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Several years back, when I was just a young pup…oops!…I mean…kitten, it was the cold time of the year. It started out as a typical day, eating, sleeping…ahh, the carefree life! Anyway, my humans began pulling out these big boxes and putting them in the living room. (To tell the truth, the boxes were fun by themselves. I was jumping inside of them, discovering all sorts of new smells, playing hide and seek and...well…you get the picture). After thoroughly exploring all of them, I slipped around to the back of the couch and took a glorious catnap. Oh, I could hear the humans doing stuff with the boxes and I kept an ear out for them but sleeping just seemed to be the thing to do.
About two hours later, I trundled out into the open space and what do you think I saw??? My humans had put up a tree in the living room! Then they began hanging blue and red balls on it along with some silvery, shimmering strings! It was surely a wonder to behold! I couldn’t imagine what my humans were doing putting a tree up in the house…outside…yes, I could understand that…but inside? Then it dawned on me—my slaves were putting up the tree for yours truly! Must be a kind of sacrificial offering to me after my hu-female forgot to feed me on time the other night! What nice humans!!
Speaking of food, I realized it had been a couple of hours since I last tasted the chicken delicacy so I sauntered into the kitchen and, lo and behold, the food bowl was full of new food! Now I knew my humans were trying to make nice because I normally have to meow a number times to communicate the emptiness in my belly. After eating I walked to the sliding glass door and made sure there were no evil, foul birds in my backyard domain. (Since the cold weather, though, there hadn’t been many out but I figure I needed to keep an eye out for them. After all, it might be some sort of ploy to make me let my guard down!) Anyway, no dastardly birds were around so all was well in my outdoors kingdom!
I proceed to the living room and….my tree was BEAUTIFUL! Not only were the balls and shimmering strings on but the tree was sparkling with hundreds of tiny lights (reminded me of multi-colored lightning bugs!). ‘Humans!!’ I thought to myself, ‘You’ve done a wonderful job fixing up my tree!’ Then I looked at the very top and said, ‘What the…?’ I looked hard again and I’ll be danged if it didn’t look like a small human in white fur at the top! I looked again and…the thing had little WINGS! (And we all know what wings mean, don’t we?) After staring at the unusual sight for a few minutes, I figured it out! It must be a new toy for me! I’m supposed to climb up the tree with my super-duper claws and get it! Yeah!
I began walking over to the tree, passing my hu-male who was sitting in his chair. As I passed him, he reached out and stroked me (and, of course, I stopped—nothing finer in the world than a loving scritch!). Then I continued toward my tree. Underneath it were these gaily wrapped boxes and containers! ‘Wonder what these are?’ I meowed silently to myself. I extended my paw to one of them and—joy and ecstasy!—the paper was crinkly—just the kind I love!
I jumped on top of it and danced around for a few minutes, thoroughly enjoying the sensation on my paws.
But wait! There was one of those balls hanging from the tree not more than a couple of inches from me! I scampered off the package and began batting the ball! And it was free swinging! It came back at me and I batted it again! My goodness—such fun! The ball and I kept whacking at each other! This is great! I eventually lost my cat composure and rolled over on my back! Now I had all four paws blazing like the dickens on that ball—what a blast! Then, something hit me! Then it hit me again! I did a quick smell check and it…it…was WATER!!! WATER?? This crazy tree is hitting me with WATER! I immediately did the classic 90-degree cat jump (For those who aren’t familiar with this move—when a cat is on its back, it can seemingly jump five inches in the air from its back. Then, when its at the height of its jump, the cat does a 90 degree twist so that when it starts coming back to earth, its feet are the first thing to hit the ground!) Well, I hit the ground and started backing up—all the while casing the room with my eyes to determine the source of the WATER. Wouldn’t you know it—I backed into the wall which startled me again, causing me to run into the center of the room.
I quickly regained my cat composure and settled down. I slowly and methodically began to look around the room, trying to find the source of the WATER! I squinted at my hu-male who nonchalantly looked at me and then back at the TV. Did he do it? I looked at him again…no…I guess not…he wasn’t smirking or otherwise acting suspicious. I could hear my hu-female in the kitchen so it wasn’t her. Maybe it was the human-bird thing on top! No…it was still on top—the WATER came from the side! It must be…that tree itself!
That thing has it in for me! My gift from the humans and it won’t let me play on it! I’ve tried to point this out to my humans on numerous occasions but all I get is a few scritches on the head (not that I’m complaining about the scritches, mind you!)
From that first encounter, I can walk around the tree and I could sniff it but should I start whapping a ball or playing with the paper boxes, the WATER comes back! The tree is only in the house for a month or so and it only comes out during the cold weather time. Still, if it’s the last thing on earth, I’m gonna figure out how it squirts me every time I start to play with it!
So, have any of you other cats out there had the same problem? Have you figured out what’s going on? If so, please let me know because I’m dying to find out!
Editor's note:
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