Christmas Vandals...

We spoke too soon last night when we told John's sister Janice that the cats had ignored the Christmas tree - John got up this morning to find the tree ass over tip on the carpet with a number of the decorations strewn across the floor!!  

We rescued the tree and the decorations including the rather well sucked feather and restored it to its former glory - so yes all those of you who thought feathers were a bad idea you were right!!!  

We will have to see whether or not it survives until Christmas!!

The little darlings have ignored the Santa Sacks thank goodness (although we have been very careful to hide their kitty stockings somewhere else where they cant find them!).  Although we don't really 'do' presents its amazing how things accumulate so we should all have something to unwrap next Sunday.  

It is going to be such a different Christmas for us this year - it's hard to believe that all the things we said we would be doing this Christmas when we were stuck in Yeovil in the snow last Christmas are actually coming to fruition. 

The two vandals themselves were asleep in their basket looking like butter wouldn't melt in their little mouths - all tucked up with their respective teddies.  

Little did they know what challenges they would be facing later in the day...

...the time has come to give Chivers and Minnie Mou the freedom to come and go as they please but only if they can negotiate the cat-flap.  John decided to install it this morning and we finally decided to put it into the kitchen door.  The feline jury is well and truly out at the moment - no amount of coaxing, pushing, bribery and/or corruption has persuaded them to go in and out of their own volition!  John and I have spent most of the day either side of the flap and have the scars to prove it.  Why is it that they are quite happy to squeeze themselves down the side of the shed, get stuck and have to back out but wont push a little bit of plastic which enables them to come in from the rain into the warm?

We were going out tonight for Christmas drinks and nibbles at Mel and Simon's in the village but just before we left we 'sniped' Vicki (on Trevor's instruction!!!).  It looks like Trev has some work in Cyprus in February and Vix is hoping to come out and visit at the same time.  That will be so fantastic and something for us to look forward to during what is considered one of the worst months in Cyprus and now that we have discovered shops in Limassol and Nicosia we can find things to do that aren't dependent upon the sunshine.  Fingers crossed that this will materialise.

We walked down into the village to Mel and Simon's house.  We absolutely love their home in Droushia - it is over 100 years old and full of character and when we arrived Simon had the roaring log fire that he had promised us.  I didn't manage to get a photograph of their two rescued dogs but they must have been well drugged as they were very well behaved all evening.

We had a lovely evening of mulled wine, mince pies and nibbles and John and I taught Mel and Simon the rudiments of crib so we had a couple of hours of fifteen-two, fifteen-four and one for his knob!  John and I are hoping that we might be able to set up some sort of casual crib club in the new year as it is one of the things we have missed about the UK.

We had a beautiful starlit walk home - the cats didn't appear to have moved all night - so the cat-flap had got a stiff ignoring - Christmas Tree was still intact - no shipwrecks and nobody drownded - nothing to laugh at at all!!