Ivan Vs. Santa Claus

Though many have described me as "fearless", I must confess that I do indeed harbor one particular fear. Simply put, It is the fear of becoming predictable.

Predictability in a benevolent dictator (or cat) can lead to the loss of fear in one's minions. It can give them ideas of mutiny or even usurpation. It may even lead some unenlightened two leggers to believe that they actually have some control in their meager little lives.

Unacceptable.

The reason I bring this up is because last Christmas, Santa seemed unusually well-prepared during his visit to my Kingdom. He showed up wearing hockey pads, heavy welding-type gloves and armed with a can of pepper spray. Judging by his agile maneuvering, I also suspect that he has been dabbling in the martial arts.

I still managed to rough him up a bit, but I confess that it was a near run thing.

The only possible conclusions I can draw is that I have either become predictable, or he has begun reading my blog thingy.

Either way, a change of strategy was in order.

So this year I decided to delegate my Christmastime chaos to Ivan.

I played the part of Ebeneezer Scrooge after his night of visitations. I appeared sweet, generous and filled with the spirit of Noel. When he entered my house, I sat serenely upon my throne and bid him welcome with a lyrical purr and a totally non-evil smile upon my face.

Given our "history", I was not surprised that he did not trust my sudden transformation. His anxiety was palpable. He crept slowly towards the tree with his bag of presents in one mittened hand and a Tazer in the other, never taking his wary eyes off of me. I simply watched him and began licking my paw in a manner that broadcast "I am perfectly at ease and I bear you no ill will my good sir.".  I then curled up, head to tail, and pretended to fall asleep.

Finally, his ill-advised innate optimism got the better of him. He holstered his Tazer, put down his bag and began carefully placing presents under my tree. He was still fairly skittish and tended to jump at every slight sound, but soon he relaxed and set himself to his task.

It was at this moment that Ivan made his move.........

Amazingly, Ivan had managed to hide himself under the tree skirt and had miraculously refrained from giggling in a fit of pre-ambush mirth. As Santa bent over to remove a present from his bag, Ivan jumped from beneath the tree thingy and proceeded to viciously maul Santa just below his kneecap. Santa responded by grabbing a pair of candy canes and used them like nunchucks, beating Ivan on his head thingy.

The rapid, staccato sound of the candy canes reverberating through the house caused Jaq to suddenly launch into a very creditable rendition of "The Little Drummer Boy" by Bing Crosby and David Bowie. It is uncanny how she can perform a duet by herself.

Owing to Santa's poor choice of targeting Ivan's noggin, his counter-attack had little affect. In a great slashing, tearing and mrowring whirlwind of stinky orange fur, Ivan continued his attack as though he believed that Santa was smuggling several whole tunas beneath his silly red suit.

I have no idea who would have told Ivan that Santa was a notorious fish smuggler.........

Unfortunately, Ivan's attack was suddenly curtailed when a pair of socks, obviously intended as a gift for some ill-behaved adolescent two legger, fell out of the sack thus becoming SIUPs (Socks In Unexpected Places, Ivan's worst fear). This caused Ivan to totally poof and bolt from the room, knocking over the tree thingy in the process....I guess one could say that "the fir really flew". In his panic, he also managed to upend Santa who came down with a horrendous, yet spectacularly wonderful, CRASH!

The crash was so loud and mighty that it actually caused me to bolt and in my panic I accidentally broke  a lamp and four wine glasses.

Now this may sound like a lot of damage for a few seconds of extreme panic, but trust me, it only took me a second to break the lamp and only 18 minutes to get into the cabinet to break the wine glasses.

It's amazing what can happen when one panics.

I hope you all have a very safe and merry Christmas filled with joy and chaos.