Cat’s Christmas

Thank you for being a Splash Magazines Worldwide reader. We appreciate you! May you enjoy the holiday season, good health, and peace as we move to 2024.

The poem below is a gift from the poet who hopes it brings you cheer.

By Carlena Wike

“Pad with heightened, lightened tread

Down the hall while they’re in bed.

Crouch behind a far settee

Gaze intently…at a tree!

A tree indeed! I didn’t know

Trees grew inside—big ones that glow

And grow strange fruit of varied hue.

I’ll move in for a better view.”

So mused our cat and then moved slow

To where the strange thing seemed to grow.

He slapped once at the lowest ball

And was amazed to see it fall.

He battled it across the floor

The moved in fast for two balls more.

A tinsel tango after that

And lo—a decorated cat!

Garland followed tinsel down.

He caught it and wrapped it round

piano leg—and then he stopped…

and gazed at angel on the top–

Upon her birdlike wings, her hair

Upon her, poised and waiting there.

“A sitting duck for agile cat

As he moved slowly, silently,

Away to get a run at tree.

He crouched low near the fireplace

And painted HUNTER on his face

‘til sight of silent seraph in

that treetop was too much for him.

He sprang and caught a middle bough

and clung to sticky bark somehow

while tree, on impact, swayed and bent

and one by one, shed ornament.

Then our cat began his climb

To angel there on highest limb.

Inch by inch he made his way

Up trunk in spite of sway

‘til he had almost reached the prize.

that danced and had him mesmerized.

He was oblivious, it seemed,

To hurried footsteps, varied screams

of family, who’d come down the hall

in time to catch the awful fall.

Cat, embarrassed, headed South-

angel feathers in his mouth.