Presents!

Hi, everybody!

A really long time ago (three years ago next week, to be exact), Moms and Dads got married. When they got hitched, they got presents, and those presents came in boxes! BOXES! I LOVE BOXES! Here I am in a Crate and Barrel box. Crate and Barrel makes great boxes.Well. Did you know that when you get a tot, people also give you presents? They do! It's true! The first present arrived this week. It is this thing that you put the tot in and push it around. They said it's called a stroller, intended to help people stroll with tots.

Auntie Chris, Uncle Dale, and Dylan and Cameron gave Moms and Dads the pushie thing. It also came with something called a car seat. I recently learned that tots do not go in cat carriers when they go in the car and, apparently, tots go in the car a lot. Moms and Dads said that the tot will go everywhere with them, and won't be left home alone like me and Archy. I guess the tot is not as self sufficient as me and my brother. I mean, come on, Archy has Esq. at the end of his name, and I sometimes manage Work Out Basement! Moms and Dads even said that the tot won't know how to go to the litterbox for nearly three years! The baby sounds behind the times already.

The stroller and tot seat came to our house, and Dads put it together. He learned that assembling tot stuff is not like assembling cat stuff. There are lots of parts and instructions come in English, Spanish and Italian. Dads put the pusher part together first. A half-hour after starting to assemble the stroller, Dads made it look like the picture on the box. Here he is, proud that he figured out how to put together the pushy thing.Then Dads realized the car seat thing has to be assembled, too. It didn't look too hard. The car seat came in a plastic bag, and only had two parts and a rod. How hard could that be? Well, it wasn't hard. Dads figured out how to get the car seat rod in the pushy thing, and easily got the sitting thing in the pushy thing. See? Dads got the sitty thing in there real nice. He was so proud.Unfortunately, after this picture was taken, Dads couldn't get the sitty thing out of the pushy thing. He pulled and yanked on the sitty thing so much that Moms said the imaginary tot got whiplash five times over. So, they pulled out the instructions (in English, Spanish, and Italian) to try to figure out where they went wrong. After reading it a lot, they figured out how to safely release the imaginary tot and its sitty thing from the pushy thing. I think Moms and Dads need to practice more before the tot actually comes because they might screw up the tot if they forget where that release thingy is located.

But the most exciting part of the gift was the box. It was so big that our refrigerator could fit inside of it. It's like a gigantic tunnel - it's HUGE! When I am in it, my purrs echo.

Moms and Dads said that the box is a present for me and Archy. As big brothers, we will need to show the tot how to play, and this box is for us to practice play time in. Moms asked Dads to cut holes in it so that we can play "Sparkle Ball Surprise" in the box, and I've already requested daily catnip deliveries so that I can roll around and smell wicked good. Dads put the box in the romper room out back, away from the pellet stove in the living room, so that it does not catch fire.

Moms and Dads are going to a shower this weekend. A tot shower. No water is involved; apparently they "shower" you with stuff for the tot. I hope that the stuff comes in boxes and that they give the boxes to me. I am going to make a wicked large fort and call it "Johnny's World." If you want to visit, I will charge you admission.

Your pal,
JD!