Background: Kayda, our 12ish year old family mutt, was put to sleep a few months ago. Piper is our 4 month old kitten whom we adopted when he was 2 weeks old and bottle fed him for 2-3 weeks. Annabelle is my calm-as-hell 7 year old cat. A 'baby' is a special stuffed animal that the animal has a soft spot for and will defend and guard it like it's their baby. Kayda would know what you meant when you said "Where's your baby?" cause she'd run around the house looking for it. Woe were the days it was in the wash!

Kayda used to ADORE Christmas. If you held a gift out, she'd rip the paper right off. A few times she'd even jump into the pile of paper and just start tearing stuff up for the hell of it. Her favorite were her toys, or a new 'baby', and she'd often parade away with it half unwrapped. With hardy or plastic-wrapped gifts, we'd let her tear the paper off because her eyes would just gleam with excitement (muddafugger I'm crying ;-; ) and she knew her breakfast would be a big can of wet food, and her dinner would be another one. We'd individually wrap as many presents as we could like tennis balls, so she'd just go nuts whenever she saw us toss something towards her.

I think Piper will be a lot of the same way, except he won't have the same manners. He'll probably sit in the middle of the floor and chase the strings while Annabelle sits on the piano and watches. Once he figures out the glee of opening gifts, he'll probably dive under the tree after them. So far he's been GREAT about Christmas- he doesn't climb the tree, ignores the gifts, and leaves the door hangers alone. His only issue is the tree skirt but that's an issue every year. He couldn't care less about the stockings or ornaments so I'm really proud of him. He's getting a handful of toy mice and a special big mouse, and hopefully one of those ball in the track toys soon. He's been a great spirit and will hopefully be big enough for a collar soon. Fingers crossed, the collar we chose for him has little diamond studs all over it. Teehee.