Welcome to the third in our series of helpful hints for surviving the festive season. We have observed the usual crop of smarmy magazine articles on present wrapping and notice that they only cover the obvious, such as how to wrap a box of hankies or which stores will gift wrap a box of chocolates for you. In our opinion such advice is given by wimps to the lily livered. JaneLaverick.com is altogether more robust, with readers who are exponentially more individual and interesting. JaneLaverick.com does not shy away from the tricky stuff, oh no! Therefore with pride, joy, fairly correct spelling and researching it as we go, JaneLaverick.com is proud, joyful and finding out the hard way:
How to wrap a cat.
1) Before commencing, assemble everything you need on a large table. The items required are: sufficient wrapping paper (a 5m roll should do, unless the cat is particularly large, such as a tiger), sticky tape, child safe scissors, a roll of sparkly, self-curling ribbon, a gift tag or label. And the cat, of course. Silly me, I nearly forgot the cat then. Put the cat on the table next to the ribbon while you unroll the wrapping paper.
2) Unwind the shredded ribbon from the table legs, cutting where necessary to free it and bin it. Get a new roll of ribbon, hide it up your jumper till you need it and put the cat back on the table.
3) Spread the wrapping paper flat on the table inside up and place the cat on the middle of the paper.
4) With your right hand lift the right side of the paper over the cat’s head.
4) Bin the shredded paper. Place the new sheet of paper on the table and put the cat on top of it. Now with your left hand lift the left side of the paper over the cat’s head.
5) With the new sheet of paper flat on the table and the cat in the middle of it, using both arms, simultaneously gather all sides of the paper at once, very like that magazine article I read for wrapping a football and
6) When you have finished with the sticking plasters and your arms have mostly stopped bleeding, bin any paper that is left, entice the cat out from under the bed………. hang on, I’ve had an idea.
7) Remove the duvet from the bed. Spread wrapping paper on the bed. Say in a loud voice ‘I’m going to change the bed!’ and start to strip the cover off the duvet. The minute the cat jumps on the bed to help, drop the duvet and quickly wrap the cat in the paper.
8 ) When you come back from shopping for more sticking plasters, do step 7 again except this time wrap the cat in the duvet first, then when it’s finished purring and gone to sleep wrap the duvet, very gently, in wrapping paper. It will be necessary to give the cat before it wakes up, which might mean you end up doing all of this on Christmas morning, in fact you’ll have to, unless you have a spare duvet. Or, you could if someone gave you a duvet for Christmas, in which case, unwrap all your presents first, then when everyone is on to the sherry, put the sprouts on to cook and go into the bedroom, with the cat, the duvet and the wrapping paper.
Coming next week: 10 things to do with burned sprouts.
*Please note JaneLaverick.com doesn’t think you should give animals for Christmas and suspects many animals are not pre-disposed to ownership at all, especially cats. And, if you had a nice cat, why would you want to give it away?
*And don’t give a tiger. Better still, save the jungle and give it back to the tiger.