Saturday's Storyteller: "And that's when I noticed, deep within the fragrant branches of the bedecked fir, pair after pair of tiny eyes glinting back at me."

by Belinda Roddie

And that's when I noticed, deep within the fragrant branches of the bedecked fir, pair after pair of tiny eyes glinting back at me. For anyone else, that could have been the beginning of a holiday horror film - perhaps evil gremlins had been feasting on the needles and were ready to pounce, or malicious spirits sent by Krampus himself had begun to swarm around the lights and ornaments. Amber, yellow, green, and even blue glinted from these perhaps disembodied eyes, and despite the glow of the hearth and the glinting of the tinsel, from a distance, you couldn't tell what they were.

Of course, I knew better. I laughed, and I stood up from where I had been nursing a glass of butterscotch schnapps and listening to Vince Guaraldi's Charlie Brown Christmas album. My feet gave off little heat as each toe skipped off the wooden floor, and once I got to my tree, I shook it a bit, smiling as I heard the skittering and the whining.

"That's right, you three," I snickered. "Enough playing Christmas ninjas."

My two tabbies, Simon and Elroy, and my Bengal, Basquiat, all sulked around the corner, having been dislodged from their hiding spots. There was a reason I hung all the soft, unbreakable ornaments at the bottom of the tree and the more fragile ones toward the top - my gang of felines couldn't get enough of the "present" I put up every year. It was just for them, obviously, and they were of course mildly annoyed at my insistence that they act like it was for me and my family instead.

Basquiat, named after one of my favorite artists, settled on the warm spot where I had been sitting on the couch, the tree lights reflecting off their painted and spotted bodies. Simon and Elroy, on the other hand, tottled off to their food bowls, brothers to the end. I decided to sit next to Basquiat, and he mewed quietly as I stroked him on the softest spot behind his ears.

"You're lucky Mom wasn't there for that," I cooed. "Otherwise, she'd be throwing out my tree for being plagued by ghosts."

My mom was supposed to be in town on Monday. She wanted to finalize presents first, especially for my wife, who was out of the hospital for the first time in two months.

This week's prompt was provided by Diana Heideman.