Last night we put up the Christmas tree. It is in the dining room this year because we didn’t want to re-arrange the den and make that room look any smaller to potential buyers. Putting the tree in the dining room means you have to move around the table and chandelier to have a clear look at the tree. It doesn’t matter much though because the tree is beautiful. And, it smells divine.
While the better-half strung the lights, I went through our boxes of ornaments and decorated the mantel in the den. Our other decorations this year are very limited. We normally put a lovely pewter Christmas train on the cabinet in the foyer but since some snot-nosed brat stole a domino from our nice domino set (yeah, parents, when you are visiting a house don’t let your kids steal) we’re not decorating any surface at kid level. Steal something off my tree and I’ll find out where you live–you’ve been warned.
While all of this was going on the cat snuck into the dining room and first hid under the table but then moved to a crouch under one of the chairs. He’s a good supervisor but it makes me chuckle that he prefers to do his supervising covertly. The entire time we decorated we made secret points, nods of heads and that thing people do with their eyes when you want to direct someone to look at what you are looking at to keep abreast of what the cat was doing. He moved around a bit and looked into a couple of boxes but mostly just watched us decorate.
Last night we decided to sleep with the bedroom door open. Typically the cat will not come into the bedroom but this morning at what I thought was 7:15, I felt him walking around on my legs. I gave him a few scratches and then got up. I thought it was a little dark, but my clock said it was 7:15. I got into the kitchen to feed the little fatty and discovered it was 6:30–so much for the cat being so considerate to wait until 7 to bother me about breakfast. I cleaned up around the kitchen and then got back in bed for a half hour.
I changed the time on my clock (again–since I had to do that yesterday thanks to the power outage) and then I decided to remove the backup battery. I guess when the battery dies it plays a cruel joke and moves time ahead 45 minutes.
I suppose now I can claim that the cat nearly saved my life by alerting me to the fact that my clock was 45 minutes ahead of schedule. I’m not really sure how this saved my life but after reading tons of stories about how a pet does something that seems completely instinctual like clawing at the door to get out of a burning building and is given credit for saving the whole family, I figure my cat can get credit for saving my life today.