments on a tree with a kitten in the house
anyway.

Mommy finishes putting the boxes of ornaments on the sitting room
floor and goes upstairs to get the popcorn for stringing. Mommy
tries to enlist Daddy's help decorating the tree, but Daddy has
wisely made himself scarce. Mommy picks up the bowl of popcorn, gets
her sewing kit out of the drawer, and heads back downstairs to start
making popcorn garlands.

Sammy, having smelled the popcorn, hops up on the sofa next to Mommy
so she can help herself to some. Mommy says, "No, Sammy, this is for
the tree,"
and gently places Sammy on the sitting room floor. Sammy gives the
tree a dirty look for being greedy about the popcorn and hops back up
on the sofa
to try to sneak a pawful from the bowl when Mommy isn't looking.
Mommy
again reprimands Sammy and gently places Sammy on the sitting room
floor.

Mommy sits, happily stringing popcorn for 20 minutes without being
bothered by Sammy before she becomes suspicious of this quietude.
Mommy decides to check on Sammy's whereabouts, but first lifts the
string of popcorn, which has been trailing down to the sitting room
floor, up into her lap to check her progress. Mommy is quite
dismayed to see that the string of popcorn is very, very short - not
nearly as long as it should be for the amount of time she has spent
stringing kernels!

Mommy places the string of popcorn on the sofa with the end trailing
down to the sitting room floor and starts to rise from the sofa.
Before Mommy can finish rising, she sees a suspiciously large kitten
paw emerge from beneath the sofa, hook the string of popcorn, and
draw the end of the string underneath the sofa. When the string of
popcorn emerges, it is minus one kernel of popcorn. Aha, the sneak
thief has been caught red-han, er, red-pawed!

Mommy squats down to peer under the sofa and spies Sammy sitting
amongst dozens of half-eaten kernels of popcorn. Sammy protests that
she is
innocent as she licks bits of popcorn from her whiskers, Mommy doesn't
believe her!

Mommy sighs and sits back down to resume stringing popcorn - this time
keeping the end of the string on the sofa where she can keep an eye
on it. Sammy, replete with popcorn, takes a short nap underneath the
sofa.

After all the popcorn has been strung into garlands, Mommy gets up
from the sofa, stretches, and begins to unpack the boxes of
ornaments. Sammy,
awaking from her nap, comes over to help Mommy unpack. Sammy jumps
into the first opened box and starts investigating its contents.
Mommy, fearing cut paws from broken ornaments, quickly grabs Sammy up
and gently places her on the sitting room floor.

Sammy, miffed about being rebuffed, runs over to grab one end of a
popcorn garland in her mouth then dashes out of the sitting room
dragging the string of popcorn behind her. Mommy, fearing that her
hours of work will be destroyed, takes off running after Sammy. Too
late! The end of the popcorn garland gets snagged on the doorway as
Sammy streaks by, the string breaks and kernels of popcorn are strewn
across the bedroom floor. Mommy says very bad words and detours to
the hall closet to get the sucky monster. The
sucky monster eats all Sammy's hard-won spoils and tries to chase
Sammy
under the bed. However, Sammy is not at all afraid of the sucky
monster (or anything else thanks to being spoiled rotten her whole
life), and defiantly hisses at the monster until it subsides and goes
back into the hall closet.

Mommy goes back into the sitting room and places the remaining three
strings of popcorn garland on top of the mantle where Sammy can not
get to them (talk about closing the barn door after the horses have
departed!). Mommy goes back to unpacking the boxes of ornaments.

When Mommy has finished unpacking the ornaments she stops and looks
around
at the tree decorations that are covering every surface in the
sitting room (Mommy is a bit daft when it comes to ornaments - never
able to pass up a sale on them).

Now Mommy is a bit (OK, more than a bit) obsessive-compulsive. Every
ornament is packed in its original box, every light on each string of
lights has been placed in its slot on its original cardboard holder,
so there
should be no hassle with untangling lights or ornaments. HAH! Mommy
has
not included the Sammy factor in her calculations of her decorating
plan.

