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“It’s Christmas! It’s Christmas!” Ringo meowed happily.

“What’s Christmas?” I asked. “I’ve never heard of it before.”

“This will be your first one,” he replied. “It’s a time when everyone is scurrying around and the house takes on a whole new look!”

“What do you mean?” I said with an inquisitive mew.

“Well, A tree is put up in the living room and gets decorated. Then holly and lights are put on the mantel and a big wreath on the wall over it. Then…”

“What are you talking about. What are these things?” I interrupted.

“You know what, you just wait and see and ask me about the things you don’t know”, he responded impatiently.

“Oka-ay,” I said.

“There’s Miss M’lu, she’s going to the garage. Let’s follow her.”

Two men from Meadow Lake Maintenance were there waiting for her. She lowered the attic ladder and went up through the hole with one of them. As she directed, he started lowering things down to the other man.

“Wow!” I exclaimed, “what’s that thing coming down from the ceiling? What’s up there? What’s in all those boxes coming down?”

“Oh, look a tree! And another one! And deer, so many of them!”

“Whoa, slow down,” Ringo said. “So many questions!”

“Why so many things?” I continued.

“Well,” Ringo explained, “Miss M’lu likes to decorate outside, too. It’s not just inside. She puts the deer in the Bird Sanctuary, then lights on the trees and bushes and fences. She even lights up our Kitty Cabana!”

“Oooh, it must be pretty.”

“Yup, it is. But that’s not all. On the night the lights are turned on she has a huge Open House and a lot of the Residents and Employees come down to see everything. Then she has all kinds of good things to eat inside with mulled cider and egg nog, too.”

“Sounds like fun. I can hardly wait!” I squealed.

“Well, we can’t go. We’ll have to stay in her study and just watch though the window to see what’s happening. “

“Why not?” I moaned.

“‘Cause the doors will be constantly opened and she knows we’re not going to stay inside if we have the chance to run out.”

“Oh,” I sighed, disappointed.

“Hey Ingo, you didn’t tell me what is that thing coming down from the ceiling? And is there another house up there?”

“It’s a ladder that you pull down from the ceiling when you want to go upstairs. There’s just a huge room that goes over the whole house, right under the roof.”

“I guess you’ve been up there.”

“Lots of times. But there’s just a small area that has a floor on it which they use to store things that aren’t always used. The rest is just open beams with all this white fluffy stuff between them. You have to be careful when you walk on the beams so that you don’t fall into that white stuff.”

“Look, the men are leaving. Boy the garage is just loaded with things all over. Now I know why they left the two cars outside.”

“Let’s go back inside,” Ringo coaxed. “Nap time!”

All day I could hear Miss M’lu going in and out of the garage. She had closed the kitchen door so we couldn’t go out there.

“Well, I got all eight deer set up,” I heard her tell M’ster Doc. “One day down five more to go. Tomorrow I’ll get the garland, bows and lights on the privacy fence.”

The following day when she went into the garage I went with her. She went up into the attic and I wanted to follow her but I didn’t know how to climb a ladder.

She saw me down at the bottom when she descended.

“Oh little Nina, you look like you want to go up and explore.”

“Mew-yes! Yes!” I answered.

“Here, let me show you how.”

She picked me up and placed me on the first rung. Then she took my two front paws and placed them on the second rung.

“Now what?” I thought.

She picked up my bottom and placed it on the second rung with my front paws. I cringed there.

“Okay, now we do it all over again.”

She picked up my front paws and put them on the third rung. Then she picked up my bottom and moved it up.

“Oh no, I can’t do this! It’s too scary!” With that I jumped back down to the cement floor with a crash.

“Meouch!” I said as I bravely walked away. “That didn’t hurt at all…”

At that point Ringo walked into the garage, right by me and in the blink of an eye flew up the ladder. He turned around and looking down from the hole said to me, “Com’on, whimpy, you can do it!” he challenged.

“I’ll show you!” I retorted.

“Did you see that, Nina!” Miss M’lu said to me. “Let’s try it again.”

I walked to the ladder and we started all over again. She stayed behind me the whole time coaxing. By the time we got to the sixth rung I got the idea of what to do and put my paws on the next rung and then pushed my bottom up by myself.

“Good girl!” Miss M’lu encouraged. “Keep going.”

