Katya is being good, for once. For some reason, our cats have never been bad with the Christmas trees.

Well, I say never, but that’s not strictly true. Miss Tiffany, the cat I got a year or so before Charlie and I married, decided she was going to climb the first Christmas tree she saw. She got most of the way up before it fell over on her. After that, she left them alone.

And, naturally, only a fool would hang shiny dangly things on low branches, so our trees have been fairly bare in their nether regions.

Tinsel, of course, is very bad for cats to ingest, so we gradually weaned ourselves off tinsel. Just as well, as it saved us the energy we spent arguing over how much to use and how to apply it. One of us thought the best way was to dig a handful out of the package and throw it at the tree, and wherever it caught was where it was meant to be. No, that wasn’t Charlie. No, it wasn’t any of the kids. Let’s see … Who does that leave…?

Speaking of Tiff and Christmas and the kids, they decided to get the cats Christmas presents one year. They got catnip and cat toys and cat treats and wrapped them in pretty paper and put them under the tree with all the people presents. One day, we came back from somewhere, and Tiffany was under the tree with wrapping paper all around her. I am not making this up: She had opened every one of her Christmas presents — and no other ones.

Anyway, here is a rare photograph of Katya being good. I swear, I have neither drugged nor slugged her.

She almost fell off the speaker just after I snapped this shot, but she caught herself in time. Speaker. I said “speaker,” yes. We have these big-ass stereo speakers, so we use them as end tables. IT DOES, TOO, MAKE SENSE! IT DOES, TOO!

And don’t make fun of my Christmas tree. I bought it at the Salvation Army for three dollars, already decorated. As my Grandpa would have said, you can’t beat that with a stick.

A WRITING PROMPT FOR YOU: A cat makes a havoc of Christmas.

MA