Mommy takes the lights out of their cardboard holders, plugs them in
(the only way to see the total effect of the lights as they are being
draped),
and starts to put them onto the tree. Mommy catches movement out of
the corner of her eye and turns in time to see Sammy chewing in a
brightly flashing light. Mommy, horrified at the prospect of Sammy
electrocuting herself, quickly unplugs the string of lights and
rushes over to remove Sammy's mouth from glass bulb.

Mommy bellows at Daddy to get his arse downstairs so he can hold
Sammy while Mommy puts the lights on the trees. Mommy does not hear
an answer from
Daddy and goes upstairs only to find that Daddy has fled from the
house (cowardly leaving a note on the kitchen table saying that he
will be at the store shopping for Mommy's Christmas present - yeah
right - and he conveniently forgot his cell phone at home!).

Mommy goes back downstairs and starts putting the strings of lights
on the tree without plugging them in first and just hoping that she
gets them
fairly evenly distributed. Sammy continues to grab at the lights and
Mommy strings them faster and faster so that Sammy does not have the
chance to
bite through the wire.

Mommy finishes stringing the lights on the tree and begins to put the
store-bought garland on. Of course Sammy is right there "helping" by
grabbing the end of the string of garland and running in circles
around the bottom of the tree. Mommy feels resistance in the string
of garland, doesn't realize that it is wrapped around the bottom of
the tree, and gives a good tug to try to free it up. The tree starts
to tilt, the screws in the tree stand dig holes into the soft tree
trunk, and the tree, denied its support from the stand, topples over
onto the sitting room floor.

Sammy, delighted with this new game, jumps into the middle of the
tree as it lays on the floor and immediately becomes entangled in the
strands of
lights.

Mommy comes very close to crying as she disentangles Sammy from the
tree, not-so-gently places Sammy on the sitting room floor, and tries
to stand the tree back up in its tree stand. Mommy realizes that the
trunk of the tree
is too gouged up by the screws in the tree stand to ever stay upright
as it is, so Mommy lays the tree back down on the floor and begins to
untangle the garland and the strings of lights from the fallen tree.
Mommy assesses the situation and concludes that the tree will need
shims placed around the
trunk in order to stay upright, so she heads to the garage and begins
sawing pieces of wood for that purpose.

After Mommy installs the shims at the base of the tree and manages to
get it to stand upright, she cleans up the spilled water from the
tree stand, refills the tree stand, and begins the frustrating job of
untangling the strings of lights and garland to get them off of the
tree so she can start from the beginning and get this darn tree
decorated (it is now 7:00PM, Mommy has been working at this task for
5 hours, and she is getting tired, hungry, and cranky).

Mommy finally gets the lights back on the tree (again doing this
while they are unplugged so that Sammy does not electrocute herself
by biting into the flashing lights), and gets the store-bought
garland strung on the tree. Now it is time to drape the popcorn
garland onto the tree, so Mommy fetches it off of the mantle. Mommy
is very hungry and contemplates munching a few kernels of popcorn off
the garland, but restrains herself for the sake of
the beloved Christmas tree. Sammy, however, is *NEVER* restrained and
manages to grab one end of the string to start chewing on a kernel of
popcorn.

Mommy grabs Sammy up, gets the garland out of Sammy's mouth, and
rather roughly places Sammy on the sitting room floor. Sammy,
seriously miffed about being denied her snack, jumps up onto the desk
next to the tree and gives it a dirty look, because she knows that
somehow this nasty tree is to blame for all her rebuffs by the,
usually, compliantly solicitous Mommy. Sammy is planning her revenge!

Mommy, blissful in her ignorance, begins to hang the ornaments
lovingly on the tree, pausing to smile at the "special" ones that
bring back memories of Christmases past. This one was first placed
on the tree 31 years ago for
her daughter's first Christmas, that one 30 years ago for her son's,
others when each of the grandchildren gazed at the tree in wonder for
the very
first time.

It is now 8:30PM, not even half of the ornaments have been hung,
Daddy is still not home from his "shopping" and Sammy has finally
decided on the form her revenge will take. Mommy has her back turned
to the tree when she suddenly gets that prickly sensation on the back
of her neck that tells her that Sammy is up to no good. Mommy turns
around in time to see Sammy jump from the desk top and fly through
the air to land at the very top of the tree.

