ConfusedatChristmas dot com

Well I dunno! It's getting beyond a joke now. This confusion when a cat comes in. In the dark it takes a chase round and a quick frisk to find out which one it is! Tigger is now so at home here and so sure of his welcome that he does not hesitate a nanosecond to leg it through whichever door is opened. And he's so quick. Austin can be taking a moment to decide the pros and cons of entry - you know the thing "does this mean I'm stuck in all night now, or can I negotiate a couple more minutes of freedom"?

While he is pondering this conundrum, Tigger is in with his paws in the trough, quick as you like. When Austin finally wanders in, he is astounded to see his place at table usurped by his soon-to-be erstwhile buddy! I believe that Tigger has a place set at table in about half a dozen of the most gullible neighbour's houses. That's why he is getting a bit portly. We will probably only have to wait a few more weeks before he's so fat that getting in any door will only be possible with the aid of lashings of lard and a kick up the backside. He devours every last morsel of edible stuff lying around - and even some that's not so edible, like Austin's catnip stash! We didn't see him this week for a couple of days and thought he had gone away for Christmas, but no, there he was this morning with his nose pressed up against the conservatory door. He came in and Austin went out.

Talking of "the season", the issue of the Christmas tree exercised us for a while. Should we get one and run the risk of having it hurled across the room in a cat frenzy, or should we forget it and spend Christmas out of town? I suppose we could have sent Austin away for the duration - telling him the house needed renovating or something! But that would have been costly. In the end we took the risk and went (with the junior members :>) to the garden centre to pick out a suitable candidate. Now my old fashioned slightly nostalgic view is that Christmas trees should be the kind that are shedding their needles like snow by boxing day and one is still picking them out of the cat's paws and hoovering them up in their millions in May. Well, if my opinion was sought, I missed it, as the debate over "real" versus "fake" was decided while I was searching for baby Jesus who'd inexplicably removed himself from his swaddling clothes in the nativity display and was hiding behind the third shepherd and discussing world events with the Angel Gabriel.

History having been restored I dragged myself back to the present, only to discover a large black box labelled "flame retardant clear assembly instructions inside the box" was being loaded into my boot! When youngest neff hauled it upstairs at home, it only took me a minute or two to realise that it was made of metal and plastic and hoovering up needles in May probably won't be an issue! Oh Well! Now as we know the words "cat" and "Christmas tree" usually only appear in the same sentence when the word "topple" is present - wasn't that the word that took the lead role in Fiddler on the Roof? It was all a bit of a damp squib anyway, as Austin took one look at the 6 foot monstrosity complete with tinsel and baubles and went and sat underneath it. All you could see were two white paws!

Just a little postscript here. Whatever happened to the tradition of having a star or fairy on top the tree? My childhood was traumatised by the annual placing of the fairy on the pointy bit at the top. I guess it was because of where the pointy bit was placed that our fairy over the years assumed many of the characteristics of an Edvard Munch model. She unaccountably disappeared several years ago and is now, no doubt, residing in another, more appropriate, aspect of the Frieze of Life! So what did we end up with on the pointy bit I hear you ask? Well I think it's a bit of the Taj Mahal if truth be told. It definitely has an Eastern look about it, but probably slightly more eastern than Bethlehem.

PS would take a picture of the Taj Mahal to show you, but it would mean trailing upstairs and recharging my camera and taking the pic, then downloading and resizing etc etc - basically I can't be faffed :>)