Sylvester's First Christmas

Yesterday was Sylvester's first Christmas and it almost turned into his last Christmas. 

See this sweet little face?  

You have no idea the terror that such a sweet little face can cause.

On Christmas morning, I woke up around 1:00 am to fill my husband's stocking.  Upon returning to bed, I heard a loud crash and assumed that Sylvester had gotten into my husband's stocking and knocked something down.  I was wrong.  When we woke up later in the morning, we discovered that Sylvester had knocked over a cup of coffee and spilled coffee all over a skein of white yarn and my favorite crochet book.  (I know that Sylvester did it because Paddy was in bed with us when I heard the loud crash.) This would be only the beginning of his one day reign of terror.

Later we were in the kitchen, busily preparing our Christmas feast, when my husband hears a strange scratching sound coming from our sun room.  When we looked to see what the sound was, we found Sylvester digging in a large flower pot.  "Oh no," I thought, "there's only one reason for a cat to be digging in dirt!" I sent my husband to investigate.  When he returned, he said, "It's very stinky out there."  Yes, Sylvester crapped in my flower pot, which was only about 5 feet from his litter box. My sweet husband took the dirt outside and dumped it for me.  

Not long after the poop incident, I pulled my Gruyere Gougères out of the oven and set the on a rack on the counter to cool.  Out of nowhere, Sylvester appears, and before we can stop him, he jumped on the counter and attempted to eat my precious tasty delights!  While I was shrieking in horror, my husband quickly came to my rescue and shooed Sylvester away.  But as he made his escape, Sylvester nearly sent all 20 of my Gougères flying off the counter.  

By this point, Sylvester was treading on very, very thin ice.  Dinner was getting close to being ready and my husband went upstairs to take his shower.  I decided to sit down for a few minutes and catch my breath after a marathon of cooking.  As I walked from the kitchen to the dining room, I caught a glimpse of this, out of the corner of my eye:

Sylvester had knocked down a large planter full of celery, sending dirt flying in a 4 foot radius!  I was just beside myself with anger.  I marched upstairs and found the little ingrate lying in our bed, snoozing on our blanket.  I said a few choice words to Sylvester, which may or may not have included threats of sending him back to the Humane Society.  

We were determined not to let Sylvester ruin our holiday, we had our lovely feast and went to visit some of our family.  We came home from visiting and were quietly sitting and reading some of our Christmas books.  Then, there was a loud noise. We looked over and saw this:

Sylvester had managed to knock down our pine garland, several pine cones, and a candle from our side board.  (We use flameless candles for exactly this reason!)  And thankfully, this was the end of Sylvester's Christmas Reign of Terror.

-Paddy's Mommy