Twelve pounds of flying kitten is just too much for the poor tree to
"stand" - pun intended (Mommy has to get *some* humor from the
situation or she'll go mad - OK madder). Mommy stands there,
horrified, as the tree slowly topples over to land on its side on the
sitting room floor and she winces as she hears the crunch of breaking
ornaments. Mommy slowly sinks down until she is sitting on the
floor, puts her head in her hands, and starts to quietly weep. Sammy
walks over to Mommy, puts her paws on Mommy's knee, and reaches up to
lick a tear from Mommy's face. Mommy's heart melts and Sammy is
instantly forgiven.

Mommy sighs, wipes her eyes, takes a deep breath, then rises to pick
up the tree and remove all the decorations she had so carefully
placed on it. Strings of lights and garland are hopelessly tangled in
the broken branches, pieces of popcorn and ornaments are all over the
sitting room floor, and the water from the tree stand is soaking the
carpet.

It is now 11:00PM, the tree is finally righted, and Mommy is getting
weak from hunger when Daddy arrives - purportedly home from his
shopping expedition. Daddy looks at the bare tree and says, "I
thought you were
going to decorate the tree - what have you been doing all this time?"
Mommy contemplates the best way to commit murder, knife or gun, but
then decides that this would not be a good idea in a capital
punishment state (although she thinks a jury may understand the
motivation in this case). Daddy sees the look on Mommy's face,
mumbles something about urgently needing to take care of something
upstairs, and quickly retreats to safety.

Mommy is in the middle of draping the remaining pieces of popcorn
garland on the tree when Daddy comes back downstairs with a plate of
sandwiches and
some potato salad and Daddy is instantly forgiven. Sammy, smelling
food, runs toward the plate of sandwiches but stops short in
amazement when she hears a growl coming from Mommy's mouth.

After she is finished eating, Mommy resumes the decorating of the
*(&%#&^% tree. The popcorn garland is missing more than a few
kernels, the lights
are all bunched up in clumps, the ornaments are haphazardly hung, but
it is now 1:00AM and Mommy doesn't really give a flying fig how the
tree looks.

Daddy has lit a fire in the fireplace and brought some eggnog for
Mommy in
an attempt to atone for his foul desertion (he dared come home
without a shopping bag and smelling suspiciously of a local bar).
Finally, at 3:00AM, the tree is decorated and Mommy awaits her reward
for all her hard work as she stands back and instructs Daddy to plug
in the lights so that Mommy may view the Christmas tree in all its
glowing glory. The lights do not turn
on. Daddy nervously unplugs them and plugs them back in several
times in succession. Mommy is aghast. Mommy not-so-quietly goes
into total
meltdown. Daddy retreats upstairs. Even the unshakable Sammy leaves
the room. Mommy walks over and begins to throttle the tree. As she
shakes the offended vigorously back and forth, the tree lights
suddenly spring to life (in self defense) and Mommy stops trying to
kill the tree.

Mommy backs off slowly with trepidation of jostling the lights back on
again, but the lights remain shining brightly. Mommy sighs, puts her
favorite Christmas album into the CD player, throws another log onto
the fire, and pours herself a large glass of eggnog. Daddy, hearing
the strains of Christmas carols, cautiously reenters the sitting room
and then smiles at the decorated tree. "This is the best one yet!"
he exclaims, as he does every year, "You've outdone yourself!!"
Mommy, looking at the tree with its Sammy-induced injuries, knows
that he is lying, but at this point she'll
take what she can get. Sammy, having forgotten about Mommy's wrath,
runs back into the sitting room ready to play some more. Daddy
promptly picks up Sammy and takes her upstairs with him so the Mommy
can sit on her sofa and admire her Christmas tree - he knows she
needs at least a few minutes of joy before Sammy starts her own
redecorating of the tree.

Happy Holidays you guys - you're a great set of listeners and have
helped Mommy get through her first seven months of Sammy!

Hugs,

CatNipped