Author's Note: Filler. Filler filler dear golly filler.

still in post-Christmas nirvana. please don't hate me.

Character(s): Cat

Pairing(s): Cat and her Jitter Jatter

December 26th, 2011

"Haha, yay!" Cat watched her brand new Jitter Jatter bob back and forth as she sat cross legged in the middle of her living room. "Thank you for all my presents, Mom! I got everything I wanted!"

Cat's mother emerged from the kitchen and smiled at her daughter. "I'm just glad you had a good Christmas, sweetheart. Especially after the little… mishap with your brother."

Cat frowned and nodded. "Yeah, but that wasn't really his fault. Grandpa provoked him."

"I suppose." Mrs. Valentine grabbed her keys and started walking toward the door. "Your father's already out in the car. "Are you sure you don't want to visit your brother and grandfather in the hospital?"

Cat looked up at her mother and nodded. "Yeah. Grandpa says I creep him out."

"He's eighty seven, dear. Everything that moves creeps him out."

Oh yeah.

Before Cat's mother could take another step, she looked back down at her daughter and told her, "Oh, and since you're staying here, could you please try to do something about the post-Christmas mess?"

Cat, in a pile of ripped wrapping paper, tissue paper tossed this way and that, paper plates with small scraps of chips and dip left on them, quietly asked, "What mess?"

Mrs. Valentine shook her head, beginning to question having held her breath so much when she had been pregnant with Cat, and just silently walked out of the house.

"Bye, Mommy!" Cat happily waved, as if she hadn't even noticed her mother's dissatisfaction, and went back to playing with her Jitter Jatter. After a few seconds of dancing around and making its odd little chirps and squeaks, it suddenly jerked to a halt. "Jitter Jatter?" Cat tapped the bright pink toy. "Hello?"

Cat tapped it a little harder that time. Nothing.

"Poo. You must be out of batteries."

How could that darn stinkin' toy be out of juice already? She had just unwrapped it yesterday morning! That wasn't even twenty four hours ago!

I mean, she had played with it all morning. And all afternoon. And she hadn't even gotten much sleep. She had stayed up playing with… her new straightening iron.

But she quickly took a break so she could play with her Jitter Jatter for another two straight hours, while she had left the straightener on and almost set her shag rug on fire.

But that still wasn't much.

If it was, it would explain why her dad was waiting in the car to go to the hospital at five thirty in the morning.

Cat stood up to go into the kitchen to find some more batteries, but it was as if not being mesmerized by her brand new obsession made her see things for how they really were. And what she saw was a big, post-Christmas mess.

The debacle between her brother and grandfather didn't exactly help tidy things up around the house.

"I guess I should clean up." Cat frowned. "Phooey."

Wait! Cleaning didn't have to be a bad thing. It could be fun! If anyone could make something fun, it was Cat Valentine!

But even she couldn't make cleaning chizz up fun with her spunky nature alone. She'd need some help.

"To my room! Woosh!"

/ /

After heroically skipping up the stairs and into her sanctuary and orange and pink delight, she grabbed and slipped on what she needed and hopped back downstairs.

It was simple, since she had put on her Jupiter Boots.

Why had she put on her Jupiter Boots, you ask?

Bouncing made everything more fun!

"Boing, boing!" Cat bounced on over to a closet near the front door and pulled out a garbage bag. "Okay house, time to get cleaned!"

She hopped back into the living room and started to gather up a handful of paper. She stuffed it into her bag and repeated her actions. She kept hopping around and gathering up trash, but grew tired of the whole thing after a while. Too bad she wasn't even halfway done.

"Huff." Cat looked at the remaining mess and quietly muttered, "Even the Jupiter Boots don't make this fun."

There had to be an even easier way. One that didn't require so much… Well, work. She was still in the Christmas spirit and Christmas spirit made one very, very lazy when it came to household chores.

Seriously, she was pretty sure that they've done studies on that before.

But never fear, she had another idea!

"To my dad's garage! Boing, boing!"

/ /

Cat bounced back through the garage door, dragging her dad's shop vacuum along with her. "This has got to be powerful enough to suck all this stuff up!"

After plugging the industrial strength vacuum in, she flipped the switch and pointed the hose at a rather large pile of scrap papers. "Byyeee, Christmas wrappings!" The vacuum made a loud noise as it consumed the paper, but it only made Cat laugh more as she moved the hose to and fro, sucking up paper, ribbons, bows, gifts tags, crumpled up napkins and her brother's left sock.

Why did Cat find this so amusing? Even she questioned that.

Well, it was kind of like the garbage was disappearing into a black hole or it was being sucked into the belly of some rolling hose beast. That was kind of cool.

"Why don't more people clean up like this?" Cat asked herself over the loud sucking, beaming with joy by how much better the living room looked. "This isn't so bad! It's like a big, fun sucking game!"

And it just kept getting funner and funner… Until she accidentally moved the hose a little too far and caught the garland from the tree into it.

"Uh oh." Cat's eyes widened and she tried tugging it away. "Okay, the tree doesn't need to be cleaned, Mister Vacuum! No need to suck it up!"

However, that darn shop vac refused to listen and started ripping the shiny garland off the tree, along with the popcorn strand she had worked so hard on.

Vacuums are not very compliant devices.

As more and more came unraveled from the tree and knocked off several ornaments and just caused a frenzy, Cat squealed and tried her hardest to yank the hose away and stop the chaos, but Cat's efforts were unsuccessful.

That is, until she tried to hop away, but one of her Jupiter Boots snagged on the cord, tripping her and unplugging the vacuum.

Maybe there was a reason people didn't clean like that all the time.

After getting up, taking off her bouncy shoes, shoving the vacuum back into the garage and shuffling back into the living room, she took in all the broken glass, ripped off branches, and pieces of popcorn that the vacuum hadn't eaten up.

"I… I think that's clean enough."

A freakish chirp interrupted her, and she looked down at her Jitter Jatter, which was surprisingly unharmed. Its antenna bobbed back and forth and its eyes lit up, making Cat's eyes light up as well.

"Hey, your batteries aren't dead!" Cat kneeled back down and picked the child's plaything up. "You were just taking a nap!"

She could understand that. Her brother took naps a lot. Especially after he took his special medicine.

"Let's go play upstairs!" Cat bounced up the steps, and she didn't even need she Jupiter Boots to do so.

After she shut her bedroom door, the tree fell over completely.

What a great way for Mr. and Mrs. Valentine to be greeted when they walked into the house.