I remember my Easter ornaments.  Not just ornaments that I bought, but ornaments that I MADE BY HAND.  From real Grade A large eggs whose insides I scrambled with a needle and then blew out through a small hole in the bottom, then painted a solid color, then painted pretty scenes upon. 

This was back in the day when I still was both Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny. I took my holiday duties seriously.  And part of getting into the Easter spirit one year involved painting real eggs and then attaching a loop of ribbon to the top with hot glue, so that they could be hung in a pretty little Easter tree in a charming terra cotta pot with a ribbon and bow motif.  I painted an egg with sheep grazing in a field.  An egg with a brown bunny and a basket of eggs.  An egg with a straw bonnet upon it.  And my personal piece de resistance, an egg with a mother duck (wearing a flowered bonnet) and four little ducklings (one each for my four kids).  I haven't looked in a while, but I think there's even one with a mallard duck wearing a tie with a briefcase.

The Easter tree and the hand-painted Easter eggs have sat, now, in a closet for six years, ever since I bought my youngest child a kitten to get through the rough spots of a divorce.  We actually picked up little Smokey the day before Easter Sunday, in fact. I believe we put the Easter eggs and the Easter tree away that same night.  Smokey now weighs eighteen pounds, and when you add a poufy coat that's about three inches deep, he looks like an ottoman with paws the size of small hams.  

These days he's joined by Meatball, my older son's cat, who is staying with me for the indefinite future as career plans sort themselves out.

Meatball has many entertaining personality traits, among them the ability to sound like a canary, a penchant for conversation, and the desire, apparently, to be a dog. He has the unerring gift for finding any unguarded morsel of food, whether human or animal, and as such, I think of him occasionally as a four-footed vacuum cleaner. 

I can no longer remember what it's like to go downstairs to do laundry in the utility room and not steel myself against the possiblity that a dead mouse might be on display for me at the foot of the stairs.  (And yes, I sometimes still scream like a chick in a horror film despite my best intentions.)  I no longer remember what it's like to walk into the laundry room and not have the small "crunch, crunch" of stray bits of kitty litter underfoot.

Before cats, I put tinsel on my Christmas tree, flowing streams of silver that gleamed and glimmered off the tiny colored lights and cast a soft glow in the living room when the lamps were turned off and the fireplace crackled with warmth. 

Before cats, I used to knit. I believe the words "cat" plus "ball of yarn" are self-explanatory.

Before cats, I left the butter on the kitchen counter to be at room temperature for making toast. Now I hide it in the oven.  A good idea on paper...but not if you forget it's there when you preheat the oven for something else.

I remember lighting candles on the dining room table to set the mood for a romantic dinner. That went by the wayside when, after adjourning to the living room to watch a movie by candlelight one evening, I spied Smokey atop the kitchen table, his nose in a vase of flowers...and his tail across a burning candle. His tail left char marks on the palm of my hand when I checked how close he'd come to being cat flambe.

Before cats, the phrase "herding cats" was just a joke, something funny in theory or in a Superbowl commercial. Now I get to see my border collie mix try to do it on a regular basis. The herd is not amused. I expect bloodshed one of these days.

Before cats, I had no idea that I could feel like a lion tamer in a circus, separating the cats and the dog by a kitchen gate for their morning treats, and watching the cats sail over the gate when I pointed to it, leaving the dog on the other side.

And before cats, I had no idea how aloof they...weren't. How much plaintive "conversation" (or accusation?) they would hurl at me after an absence of a couple of days as I walked in the door, despite their creature comforts of food and warmth and clean litter boxes and a radio tuned to soft rock being in abundance.  Or how their warm, boneless grace while snoozing in my lap in the evenings would seem like a tranquility zone I could do well to emulate.

I couldn't possibly put a pricetag on sitting next to a rolling purr that lasts a half hour.  Somehow keeping the Easter egg ornaments in the closet seems a small price to pay...