Sunday, December 11, 2022

The photo box

It has been a while because, people, I have been too busy keeping notes of all the shenanigans going on in this house. Der Dekan will get his extra large font on the naughty list for Christmas this year.
I'll have to be fair. Sometimes he's very calm. He can sleep for hours and be very snuggly, and sometimes I even let him groom me for a few seconds before one of us raises their paw for a slap fight. Yesterday I even let him hug me, but not long enough for Mom to take a picture. That constant photo hunting of hers can get very exhausting.
Usually she can only get a good picture of me if I'm exhausted and trying to disguise as a stone.


This story I have to share with you, though.

After we got our breakfast today, Mom had the nerve to go back to the bedroom and shut the door. That's fine with me, after breakfast I usually take a nap on my favorite faux fur blanket. This time I installed myself on one of the chairs at the dinner table.
When Mom came out again after hours, der Dekan had already been getting ready to knock down that door because his breakfast portion had been too small. Adding insult to injury, however, Mom didn't run to the kitchen right away to give him a second one.

If der Dekan gets mad, he gets MAD. It usually involves running through the place at lightning speed, knocking things down here and there randomly, not actively, just by hitting them with his massive little body. If that doesn't set things right, he'll jump at walls knocking down what he can find, one of Mom's vintage hats, a picture, magnets off the notice board, you get the picture.
Today he took it out on the photo box.

You need a little backstory for that.
Mom had an open light tent that der Dekan loved right from the start. He looked very cute in it when he was still a baby, but he grew and the tent which was more than ten years old started suffering. So Mom decided we'd need a new box, one that she could close, so it wouldn't be used as a cave anymore.
In her calculations she forgot that we would definitely use the box as a stepstone between closet and shelf, though, and sometimes also just to sit on it. I move in an elegant way, so I'm not the problem.


Mom also hadn't figured that der Dekan would do his very best to get inside the box through the flap on top attached by velcro.
Last but by no means the least, she hadn't expected to be so annoyed by some LED strips. To make it short, Mom hated to use the box for taking pictures. Nothing worked the way she wanted and more than once we had to cover our ears because of the heavy cursing.
Finally she gave up. She put the box on the floor for us to have fun with - which of course made us lose interest in it immediately, especially because she didn't open the front flap - and got a light tent that looked like the old one. Now she takes pictures and then puts it up on a cabinet. She could have done that with the old one, but sometimes she's a slow learner. Humans, you know.

Now today der Dekan remembered the box standing there and from her desk Mom could hear him going wild with the velcro. She was on the phone at the time and didn't care what he was doing until it definitely got too loud for her to concentrate on the call and the printout she wanted to do. So she asked her conversation partner to wait a moment and went over there.
This was what she saw.


The little top flap really got it, just as she had expected. But where was der Dekan?
Any ideas? Yes, der Dekan was inside the box and tried to claw his way back out, but the velcro resisted bravely.
When Mom raised the flap, she almost got it as well because he tried to jump up there, claws out as usual. When she tried to open the front flap, a little striped arm came out hitting at her. She finally managed to tear it open with a quick movement and a not at all panicked, but angry tiger walked out ... and immediately came over to me to take it out on me next.
All that got him was a timeout outside - and a very small second breakfast.

Once again I wish I were better with the camera because Mom definitely didn't have a free hand to handle one while releasing the kraken. Sorry, den Dekan.

Not on topic, but Mom chose not to put up a Christmas tree this year. What a pity, I bet I would have had a few things to tell! ;-)

P.S. About 40 minutes later.
Wanna guess who just had to be released from the photo box? A hint, not Mom, not I.