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Decorating the Tree With Mommy



 
 
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  #1  
Old November 30th 04, 07:36 PM
CatNipped
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Posts: n/a
Default Decorating the Tree With Mommy

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


  #2  
Old November 30th 04, 08:56 PM
jmcquown
external usenet poster
 
Posts: n/a
Default

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



  #3  
Old November 30th 04, 10:12 PM
TBird
external usenet poster
 
Posts: n/a
Default

I haven't even begun to read this and I am afraid.

Very Afraid.

TBird ----- afraid

"CatNipped" wrote in message
...
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




  #4  
Old November 30th 04, 10:50 PM
Caroline S.
external usenet poster
 
Posts: n/a
Default

Loved it Catnipped! Great study break for me.
I am facing a similar scenario in a few weeks when I put up our tree.
Baby Catherine is 15 months old now, walking, climbing and being
generally Sammy-like, with the added bonus that she has opposable thumbs.
"No" is an invitation to 1) continue what she is doing and 2) giggle at
Mommy's funny tone of voice.

I sympathize with you.
-Caroline S.


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


  #5  
Old November 30th 04, 11:15 PM
Kreisleriana
external usenet poster
 
Posts: n/a
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On Tue, 30 Nov 2004 12:36:53 -0600, "CatNipped"
yodeled:

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.


(snip scads of ensuing hilarity )

She's just invincible, isn't she?
How can you discourage a cat when *everything* is fun to her? I had
the same deal with Mimi scratching the furniture. It just became a
game to her.

Except, of course, she was only ever six pounds soaking wet. :P



Theresa
Stinky Pictures: http://community.webshots.com/album/125591586JWEFwh
My Blog: http://www.humanitas.blogspot.com
  #6  
Old December 1st 04, 02:16 AM
Yoj
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ROTFLOLWTIME!!!

It's a good thing I know that the inclusion of the words "with Mommy" in
the subject line are the equivalent of a BW.

(((((((((((CatNipped)))))))))))))

--
Joy
Owned and operated by Lindy and Nanki-Poo

"CatNipped" wrote in message
...
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




  #7  
Old December 1st 04, 02:27 AM
FibbersCloset
external usenet poster
 
Posts: n/a
Default

This reminds me of a posting I did several years ago.

Cast of Characters:

DD - age 4 at the time
DC3 - three calicos aged 3 at the time
Mom - age not available...

We went to the basement to find the decorations for the tree. DD wanted
to take everything up. Mom wanted to haul up the bare minimum (lights,
angel, and the can of unbreakable Christmas ornaments). DD left Mom to
hunt and went to other end of basement to play on DH's drum set.

Hauled stuff upstairs. Discovered that angel was not in can marked
"angel and lights." Returned to basement. Looked through every box
marked Christmas. Twice. Discovered a bunch of Christmas stuff in an
unmarked box. Note to self: mark boxes better when we put things away
in January. In the meantime, got totally distracted with all of the
other "stuff" in basement. Went back upstairs with angel. D*** cats
(three of them -- hereafter referred to as DC3) escaped into basement.
Returned to basement to retrieve them.

Back to tree. While Mom untangled lights, DD opened box of ornaments
and unwrapped every one, dumping them all in a pile on the floor. Mom
did angel and wrapped lights. DC3 chased ends of light strands. Mom
and DD wrapped pearls and ribbons. DC3 chased ends. DD became irate
with DC3.

The style of decorating is not a classic one. The pearls and ribbons
are a minimum fuss with maximum effect plan to make DD happy and
decorate fast. All ornaments are unbreakable. Not because of DD (who
understands fragile and breakable) but for DC3. We bought a heavier,
sturdier stand this year in hopes that no tree disasters would occur.
We can also resort to tying it up with fishing line. Mom's mantra
during whole process ("We are not trying to be Martha Stewart. We are
trying to have a tree DD will be happy with.")

Mom decided Christmas music would add to atmosphere. Discovered all
Christmas CDs are in DH's truck. Decided to play radio instead, didn't
turn down volume and caused DD to literally fall to floor from blast of
music.

DD tired of process and started talking about snack. Mom finished
decorating with half the ornaments -- the rest went back into the box.

Mom turned out room lights and sat with DD on her lap to admire tree
(this is the best part).

Dena

"CatNipped" wrote in message
...
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.

Very amusing story snipped


  #8  
Old December 1st 04, 02:40 AM
Yoj
external usenet poster
 
Posts: n/a
Default

LOL!

--
Joy

Things turn out best for the people who make the best out of the way
things turn out.
-- John Wooden

"FibbersCloset" wrote in message
...
This reminds me of a posting I did several years ago.

Cast of Characters:

DD - age 4 at the time
DC3 - three calicos aged 3 at the time
Mom - age not available...

We went to the basement to find the decorations for the tree. DD

wanted
to take everything up. Mom wanted to haul up the bare minimum

(lights,
angel, and the can of unbreakable Christmas ornaments). DD left Mom

to
hunt and went to other end of basement to play on DH's drum set.

Hauled stuff upstairs. Discovered that angel was not in can marked
"angel and lights." Returned to basement. Looked through every box
marked Christmas. Twice. Discovered a bunch of Christmas stuff in an
unmarked box. Note to self: mark boxes better when we put things

away
in January. In the meantime, got totally distracted with all of the
other "stuff" in basement. Went back upstairs with angel. D*** cats
(three of them -- hereafter referred to as DC3) escaped into basement.
Returned to basement to retrieve them.

Back to tree. While Mom untangled lights, DD opened box of ornaments
and unwrapped every one, dumping them all in a pile on the floor. Mom
did angel and wrapped lights. DC3 chased ends of light strands. Mom
and DD wrapped pearls and ribbons. DC3 chased ends. DD became irate
with DC3.

The style of decorating is not a classic one. The pearls and ribbons
are a minimum fuss with maximum effect plan to make DD happy and
decorate fast. All ornaments are unbreakable. Not because of DD (who
understands fragile and breakable) but for DC3. We bought a heavier,
sturdier stand this year in hopes that no tree disasters would occur.
We can also resort to tying it up with fishing line. Mom's mantra
during whole process ("We are not trying to be Martha Stewart. We are
trying to have a tree DD will be happy with.")

Mom decided Christmas music would add to atmosphere. Discovered all
Christmas CDs are in DH's truck. Decided to play radio instead,

didn't
turn down volume and caused DD to literally fall to floor from blast

of
music.

DD tired of process and started talking about snack. Mom finished
decorating with half the ornaments -- the rest went back into the box.

Mom turned out room lights and sat with DD on her lap to admire tree
(this is the best part).

Dena

"CatNipped" wrote in message
...
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.

Very amusing story snipped




  #9  
Old December 1st 04, 02:55 AM
Elise
external usenet poster
 
Posts: n/a
Default


"CatNipped" wrote in message
...
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.


snipped for a crabby server



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


Another wonderfully well told story. You'd never know from the pictures of
the tree in the sitting room that it had been through so much trauma
--
Elise (supervised by Gossamer & Jeeves)
dragonandthistle at snet dot net
pics:


  #10  
Old December 1st 04, 05:11 AM
Marina
external usenet poster
 
Posts: n/a
Default

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.


snippety

LOL! It was worht the wait!



--
Marina, Frank and Nikki
marina (dot) kurten (at) pp (dot) inet (dot) fi
Pics at http://uk.pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/frankiennikki/
and http://community.webshots.com/user/frankiennikki
 




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