It's Christmas Times, Cat

This is my daughter's first Christmas, so 'hiding' Christmas presents from her is about as difficult as buying them. She was with us when we found the little bath-finger-puppets, heard us talking about them, and I still suspect that she will be appropriately surprised to see them Christmas Eve in her stocking. I mean, everything is still a surprise to a 5 month old. ("Look! A clean diaper!")

I anticipated some searching from the dog, considering her nose knows she got a chewy stick and where it's located out of reach, but who I should have been more concerned about is the cat.

I knew I was in trouble when I first got home with it. It's a 'rat' stuffed with real, organic catnip, and a bell. Unfortunately, it was a little too perfect considering that he took it out of the shopping bag it was in (under everything else from my other trips yesterday,) and was swatting it around on the floor. So I put it into a Christmas stocking, under something else, anchored by a basket, and by this morning, stocking, basket, and everything else on the dryer was on the floor.

Other attempts to keep the cat away from his Christmas present have failed in the past, but not to this extent. It's hard to keep from thinking that he looks forward to this game we play every year, (a bit of cat and mouse?) but the most frustrating thing is that once I give it to him he is just going to take one swipe at it and it will land under a chair/sofa/dryer/other piece of heavy furniture and will stay there until we get back from Christmas.

Then, he will just ignore it.