Once A Bad Kitty, Always A Bad Kitty

When the boys were young, we used a Countdown to Christmas calendar. It had a pocket for each day that held a strip of paper with an activity that would help us get ready for Christmas. Even though I haven't used that calendar for many years, I still like the concept of spreading out the holiday activities, and try to do one or two things every day to make the season less hectic.

Years ago I had to find places to hide Christmas presents from prying eyes. Now, though, since (I'm pretty sure) Hubby Tony doesn't snoop around looking to see what he's getting, I just shove things in the back of my closet as I buy them.  It was getting hard to move around in there, so today I wrapped the first of the Christmas presents and put them under the tree.

Today's session took place on my bedroom floor.  To make wrapping the job easy, I keep everything together in a red-and-green plastic storage container.  The long, skinny box holds paper, tissue paper, bags, ribbon, and bows, as well as scissors, tape, and pens for writing names on the tags.  All I have to do is open the box and I'm ready to go!

When Pepper (one of our cats) was a kitten he liked to play with cellophane tape and eat it.  I quickly learned that when I was wrapping presents I had to hide the tape dispenser when I wasn't using it or he'd grab it in his teeth and carry it off. The first Christmas he was so small that the dispenser kept hitting the floor as he tried to run.  It was hilarious!

Pepper is now a mature 8 years old.  Last year he wasn't interested in tape, so I figured I wouldn't have a problem this year.  I figured wrong.  As I was cutting paper to wrap the second present I saw something slinking away out of the corner of my eye.  It was Pepper, up to his old tricks with the tape.  However, today I was able to grab him and take the tape away before he got out of the bedroom.

For the rest of the wrapping session, I kept the tape under my leg when I wasn't using it.  No more problems.