The Christmas Ham Incident
Tiger had been planning this since Thanksgiving.
Thanksgiving had been a disaster — tactically speaking. Mom’s turkey had come out of the oven golden and perfect, and Tiger’s hastily improvised grab-and-dash had been thwarted by the simple fact that a fourteen-pound turkey was approximately three pounds heavier than Tiger himself. He’d managed to get one paw on the counter before Dad scooped him off with a “nice try, buddy” that Tiger found deeply patronizing.
Gunner, meanwhile, had positioned himself under the Thanksgiving table and caught approximately eleven dropped items, including a roll, two green beans, a piece of turkey that the youngest “accidentally” dropped, and something that may or may not have been a pat of butter that had launched off the middle boy’s plate during an enthusiastic reenactment of something he’d seen on a nature documentary.
But Christmas was different. Christmas had ham.
Tiger could smell it from the moment Mom brought it home from the store — that dense, smoky, salty promise wrapped in plastic and tucked into the bottom shelf of the refrigerator where Tiger could not reach it. He’d opened the fridge twice (cats can open refrigerators, a fact that Mom discovered to her horror in the first house and had been battling ever since) but the ham was too heavy and too well-wrapped for a solo operation.
This required a team.
This required Gunner.
Christmas Eve, 4 PM. The ham went into the oven. The kitchen filled with a smell so magnificent that Gunner, who had been napping in the living room, woke up, walked to the kitchen, and sat down in the doorway with the expression of a pilgrim who has just sighted the promised land.
“No,” Mom said, not looking up from her potatoes.
Gunner didn’t move. He sat there, nose elevated, nostrils working, absorbing the ham scent like a devotional practice.
Tiger was on the kitchen counter. Mom moved him. He returned. Mom moved him again. He returned again. This cycle had been happening for approximately six years across multiple homes and states, and neither participant showed any sign of altering their approach.
“Tiger, off the counter.”
Tiger looked at her. The look said: We both know how this ends.
Mom sighed and went back to the potatoes.
The boys were decorating. The oldest was stringing lights with the methodical precision of an electrician. The middle one was arranging ornaments by color and theme, because even Christmas had to be organized correctly. The youngest was wearing a Santa hat backward and putting candy canes on the tree at a rate that suggested he was eating half of them.
Dad was in the living room, allegedly supervising, actually watching the boys with the quiet contentment of a man whose family was together and whose house smelled like ham and whose dog was sitting in the kitchen doorway crying softly about how far away the ham was.
“It’s six feet away, Gunner,” Dad said.
Six feet might as well have been six miles. The ham was in the oven and the oven was closed and the only way in was through Mom, and Mom was an impenetrable defense.
Tiger understood this. That’s why the plan was not about the oven.
The plan was about what happened after the oven.
The ham came out at 6:30 PM. It was enormous — a ten-pound, honey-glazed masterpiece that Mom set on the counter on a cutting board to rest before carving. The kitchen was warm and golden and smelled like everything good about Christmas.
“Don’t touch it,” Mom told the room. “It needs to rest.”
“How long?” the youngest asked.
“Fifteen minutes.”
“That’s SO LONG.”
“You’ll survive.”
Mom left the kitchen to set the dining room table. Dad went to help. The boys scattered to wash hands, change out of pajamas (the youngest had never changed into regular clothes, and at this point, 6:30 PM, it seemed like a lost cause).
The kitchen was empty.
Tiger’s ears rotated. His eyes fixed on the ham. His body lowered into a crouch.
This was the window. The fifteen-minute window. The gap between defense and dinner.
Tiger jumped from the counter to the cutting board in a single, silent leap. He landed next to the ham — huge, hot, glistening, the size of Tiger’s entire body. The heat radiating from it was intense, but Tiger was not deterred by heat. Tiger was not deterred by anything.
He placed both front paws on the ham and pushed.
The ham did not move. Ten pounds of meat on a cutting board was not going to be relocated by eleven pounds of cat through pushing alone.
Tiger reassessed. He needed leverage. He needed the cutting board to slide.
He moved behind the cutting board and pushed the board itself. It slid an inch on the counter. Then another inch. Then —
He needed muscle. He needed the idiot.
