The Cat Before Christmas

By Lynn Michaels

Wiki the cat loves Christmas. Batting the ornaments, basking in the blinking lights--he even helps choose the tree each year.

 

But this year there's trouble in Wiki's yuletide paradise when his mistress Cary decides to go skiing in Colorado instead of staying snug at home with him in Kansas City, Missouri. To derail her plans, Wiki escapes to the Christmas tree lot where he's sure Cary will find him.

 

He doesn't count on a blizzard or a huge German shepherd with a handsome and stubborn blue-eyed master named Ben. All three conspire to trap Wiki on the lot. For his own good, of course.

 

Cary is frantic, searching everywhere for Wiki--everywhere but the Christmas tree lot, where Wiki waits to be saved. And Zeus' master waits to sweep Cary off her feet.

 

Can Wiki escape and get home to Cary in time to save Christmas? 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lynn Michaels
• Release date: Dec 20, 2010
• ISBN: 9798215470305

Lynn Michaels

Lynn Michaels lives and writes in Tampa, Florida where the sun is hot and the Sangria is cold. Lynn is the newest addition to Rubicon Fiction, and she loves reading and writing about hot men in love.

Book preview

cover.jpg

THE CAT

BEFORE CHRISTMAS

By

Lynn Michaels

Copyright © by Lynn Michaels

All rights reserved.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 1

Wiki loved Christmas. Lights that blinked, twinkled, chased and flashed, ribbons and bows and bright colored yarn, shiny, crinkly wrapping paper, and glistening baubles swaying on the branches of the Christmas tree in the updraft from the furnace vents.

A soaring, stately pine begging to be climbed, ornaments he could bat and send flying across the room. Prickly branch tips for scratching those hard to reach spots, and a plush red and green skirt underneath that was just perfect for napping in a beam of sunlight.

It was Saturday morning. In a couple of hours, the house would smell like cookies. The butter in the blue glass bowl on the kitchen counter was soft enough to start the snickerdoodles. Wiki knew because he’d stuck his nose in the bowl and used his paws to lick off the butter. Helped with hairballs.

His mistress Cary was in the basement gathering up the Christmas decorations. Garlands of fake greenery to trim the fireplace mantle and the doorways between rooms, sprigs of mistletoe to hang from the garlands – ever hopeful, that was Cary – candles and porcelain angels. A nativity scene for under the tree that Wiki could topple with a flick of his tail, musical snow globes to line the bookshelves in Cary’s office next to her bedroom. One pitiful wail could induce her to wind up the one that played Here Comes Santa Claus. She was such a pushover.

A white wire reindeer and sleigh to plug in at night and twinkle on the porch, a string of lights to edge the bay window above the padded seat in the living room. Wiki liked to sit there and covet the birds that hopped along the brick balustrade of the porch.

He heard his mistress’s step on the stairs and sprang off the seat. What would she bring up first? The garlands? The snow globes?

Cary Tyler pushed open the basement door and stepped into the blue tiled hallway between the kitchen and the sun porch in her red brick row house on Cherry Street in Kansas City, Missouri. Her Siamese cat Wiki sat in the kitchen doorway, his black ears pricked, his blue eyes as big and as round as saucers in his sharp, sable-pointed face.

No ornaments this trip. Cary laughed and stepped over Wiki with a yellow plastic wash basket full of folded towels. I have to finish the laundry first.

Wiki yowled. Cary glanced over her shoulder. Wiki narrowed his eyes and flicked just the tip of his black tail.

Oh, all right. She sighed. Let me put these away. Then I’ll bring up a couple of boxes. You can amuse yourself getting them open while I make the cookies.

Cary, ever practical, stored the Christmas decorations in case-size paper boxes she brought home from work. Wiki had the lids off the two that she brought up and put down in the middle of the living room floor in seconds. Ooh, goody. The garlands and a bonus – a spider!

Wiki cornered it in front of the fireplace. He was about to spring when Cary shouted from the kitchen, I see a nose print in the butter! That broke his concentration and gave the spider a split second to jump to the top of the fire screen, launch a strand of silk and swing to safety like Spider-Man.

Wise guy, huh? Wiki glared at the spider swinging from its lifeline inside the dark, cold hearth. I’ll get you tonight when Cary goes to bed.

Take your best shot, furball. The spider made one last swing and disappeared up the flue.

You’re going down, Eight Eyes. Wiki growled and jumped on the window seat to clean his ears and plan his strategy.

