Kibble for Christmas

I have been staring at them ever since I moved here some time ago, and I still don't have them figured out. I stare at them from across the room, from around the corner, from underneath the chair they're sitting on and, my favourite, from secret hiding places. I see everything they do, whether it's staring at a big screen or a slightly smaller screen for hours, or making friends with the monster who comes and sucks my precious pieces of dirt off the floor.  

This is a bad thing, because one morning while I was looking out the window, I saw the same funny and small white things fall from the big white thing in the sky that I saw last year too. And it's not bad only for the reason that they're damn hard to catch. It's bad because when all the trees that I always climb when I get to go outside got covered in white, they brought one of them inside the house to keep it warm. It was smaller than the other ones and I believe my parents didn't love it when I tried to climb it. What can I say, the five corners of the shiny thing at the top looked very nice to crunch on.  

It's bad because after that all happened, on a very much otherwise nice evening, my parents gave me presents. I might be a cat but I'm not so stupid as to not know what presents are. You simply give someone something that is hidden in paper or a plastic bag or a paper bag, which then makes the other person open their mouth wide and smile nicely. You see, my problem is that you give something, some magical thing, what thing? 

Last year my parents smiled and gave me a huge cat tree AND a treat!! They made me so happy I decided to do my part this year too. I went through all the things I like. My piece of string, my favourite balls, the occasional fruit flies, the pieces of paper on my mom's wall that I like to rip off it and the trash can full of wonderous things to discover. But thinking of having to give one of these things up made me extremely sad. After all, I didn't have an endless supply of them. Then again, a thing that always appeared out of nowhere, in my little bowl of heaven, was food. Wet food is obviously superior, but quite messy. Kibble however… Those crunchy little bastards, so delicious and scrumptious, always coming back to me immediately after I finish licking the smallest of crumbs from the bottom of my bowl. What could be a better gift?  

I know where my mom hides the paper and plastic bags, but I thought that kibble had to have a smaller package to really accentuate its beauty. I went through all the packaging materials I like. Flimsy plastic is terrific, fun and so tasty, but I don’t think it would achieve that wide mouth effect because it is rather see-through. Regular paper is also fun, but awfully strong against my paws that try to shape it into a pretty little thing. That leaves us with the winner, a pre-shaped type of paper, small enough for the pieces of kibble: an envelope. I also have some inside information about envelopes, as it happens to be so that my mom sometimes spends hours or weeks scribbling something on pieces of paper, and then stores them in envelopes. They must be very valuable.  

I think my mom has some kind of magical powers, because every time we play with my favourite string, she makes it magically disappear whenever she puts it behind her back. I really like her because of it. That is why I think she deserves five pieces of kibble. Four for being a good magician, one for giving me more kibble. My dad gets four kibbles for not torturing me with the wet place of horrors where water comes from every direction, trying to shoot me dead. He also gets a kibble for giving me more kibble. Ten kibbles, that makes. Phew, I hope my parents really appreciate this.  

Ten pieces of kibble in two envelopes, five in each. I licked the envelopes to close them, I've seen my mom do that. I tasted the meaty flavour of the delicious little pieces through the thin paper, knowing it was the last time I would ever get to do that. Maybe I would get some extra kibble as a present from them. I pushed the sealed envelopes under the Christmas tree. There were presents of many kinds underneath it already, so I decided to shove mine under all the rest, out of sight. That way I would maybe not be reminded of my loss of ten pieces of kibble all the time. Not that I fretted over it that much, I was happy with my sacrifice. I do like my parents, and I wanted to see them smile.  

-  

This year we went with the classic, presents under the Christmas tree. The tree was rather small, which turned out to be good thing because it minimised the damage when our cat, of course, tried to climb it. Thankfully the presents under the tree were pretty durable this year. I really do like opening presents. I wait for them all year round. As a child, you always had to wait an additional eternity after opening the presents because the toys were too damn hard to open even for the adults. What were those twisty little things they used to keep the barbies tied to the cardboard with anyways? Oh, the freedom of adulthood and being able to go cut all the bread you ever want, whenever you want, with your new bread knife that comes in simple packaging.  

We had opened all of our presents and had started cleaning up when we noticed our cat playing with two envelopes that were on the floor. They were probably a part of the mass of envelopes that always appear out of nowhere on Christmas, envelopes you don’t really want to throw away but also don’t want to keep because you won’t be needing them for anything. I picked them up so that I could dangle them in front of our cat’s face, he likes playing with paper. Both of them made a tiny rattling sound. I investigated them more closely and noticed that they had once been closed, but someone had opened them quite frantically. I looked inside. There was a single piece of our cat's kibble in both of them. Our cat is a very messy eater, but a single kibble in both envelopes? Had Santa's elves made our cat sad gifts this year and then decided to open them? Or who am I to say that they’re sad gifts, he really loves his kibble. Even now, he was sniffling the air curiously. I smiled at him. I reached my fingers in the envelopes and gave him both pieces of kibble. He crunched on them loudly and looked up at me. He blinked slowly, his other eye blinking a bit faster than the other. He laid down, stretching his paws towards me, eventually touching my knee gently. I scratched his nose, it’s his favourite. 

Illustration by Elvira Ehnström