I happily made it all the rest of the way by myself with her watchfully coming up right behind me.

“Who’s the Wimp now?” I threw back at Ringo who was wandering off.

“Cool,” I thought as I looked around. “It’s huge up here. So many things to sniff and catalogue!”

I spent a lot of time up there exploring. I never left the flooring part.   Those beams and all the fluffy cloud-looking stuff seemed frightening. I didn’t want to go there.

In the meantime, both Ringo and Friendly kept running up and down the ladder and were walking the beams. It was dark out there but I could hear them. After awhile, they got bored and left. I was all alone.

“Now what?” I wondered. “How do I get down?”

After a long while I saw Miss M’lu down in the garage. She looked up and saw me looking down.

“Oh, Nina, you’re still up there!” she exclaimed. “I’ll bet you don’t know how to come down,” she guessed as she climbed up towards me.

“Here, put your two little from paws on the top rung,” she said as she stood before me. Then she gently pushed my bottom to the same rung with my paws.

I was nervous. It was a long way down.

“Good, now let’s do it again.”

Rung by rung she helped me down. When we got nearer to the bottom she stood up on the garage floor and left me on the ladder with four rungs to go.

“Come on, Nina” she called.

Tentatively, I lowered my two front paws to the next step and stayed there extended between the two rungs. Slowly, I moved my back paws to join my front ones.

“Good girl. Do it again.”

I did and then just jumped off the last two to the floor.

“What a big girl you are!” she praised me.

“Mew!” I beamed. “I can do it!”

I ran off to tell Ringo!

The next day the ladder was down again, but no one was in the garage. I walked over to it and looked up. The yawning hole was beckoning.

“There’s so much more to see up there,” I thought with a yearning for adventure. I looked around just to be sure no one was watching. “I’m going to try and if I mess up, no one will know.”

I put my two front paws on the first rung and the back ones followed. I went up one more step and it got so much easier as I got to the top.

“I did it!”

Just then I heard my name, “Nina, you’re up in the attic! What a smart kitty you are and fast learner!”

Miss M’lu came up the ladder and petted my head. I held it high. I was so proud. As she went up and down with Christmas lights and other things I wandered around.

Ringo soon came flying up.

“Why don’t you just walk up?” I asked him.

“It’s more fun to run up and then down, too,” he laughed. “Wait until you get your “stair-legs” and you’ll find out.”

Eventually, I got tired and wanted to go down, but wasn’t too sure when I saw how far away the floor looked.

“Ingo,” I called out. “Can you come here?”

“What?” he said as he jumped down from a beam.

“Can you help me go down?”

” Nothing to it. Just don’t look down to the floor. Concentrate only on each step. Watch me.”

He started down slowly, but he was so much bigger than me he just put one paw on each rung and sort of walked down, one paw after another.

I followed but had to put two paws on each rung first and follow with my back ones. I was doing a bunny hop on the stairs, but it worked!

“I did it!”

Miss M’lu just happened to come into the garage and saw me.

“Oh, Nina, you came down all by yourself!”

“Meow, with a little help from me, thank you,” Ringo admonished.

“Come on you two, this calls for a treat!”

As she was giving us our treats, Friendly came around the corner looking for some too, even though she had done nothing to earn them.

As the days progressed, I practiced on the ladder whenever I could and got to the point I was able to actually run up and down almost “quickly” for my size.

On the fifth day, when she was almost finished the outside decorating, Miss M’lu started taking the empty boxes back up to the attic to clear the garage so at least one of the cars could come in.

It was already dark outside when I did a final run upstairs that day. Miss M’lu was sweeping the garage. I’m not sure if she saw me. I knew she would be raising the ladder before supper so I started to do some serious exploring. I hopped on top of one of those shiny silver tubes and then jumped down to a beam and started walking slowly across. I made sure to avoid the fluffy white stuff. I was getting further away from the light and it was getting darker. Suddenly I came upon a black void in the fluffy white stuff.

“That’s strange,” I thought. Where’s the white stuff?” I leaned over to see if I could feel something. There had to be a floor because it was all dark. I extended my paw a little further to see if I could touch something, but there was nothing. Without warning I lost my balance and fell forward into that black hole and my small body plummeted down, down, down!

“Mewelp! Mewelp!” I screamed in a kitten voice as I fell…