Kittens' 1st Christmas
By December 1st the kittens were nine weeks old, and there weren't many places they couldn't get... They were using the kitchen table legs as mini trees, to gain access to the table top, and they had no respect for whether it was a mealtime or not, in fact that was probably considered a bonus...
I was busy doing on-line Christmas shopping, and as the packages started to arrive, there were containment issues. The Christmas before when Mitzi was tiny, she'd been much too scared to go near the door, running for cover when anyone came, but her kittens were a different story. Where possible I closed them in a different room before I went to the door, but there was always the odd one who went to the door with me. On one occasion a delivery man was catching Captain, who was making a bid for freedom as I signed for a package...
And so, into this backdrop of chaos we brought our Christmas tree... now with hindsight we probably shouldn't have had a Christmas tree that year, but not much gets between me and a Christmas tree, I even factored in the Christmas tree when we were planning our kitchen/dining room extension, planning where kitchen appliances, cupboards, and the annual Christmas tree would go... so missing a year was never an option.
I was beginning to think that five kittens were really no more trouble than one kitten, apart from the obvious extra cat litter to be cleaned out. But, where one kitten and even two kittens can be quite funny in a Christmas tree - with five kittens, the poor tree was well and truly outnumber... it stood innocently enough with no toys on for the first night, and we had planned to just hang a few decorations on that year, but then Kim and I got carried away, and soon the tree was festooned with exciting objects and dangly things. We were having a Christmas party that night, and at the party the kittens provided the main entertainment and ah factor. They were far too busy with all the extra people to try much with the Christmas tree. But the next day was a different matter...
Genie was the ring leader at climbing the tree, then they all followed - even Mitzi got in on the act. I must admit to not quite seeing the funny side of it at the time, as kittens climbed and decorations fell, and any shouting or telling off was met by innocent eyes with no understanding of why I was lifting them down from this new and exciting toy. It was a losing battle, and I decided I couldn't spend the whole of Christmas trying to train kittens not to climb a tree that they probably thought had been supplied for their sole entertainment. The decorations were coming down one way or another, and better for me to do it than the kittens, and so by the end of the day only the lights and the fairy on the top remained.
With all the breakables removed I decided that the only way to avert a nervous breakdown over the Christmas tree, was to just accept that the kittens were going to climb it, and what was the worst that could happen? The tree turned out to be far more stable than expected, and could cope with several kittens climbing on it at once, there was a bit of a sketchy moment when Kryten and Bumble had a scrap half way up the tree, while Genie had decided that she was going to be the fairy on the top of the tree and was heading for the top...
(This excerpt is from Outnumbered by Cats, which covers from when Mitzi came to us, up until her kittens 1st birthday)
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