A star?
An angel?
A big fancy bow?
A dead cat?
Care to guess which one is perched atop my tree?
It all goes back to last Christmas when my dad, in a gesture that was simultaneously a beloved present (for my kids) and a bit of a gag gift (for me), gave us two ornaments, one a framed picture of Roderick the Awesome Dog Who Sheds A Lot and one a framed pictures of Morris the Cat and My Arch Nemesis. The gift was received with glee from my children, and it gave me a good chuckle. (In case you were wondering, the dog hair and the cat poop were not the best parts of living at my parents' house, a fact of which my dad, and everyone else on planet Earth, was well aware.)
I should mention that, at the time, my ill-will had not yet killed the cat. Morris the Cat and My Arch Nemesis was still alive and--if you consider pooping all over the house to be "well"--well. After Christmas, the ornaments were packed away.
Soon enough (but, really, not soon enough, because how much cat poop does a person need to step in?), Morris passed away. I thought he was gone from my life forever.
Until we unpacked the Christmas ornaments.
It all happened too fast:
- David was aghast that we do not have a star or angel to put on top of our tree.
- David was adamant that the Morris ornament receive a place of special prominence on the tree because Morris is dead.
- David formulated the perfect solution to the above problems.
- My dear, sweet, tall husband who did not have to live with that cat for a year because he was off scuba-diving and playing fire fighter (no bitterness, really) agreed to implement the perfect solution.
- Any protestation on my part was greeted with the plea of, "But, Mom, he's DEAD." As if there's no way to refute that. And is there?
So that is how we came to have a dead cat on top of the tree.
David may think of him as a sweet angel, watching out for us from above.
But I'm inclined to think he's a visitor from the underworld enacting his revenge, looking down on us (ME) with a smirk across that whiskered face.
Morris, I didn't mean to kill you with the power of my mind. (Or did I?) Either way, you're dead. It makes me a little sad. (But not too much.)
But to be perfectly honest, I'd rather have your face on top of my Christmas tree than your poop between my toes.
***
By the way, if you missed the whole cat story the first time--and have some burning desire to read about poop puddles and my complicated relationship with the feline type--you can read here, then here, and here.
