Someone needs to explain what the hell happened to November.

One minute I was coming to grips with the fact that it was almost Halloween, and the next, it was 3 days before Turkey Day. Not cool, this time warp thing.

Since I'll be working retail again this Christmas season, I'll be putting up all the holiday decorations on Thanksgiving morning. I'm looking forward to it, and expect that by dinnertime, my husband will be ready to toss me and my Christmas CDs out onto the lawn. No, I kid, I kid. He's a very patient man.

My real worry is that our cat might not be able to control himself once the tree goes up. He has a compulsion to get into everything he is strictly forbidden to touch. He also has a weird habit of drowning things in his water dish once they cease to amuse him. Last year, I lost count of the number of times I came home from work to find a Christmas ornament floating in a small watery grave. He had one particular ornament that he was OCD about getting his fangs on, but I can't remember which one it was.

Our tree is only 4 and a half feet tall, and we set it up on top of a small table. The cat had few difficulties plucking whatever he wished from the branches while he was home alone. Luckily, he kept the actual destruction to a minimum.

His last vestige of self-control vanished about a week after Christmas, however. El Esposo and I were eating dinner when the cat decided he wanted to sit under the tree. I pulled him out; he jumped back up onto the table. I pulled him out; he jumped back up. I finally decided to just let him sit there. Sure enough, as soon as I stopped watching him, he attempted to climb the tree from the inside. When I grabbed him around what I guess is his waist to pull him out, he went into civil disobedience mode. I swear I am not making this up. He flopped onto his side and threw out his front legs, hooked his paws around the base of the tree, and refused to let go. Meanwhile, he was thrashing back and forth a bit, so that he ended up underneath the garland but on top of the string of lights. He started to slip off the edge of the table, which was complicated by the fact that the tree was now securely tied onto his midsection. I caught him before he could bring the whole business down, but El Esposo had to assist with the extrication. We ended up having to lock the cat in the bathroom for an hour while I tried to stop laughing and we took down the tree. If there's a replay this year, I hope we at least get some pictures of it.

This cat post is funnier than mine.

Dammit.