-The Nativity Set-
“Look!” Martini cried gleefully. “Oh, look, look, look!”
Martini was a sweet, overweight black tomcat with strangely beautiful amber and green eyes. He loved everything, and was playful as a kitten, despite the fact that he was two years old. He had a little black piggy nose and a tail as thin as a worm. His build resembled that of a seal. He liked to eat and sleep.
Martini also had a disease called upper respiratory infection, also URI. his family has given him numberless doses of antibiotics, and he had been cured--for the most part. He never really had recovered from the awful illness. He still sneezed a lot.
It was not that all of this was the sweet cat’s fault, though. Martini had been adopted from the shelter, and caught the URI from another cat at the local (local as in about a two hour drive away) SPCA.
He was also not the most graceful of cats and knocked things over right and left.
“Look everyone! Look at our masters! They are playing with newspaper!” Martini mewled, overjoyed.
The humans were not, in fact, ‘playing’ with the newspaper. They were setting up their porcelain, blue-glazed nativity set for Christmas. This was a beautiful, old nativity set that thy had used for many years. Every year, after Christmas, the humans would wrap the intricate porcelain figures in old newspaper.
But before Christmas, when they were decorating, the humans would set the nativity set up beautifully upon their mantle. They would place a soft white blanket on it to act as snow and set up the wise men, the sheep, Joseph, Mary, the shepherd, and, of course, the newborn babe. Then they would place upon their mantlepiece medal hooks to hang their stockings.
Martini was two years old. This would be his second Christmas with the family. But he only had a vague memory of his fist Christmas with them, for he was not the brightest of cats.
“What is it?” Moe inquired, raising a handsome eyebrow in question, as he strode graceful, but still masculine enough, into the room.
Moe was a two-year-old gray tabby tom with the most beautiful eyes. They seemingly changed color. Sometimes they were a green, an indescribable mint/olive mix. Other times they were the same color as Martini’s eyes. At times they were amber. Others they were nearly yellow, with hints of amber. He was breathtakingly built like a semi-muscled supermodel.
Moe was graceful and could leap seven feet high if he could a foot. He was high energy, but just enough. He was strong, but only weighed about ten pounds--without his ribs showing, too.
Moe was a rescued cat. When he was a stray six-week-old kitten, their family had found him. He had grown up in one of their bedrooms and was forever attached to his friend.
“The masters! They are taking the clanking things out of the box! And they are tossing newspaper about! Oh, the fun!” Martini half-replied.
With that, the fat black cat threw himself at the papers in an awkward, inelegant leap that carried him for maybe ten inches. He landed quite loudly in a sprawled black jumble of fur. He leaped a second time, this one taking him about seven inches. Abut, that was enough to land him with a boisterous, crackling crunch in the newspapers.
The kitten in him came out as best it could and he proceeded to tear at the newspaper with such gusto that it was nearly impossible for the onlookers to guffaw at such a sight.
And guffaw they did. They laughed and pointed and chuckled and rolled on the floorboards and squeezed their eyes shut and laughed and laughed and laughed.
Martini, oblivious to the giggling just inches away, was bright eyed as he tunneled right underneath the jumbled mountain of newspaper. He was purring loudly with glee and the heat of the moment. He jumped on the motionless, crumpled balls of old newspaper as if they were fleeing mice. He tore them to ruined shreds as if he were applying the killing blow to the already-lifeless things.
Moe narrowed his eyes in disgust. “You’re making a fool out of yourself, Martini. Just look around you! Everyone’s laughing!”
Alas, this was true. But Martini, in all of his glee and play, couldn’t hear what his friend was trying to tell him.
Sniffing with distaste, Moe strode out of the room. In a kitty exchange, Holston slunk in as though he were trying to hide from something bigger then he was.
Holston was an odd, brown tabby tomcat that was two years old. He had strange, unblinking eyes like a snake, and always kept them wide (was this with fear of something nonexistent and unseen or to look intimidating, the family would never know). He was adopted from the local vet clinic as a month-old kitten. He was small and thin, maybe seven pounds. Despite this, you couldn’t see a trace of his ribs. He was merely very, very small.
Being so very small, he was also quite aggressive to any new cats introduced to the household. But he was kind and loving to the cats he already knew and befriended (at least for the most part).
“What’s all of this loud stuff?” Hulston wondered, settling down in a hunter’s crouch nearby.
“It’s newspaper!” Martini squealed. “Come and play with me, Hulston. We’ll have loads of fun!”
And, right then and there, with a swift flick of Martini’s long, thin tail, newspapers shuffled as if uncomfortable. Hulston, unable to hold off any longer, launched himself into the fray. He was a streamlined, tabby torpedo and hit his target with the truest aim. He ripped and teared at the paper as though he were doing so for his very life.
Martini ripped at the vile parchments at his friend’s side. But then, with the suddenness of the shot of the gun, Martini sneezed. And a massive sneeze it was, spewing a spray of snot right and left. This atomic sneeze was, in fact, enough to even knock Holston and Martini out of their frenzy.
“Ew,” Holston said with a shudder, staring, his face distorted with pure disgust, as he backed away. “Gross, Martini.”
Martini looked up guiltily, his eyes trembling and wet with the starts of tears and large and round as two discolored moons. “I’m sorry,” he muttered apologetically.
Holston looked back at his friend, his expression changing from twisted disgust to a softness that resembled pity. “It’s okay, Martini. You couldn’t help it. Anyway, what are we waiting for? Let’s play!”
“Yay!” Martini whooped, bouncing back into the newspapers.
And together they played, a human wiping the booger up with a disinfecting wipe only a few feet away, purring and jumping to their heart’s content.
A little later, the nativity set set up (pardon the pun), the best friends could be found curled up in exhausted mounds of fur atop the torn, shredded remains of the once-magnificent pile of newspaper.
~End~
-KittyLover8
© 2012
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