Intruder at the Christmas Tree

My nephews are visiting and, as is our tradition, we are putting up our Christmas Tree this weekend. It took me about a half-hour to assemble it and about another half-hour to fix it so that it stood up straight in the base. My nephews and I then spent about another hour working on decorating it (with non-breakable ornaments only!)

We took a break for our Sunday dinner, leftover turkey and some turkey soup I just made, and the reading of "The Littlest Turkey." (I wanted to do this on Thanksgiving, but my nephews had to leave before I got to it.) We then returned to finish the tree only to find this waiting for us:
Nikki had once again decided to interject himself into a holiday activity. He hissed and swatted at us as we tried to shoo him away. Three of the ornaments visible here are hand-painted leftovers from my 2003 Christmas project for my friends at work: a gold-leaf ball that never dried, an "Escher sphere" reflecting an imaginary landscape of snow and trees and stars, and on the extreme left partially obscured by a gold bells ornament is the very ornament pictured here .