Tiger looked at Gunner, who was still sitting in the doorway, monitoring the ham situation with the laser focus of a dog who had not eaten in approximately forty-five minutes and considered this a medical emergency.
Tiger meowed. Not the demanding meow he used for milk. Not the annoyed meow he used when the boys picked him up wrong. This was the operational meow. The one he used when he needed Gunner’s cooperation, which he had used exactly four times in their entire relationship and which Gunner recognized instinctively.
Gunner stood up. His tail wagged. Tiger was talking to him. Tiger wanted something. This was important.
Tiger looked at the ham. Looked at Gunner. Looked at the ham. Looked at Gunner.
Gunner understood. Or at least, Gunner understood the part that involved ham being closer to the floor, which was where Gunner could reach it. The specifics of the plan were irrelevant. The ham was the point.
He trotted to the counter. He was tall enough that his nose could reach the edge. Tiger, on the counter, pushed the cutting board toward the edge. Gunner’s nose pushed from below, tipping it.
The ham slid. The cutting board slid. They were working together — cat on top, dog on bottom — a synchronized ham extraction that would have been impressive if it weren’t so deeply wrong.
The cutting board reached the edge of the counter. The ham teetered.
Gunner opened his mouth.
“WHAT ARE YOU—”
Mom. In the doorway. Having returned for the carving knife.
The scene she witnessed would be discussed at every family Christmas for the rest of recorded history: Tiger on the counter, both paws on the cutting board, pushing the ham toward the edge with calculated intent. Gunner below, mouth open, positioned to catch a ten-pound projectile ham like a ninety-pound catcher’s mitt.
The ham was approximately two inches from going over the edge.
Mom’s voice hit a frequency that only dogs and cats and boys who know they’re in trouble can hear. The boys came running. Dad came running. The youngest still in his Santa hat.
“GRAB THE HAM!” Mom shouted.
Dad grabbed the ham. The cutting board clattered. Tiger jumped off the counter and hit the floor running, a gray-brown streak disappearing around the corner.
Gunner sat down. He looked at Mom. He deployed the face.
The face. The one Labradors have perfected over centuries of selective breeding. The one that said: I am sorry. I am so, so sorry. I have done a bad thing and I know it and I am the worst dog in the world and I do not deserve your love but please give it to me anyway because I am very sad and also hungry.
His ears drooped. His eyes went wide and wet. His tail tucked. He looked like a greeting card for repentance.
Mom stared at him.
Dad held the ham.
The boys were doubled over laughing.
“That cat,” Mom said, pointing in the direction Tiger had fled, “planned this.”
“Tiger?” Dad said. “He’s a cat.”
“He PUSHED the ham. I saw it. He was pushing it toward Gunner.”
“That seems… advanced.”
“That cat is a criminal.”
From somewhere in the living room, Tiger’s purr was faintly audible. It was the purr of a cat who had been caught and did not care.
Dinner was served at 7 PM. The ham — intact, un-stolen, only slightly paw-printed — took center stage. Mom carved it with the vigor of a woman who had successfully defended Christmas dinner from a home invasion.
Under the table, Gunner waited. His guilt had lasted approximately four minutes before resetting to his default state: hope. Hope that food would fall. Hope that someone would slip him a piece. Hope that the universe, despite all evidence, was fundamentally good and that goodness manifested as ham.
The youngest, because the youngest had been raised in a family where animals were people and people were chaos, held a piece of ham under the table. Gunner took it gently — so gently — from the boy’s fingers.
Mom saw.
“I saw that.”
“Saw what?” the youngest said, with the poker face of a child who had three older role models in deception (two brothers and a cat).
Mom let it go. It was Christmas.
Tiger appeared at the edge of the dining room. He didn’t approach the table. He sat in the doorway, upright, eyes on Mom, with the posture of a defendant who has been acquitted on a technicality and wants you to know he feels no remorse.
“Unbelievable,” Mom said.
Dad slipped Tiger a piece of ham. Mom pretended not to see.
It was Christmas. The fire was going. The tree was lit. The boys were fed and happy and together. And somewhere under the table, a dog and a cat were sharing the spoils of a heist that had failed in execution but succeeded in spirit.
Gunner’s face said sorry.
Tiger’s face said he’d try again next year.
Both faces were covered in ham.