By now you have all probably read
Daisy Mae Maus' blog about their Secret Paws. I was Daisy Mae's, Cocoa Puff's and Fudge Ripple's Secret Paw.
The Lady is the kind of person who is always thinking. And she likes to really do things up. She knew I wanted to be a Secret Paw, so every time she'd go to Petco, she'd pick up a few extra things. Then when we got Daisy Mae and sibs, she thought, "Oh. THREE cats for less than ten dollars." She really wanted each cat to feel special and not have to share. So we thought real hard and worked out a way to make three special packages of fun stuff, one for each kitty. And they liked Purple and Green! Hmm. So we finally picked out the pressies - some Fancy Feast, some crinkly balls, some rattly bouncy balls, some fev-ver mice, and then she made the 'nip bags with cosmic catnip. But she thought it looked kinda meager.
She said, "Millie, we need something FUN! Let's shred some paper! I have purple and green paper!" So she dug up her paper and ran it through the paper shredder. Well I thought it was the cat's meow, so to speak. I couldn't stay out of it, as you can see. So we packed up the goodies in three chinese food take out boxes. (If you can believe it, we had them already.) Then she found a big box for them, and stuffed all the extra shredded paper all around them. "Oh Millie, Daisy Mae and Cocoa Puff and Fudge Ripple are gonna LOVE this box. Of course, their Mom is gonna hate me..." Then we wrapped the big box in green Christmas paper. She brought it to work, and the guys in the Shipping department put it in an even BIGGER box, and sent it all the way across the USA to San Diego Catifornia. (Except for Hawaii and Alaska, you can't go farther away from New Hamster and stay in the US than San Diego Catifornia.)
So how did the Lady come up with this neat trick? It is such a good story, I want to share. So get comfy.
When Mr Karate was smaller, he wanted the Lady to put his Christymas presents under the tree before Christymas. He liked to shake the packages to try to figure out what was inside. The Lady didn't want him to be able to know what was in the packages, so she started trying to fool him. Sometimes she'd put small candies wrapped in crinkly cellophane in the box, so when he'd shake it, the candies would bounce around and make noise. Sometimes she'd put something heavy in one corner, to disguise what was really in the box. Once she even took a whole bunch of paper clips and strung them all together, and then taped one to the bottom of the box. Gizzy said he shook that one for days trying to figure out what was inside.
Every year the Lady thought harder about how to confuse him. It got to be a real joke between them. She'd cook up something crazy, and he'd go nuts trying to figure out what it was.
Then he learned to play Chess. That Christmas he wanted a really nice set of Chess pieces. Well, they can be pretty expensive, but the Lady bought a set for him anyway. Problem was, there would only be one or two boxes under the tree for him, and he would have no trouble figuring out what it was. So the lady did this:
Yup! She bought 32 little chinese food take-out boxes, shredded some red and green paper, and put one chess piece in each box, then wrapped them all in red ribbon. Since she knew that if she put 32 little boxes under the tree he'd figure it out, she put some little chocolate candies in some other boxes, tied them with silver ribbon, and put them on the tree for decorations.
He came home from college and said, "What's in the chinese food boxes?" and she said, "little chocolates." He said, "Oh, " and that was that. Until Christymas Eve, when she added the 32 boxes of chess pieces on the tree. It now looked like this:
Christmas morning came and Mr Karate opened the one or two packages under the tree, but didn't find any chess pieces. The Lady suggested he try a little box. "I don't need any chocolate" he said, but reached for one and opened it.
The Lady said the look on his face was priceless as his eyes went from the small white pawn surrounded by green shredded paper, nestled in the tiny chinese food box, to all the other chinese food boxes hanging on the tree. He started to laugh and laugh.
He had to take down all the little boxes and open them to find his set of Chess pieces. And while he was doing that, he said the the Lady, "Hey Mom, the tree looks kinda weird without these boxes on it. You have to wrap some up again and put them back on the tree for decoration."
And that is why to this day we have some half-pint Chinese food take-out boxes wrapped with ribbon on our Christymas tree as
ornaments. The Lady and Mr Karate laugh and tell the story each year.
Now Mr Karate knows it isn't just the present itself, but the experience of it, and the story, that make it extra-special and memorable.
For her part, the Lady doesn't know how or if she'll ever top that. They both say it doesn't matter!
While the Lady was out hunting Year End, it snowed! I've never seen snow before. Gizzy and I were hanging out in the cat hammock, when I noticed white stuff falling from the sky. It's not like rain, because rain makes noise, but it was kinda like rain, because at first the parking lot outside looked wet. But then it looked silver, and finally white. All the tree branches were covered with white. It was pretty to watch. The little sticky people from next door ran around in the snow, making marks in it, and throwing it around.