When the snickerdoodles were finished, the last batch cooling on a rack that filled the house with the smell of cinnamon, Cary walked past him into the foyer, separated from the living room by knee-high-on-a-human plastered walls and round oak pillars that framed the doorway.

Wiki watched Cary lift her navy wool pea coat off the hall tree. She slipped it on and wound a red knitted scarf around her neck.

I’m going to have lunch with Pam and Tina, Cary told him. You can come along, and if you’re good in the car, after lunch we’ll go see Charlie about a Christmas tree.

Wiki shot off the window seat and wound around Cary’s blue-jeaned legs. She opened the storage bench next to the hall tree and took out his webbed black nylon harness and leash and shut the lid. Wiki jumped up on the bench and allowed Cary to truss him up like a plow horse. It was the harness and leash or he never got out of the house.

He’d slipped out the front door a week after they’d moved here and hid in the yews that grew on both sides of the front steps to let Cary know he did not want his litter box placed by the bathroom door. She liked privacy and he did, too. To Wiki’s horror his mistress, his calm, patient mistress had gone bananas, totally cuckoo, tearing up the street screaming his name, pounding on doors and weeping hysterically.

She called the police, and then she called the fire department. Wiki was too embarrassed to come out until it was dark and he wouldn’t be seen. By then Cary’s parents Lorraine and Ted had arrived and calmed her down. He’d never tried that one again.

When Cary snapped the leash to the ring on the harness between his shoulders, Wiki hopped to the floor. He heard a chuckle, faint and raspy from the fireplace, turned his head and laid back his ears.

You look like a dog, furball. The spider jeered.

You look like a bedtime snack, Eight Eyes.

The spider only laughed.

Restaurant parking lots weren’t as much fun as grocery store parking lots. At Hy-Vee or Price Chopper there was almost always a dog in the next vehicle that Wiki could send into a barking, bashing-its-head-against-the-window frenzy, but what the heck. He could get lucky, and he was bored. The spider was the most excitement he’d had in days.

When Cary eased the Civic into a parking space Wiki jumped into the back window to let her know he had no intention of making a break for it. She cracked the windows to give him air, switched off the engine and looked at him over her shoulder.

Remember – be good. She pointed a finger. Puke on the floor mats again and no trip to see Charlie about a tree.

There were no days-old McDonald’s fries under the seat to tempt him; Wiki had already checked. He gave Cary a confident and demure I’ll be good meow.

She smiled and got out of the car, shut the door and pressed lock on her keypad. Wiki heard the click and watched her walk across the parking lot. When she disappeared into the restaurant he rolled onto his back, curled his front paws and closed his eyes.

The dead cat in the window trick was one of his favorites for startling passersby. If all else failed he’d catch a quick nap.

* * * *

Look at this. Tina Simmons, Cary’s best friend since college, passed her a brochure over the empty dim sum platter on the table. We want you to come with us.

Say yes, Cary. Pam Ferguson, her second-best friend since their days as suite mates at the University of Missouri in Columbia added. We’ll have an absolute blast.

THE ELK HORN LODGE, read the front of the brochure in large white letters over a snow-covered mountain dotted with pine trees, ASPEN’S PREMIER SKIING DESTINATION.

My sister Carol and her husband have a time share condo at Elk Horn, Tina went on. They can’t go this year so they offered it to me. Pam is in, and we want you to come, too.

But I don’t ski, Cary said, looking up at her friends.

We don’t either. Tina took the brochure, opened it and handed it back to Cary. This is why we’re going.

Oh, I see. Cary smiled at the photos: a dance floor curved around a backlit bar, couples dressed in ski wear snuggling on a long couch in front of a fireplace. This is a trip to ogle cute guys in tight ski pants.

You betcha. Pam turned the brochure over and pointed at the photo on the back, a tall, blond hunk in a parka and goggles. I want him in my Christmas stocking.

You’re going for Christmas? Tina and Pam nodded. Cary shook her head. I can’t. My mother expects me for Christmas.

You spent Thanksgiving with your parents, only nine days ago, Tina said. You’ve spent every Christmas since we graduated from MU with your parents. That’s five years.And this year it will be six. Cary gave the brochure back to Tina. I could go on New Year’s. My mother couldn’t care less about New Year’s, but she’d have a cow if I sprang this on her so close to Christmas.

This isn’t last minute, Cary. Today is only December fourth, Tina responded. "Last year, Carol went to Elk Horn for New Year’s. She said it was mobbed, took her twenty