Caution: candles!

We don't know what it is but as soon as it gets a bit colder in fall we start seeing some white stuff falling from the skies. André and Sue call it snow. And as soon as that stuff turns up, things start to change in our house, too. André turns the heater on - which is really nice - and also puts candles up everywhere! Soon other items will follow and in a couple of weeks or so a big tree will stand in the living room. It will smell of freshly backed cookies and Sue will turn on those funny penguins singing a Christmas song with a snowman every so often. The whole house will look differently for a few weeks until everything goes back into boxes and disappears until the next year.

Now here is what we think of this phenomenon: we love the heater! It's a pellet stove so it has a real fire inside which looks very nice and also gives up this terrific heat. When it comes on we can lay in front of it bathing in the warm air coming out. Trapper sometimes even jumps on top of the stove and takes a nap right there. It's so cozy. The decorations are fine too. They look a little bit different each year and we don't know if that's because Sue can't remember how she did it the previous year or if she does that on purpose for us. You see, decorations have to be checked out and so we get to walk around the house and find things we can smell or even play with! This, of course, also goes for the ornaments on the tree. Lots of fun grabbing them and then trying to drag them away. We even tried to climb the tree to get to the stuff higher up a couple of times.

The singing penguins are more fun for Sue than for the song. Sure it looks funny when they shake their wings with the little bell attached to them but the real fun is in watching Sue when she waits for us to go after the bells. Which we don't do as long as she's around but only when she is looking the other way. It's like watching a kid waiting for Santa.

All this stuff is not in place just yet this year except for the candles. You see, André and Sue love candles and so there are a tone of them all over the place. They look fine and smell good but they are hazardous to cats! It is very tempting to go look what the thing at the very top is. The one that moves with every breeze of air. But no matter how careful we approach it, we can get in trouble when getting too close. This thing is hot!! It almost burned our noses when we tried to sniff it. André and Sue let us do that in hopes that we would stay away in the future. Learn our lesson, they said. But it's just too intriguing. And sometimes we don't even think about the candles when we move around. Like when Trapper jumped on the tea table and before anyone had a chance to react he felt this heat on his belly and something began to stink: he had jumped right over top of a wooden bar with several tea candles burning and stood there, front legs on one side, hind legs on the other. Or when Hunter sat on the same tea table, back to the candles and swishing his tail over the flames.

Bottom line is: candles are hazardous to cats (and dogs too we assume) so please keep an eye on them and your pet. We sometimes just forget and appreciate you're watching out for us.

We will keep you posted on the situation at our house as the season progresses. Until next week

hunter and trapper