Twas weeks before Christmas and all through the house, not a creature was stirring… save for perhaps a large orange cat with a penchant for shiny red round things that dangle tauntingly from evergreen branches and roll wildly when he bats and chases them. Saturday morning—after meticulously positioning the tree skirt “just so” and adusting every last branch, twinkle light, bulb, miniature angel, teddy bear, snowman, santa and reindeer the night before—I awoke to discover an ornament missing from the tree. Thus far the crime scene clues include a slightly askew tree skirt, two vacant metal hooks embedded into the carpet, a random red bulb resting silently in the middle of the room and one “innocent” looking kitty peering out at me from between the brightly lit branches. Not sure I’ll be able to crack this one.
Woman In Thrisis 
It was probably the dog. 🙂
Ha! I WOULD totally blame the dog, Caitlyn, if I had one. It’s just me, my fiance and Stanley the cat… So for now… he’s all I have to blame. Actually, I can hear him in the other room right now as I type this to you. He is pulling the SAME two ornaments off that tree and batting them around. They were on the floor Saturday (I found the missing one bound up in the tree skirt) and they were on the floor today when we got home from work. 100 bucks says I’ll find them in the same place here in about 2 minutes… When he gets bored or hears me coming… Whichever comes first 😉
Nonexistent dogs are the easiest to blame. At least the ornaments are surviving the attention!
Yes, I hung only the ones he couldn’t hurt at the bottom of the tree!
I wonder what would happen if you left those two off the tree, as an early Christmas present to Stanley? Probably find FOUR ornaments missing the next day?
The butler did it in the library with a candlestick!
What is Lee’s alibi??? He lives there too. Why must we always assume the CAT did it. Poor Stan.
I’m not sure he has one. I came home from work today and the SAME two were off the tree… and both of them just looked at me… silently blaming the other one. I can hear Stanley now though… he is batting around the ornaments as I type this. Lee is asleep. So he has an alibi tonight at least. 😛
The Cat is innocent until proven guilty – ha!
I think he’s guilty… right now. I can hear him chasing those ornaments all over the living room! haha 😀
Ha! Our cat growing up liked to chew on the lights. Then we got wise and place stuffies (one w/ catnip) on the very bottom branch of the tree and those were hers to do what she wanted with.
Great idea! I tried to do that by putting things for HIM at the bottom with a few other ornaments that he can’t hurt. But of course, he isn’t interested in HIS stuff!
Hmmm this is a conundrum… After careful thought I am thinking perhaps you need to see a Dr. about the possibility your having hallucinations or sleep walking 😉
I never thought of that, JT! Maybe it IS me!?! Maybe I am just looking for something to blame on someone else whenever I feel like being mischievious. Hmmmm… I’d better sleep with bells on tonight.
All the evidence points in one and only one direction. Nevertheless, you do bear the burden of purrrroof. I suggest a catscan at the first available opurrrtunity.
Ha! Good one, Donald… Bearing the burden of purrrrrrrrrrrrrroof. I love it!
Brevity, as was just mentioned in our recent correspondence, is the sole of whit. I had a longer reply in mind and decided I had better quite while I was ahead. A longer one could have been “cat”astrophic.
OMG! 😉
UGH… that was a bad pun. But pretty funny, I must admit! Brevity is an art form. The older I get the more I realize how important it is to LEAVE THINGS OUT!
Oh, speaking of the “like” button, which I just mentioned in one of our back and forths. Someone just clicked it about two seconds after I posted it. (They can still click it on that Topics page, but it doesn’t show up on mine.) No free advertising.
As you probably know Joanna, I am a part-time sleuth. It all began in my younger years when I watched all those “Columbo” TV episodes. My interests in sleuthing became even more profound when I began reading Sherlock Holmes, as did my heroin addiction — but we shan’t go there. Holmes’s own addiction to the opiate was completely ignored in those wonderful Basil Rathbone movies, wherein Basil played the great detective.
So, something just didn’t smell quite right near the Kitty Litter box the first time I read this story. The threads and little insinuating clues began to germinate, as does a little poppy plant, and during that incubation period, the pieces all fell into place one by one until the REAL culprit appeared on the scene. That was my eureka moment, and as I ran down main street naked yelling eureka, eureka!!, having just dashed from my shower moments earlier. I was, shortly thereafter forcefully –and painfully – grabbed by the Fuzz, as it were, and arrested for inadvertently exposing myself.
Archimedes NEVER had to put up with such nonsense as that. BUT I did, having spent the last five days in jail, unable to raise any bail. Ultimately, the judge released me on time served.
As I was taking my traditional weekly shower, all in a sudden, as if in an epiphanial flash, everything became perfe. . . prrrhaps . . . better to say, ‘it became very clear to me what in fact happened in this felinious hi-jinx.’ The bottom line, dear Joanna, is that there is little doubt that one Stanley-Kubric-the-Cat was *in* ^fact^ framed. While this isn’t enough to prove the dear lad innocent of all charges, it does inject more than a modicum of proof-not-met in the burden of proof system that we use. (I learned me a little Jail house lawyerin’ whilst I was in the slammer. I’m a bit of a quick learner, in a pinch.)
I’m preparing to make a comment to CNN about this unsettling trend in cat entrapment. It’s the most disturbing trend to happen since the heinous sport of cat juggling was brought to the world’s attention by Steve Martin, some thirty years ago in his movie “The Jerk.” Happily, that film, cat-nipped the practice in the bud before it had time to grow to full popial splendor.
I bring to your attention the true culprit in this diabolic caper, aptly described in this excellent public service announcement/warning.
https://womaninthrisis.com/2012/12/13/
Thank you for the sleuthing Donald! My mother has long held in contention that Stanley Kubrick is being framed and since I am never around when the crimes are perpetrated… I cannot be sure. But I will consider this seriously in my ow sleuthing from here on out! 😀