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‘Santa,’ I said in my soothing voice. ‘Please, try to keep still, we’ll get you out but the more you struggle or get distressed the worse it’ll be. And that goes for everyone. We all need to help Santa by remaining calm and keeping our cool,’ I instructed. There was something I could do after all.

‘I know why don’t you tell us one of your stories,’ Tiger asked, in a quieter than normal voice. The others looked at me hopefully. Ha, you see, I knew they liked my stories really.

‘When I was a young cat,’ I began.

We were exhausted, worried, sad and full of fear by the time the door opened and I was also hoarse from telling so many stories. I immediately knew I had to get someone to open that present, so I ran out to greet the humans. They tried to brush me off as they took their coats off and got Theo out of his pushchair but I persisted. I did everything I could, I yowled, I stood on feet, I scratched at them, but to no avail. They carried on ignoring me.

Thankfully Theo ran into the living room. He wouldn’t have been my first choice or my last actually, but then no one else seemed to be paying me any attention. I swished my tail, it seemed the youngest member of the family was our only hope. Theo loved the kittens and he stopped where they sat. I pushed the present toward him.

‘pwesent,’ he babbled and looked at it.

‘Meow,’ I said, open it. Holly pushed it toward him, and Tiger tried to help. Although Theo had chubby fingers, he really liked presents and had learnt to open them at his first Birthday party which was a few months ago, which was lucky for us. Thankfully after a few seconds of doubt, he set about pulling the paper off the box like a seasoned professional. It took him a while and he made quite a mess, as Holly helped him and Tiger encouraged him. George was rigid along with Hana.

Finally, the rest of the humans all came into the room, to see Theo about to finish unwrapping the gift.

‘Theo, no, naughty,’ his mum, Sylvie, said rushing over.

‘What a mess,’ Marcus, his dad added.

‘At least it’s not one of our children for once,’ Jonathan added. As everyone crowded into the living room and Sylvie frantically tried to stop Theo, Connie sat down next to him.

‘Meow,’ Theo said and pointed to the box.

‘Meow’ the box said loudly. The room fell quiet.

‘Oh mum, I think he’s trying to tell us something,’ she said, opening the box. Santa practically leapt out and into Connie’s arms.

‘Oh God, mum you wrapped Santa up,’ Connie said. Theo laughed as did the rest of the kids.

‘No,’ Sylvie said. She looked in the box where Santa had curled up on top of a scarf.

‘That was your Christmas present, Marcus,’ Sylvie said, laughing. ‘It was an expensive, pure wool scarf,’ she added.

‘Best Christmas present ever,’ Summer said.

‘What a scarf?’ Claire asked.

‘No, mummy, Santa,’ Summer said, and everyone laughed.

We all recovered, even Santa, who had been scared, but he had learnt a valuable lesson, I hoped. Do not sleep anywhere you fancy, even if the scarf was expensive. The adults could not believe that he’d fallen asleep on the scarf and how Sylvie had wrapped it without noticing. But as we retired that Christmas eve, all was well again and everyone was excited for the following day. If not all a little tired and stressed from all the trauma. But then, we should have been used to it by now.

My family grew all the time, both human and cat. We were the lucky ones, we had each other, which was a lot. But this year, as we waited for Christmas to arrive, I felt extra lucky. And so, dear readers of this story, from my heart to yours, I wish you a wonderful Christmas and a prosperous New Year. With love, from me; Alfie, my humans, my cat friends, Snowball, George and Hana, and of course my grandkittens, Holly, Santa and Tiger. And I look forward to seeing you all on the page next year.

AIFIE’S SPRING BREAK

As always the journey to Seabreeze Cottage was arduous. Not only was it a long drive but, as usual, made worse by Jonathan huffing and puffing – to put it politely – at other drivers who, apparently, couldn’t drive as well as him. He seemed to have a real thing against caravans as well. Also, the kids, Summer and Toby were in the back chanting; ‘are we nearly there,’ every few minutes, which even Claire couldn’t put a stop to. But the worse thing was that George and I were in our cat carrier, a tight space for the two of us, and he was in a terrible mood. I had barely heard a sound out of him on the journey. He lay down sulking and no amount of effort on my part could cheer him up. So, of course I was exhausted.