Cat Confidential!

Have you ever spent Christmas with your cats? It can be a very fun, interesting, and downright upsetting holiday. About twenty years ago, my husband and I moved into our new home in the Poconos with our three cats and one dog. We were excited about getting a fresh cut tree so tall it would fit a room with cathedral ceilings.

Not realizing just how much smaller Christmas trees look when they are outside, we purchased a beautiful 12-foot balsam fir that really did fill our living room. After buying lovely glass ornaments, bubble lights, and a stained glass star for the top, at the famous Christmas Factory , we decorated our first tree in our new home.

How Our Cats Changed that Christmas

Christmas with our cats was always fun, they loved to play with the wrapping paper, and the bows, and would always find a box to curl up in, while our dog looked on, a bit confused at the drama. I don't know if it was size of the tree, or the new found freedom our cats had in a large house, but this year our three cats decided that they did want to wait to play with the crumpled wrapping paper or bows, they wanted to play with the Christmas tree.

At first it started out innocently enough, the cats only took a few ornaments off the bottom of the tree. That was easy to fix, we moved the expensive ones to the top of the tree, and put the non-breakable ones near the bottom. When we saw our largest cat Augie sitting in the tree on the second row of branches, we thought it was cute. During the following few days when we heard them swinging the ornaments and occasionally getting one down, we still thought that was the extent of it, after all they are curious little critters, so let them enjoy. How wrong we were.

One day when while I was up in the loft, I heard the loudest, most frightful sound I ever heard before coming from right below me. It was a crashing, breaking, and scraping sound. Not really wanting to, but knowing that at some point I would need to look down the stairs, I peeked over the railing from the loft. There I could see that our beautiful Christmas tree was now laying half on the floor, with the other half on the new dining room table, and broken glass ornaments all over the place.

I was just in time to see a very frightened, fully puffed up tail, but otherwise unhurt Augie, running out from under the Christmas tree. Augie was our 22-pound cat that we thought looked so cute sitting on the branches of the tree only a few days before. I am guessing that he wanted to get a little higher and in doing so, toppled over the tree.

After making sure that Augie was unharmed, and cleaning up the mess, we stood the tree back up in its stand and found a new use for fishing line. We tied the tree to the railing on the stairs and to the balusters on the railing in the loft. We also removed most of the glass ornaments and replaced them with less expensive non-breakable ones. Our Christmas tree looked just as beautiful, the cats continued to play, Augie continued to climb, and our dog stayed far away from the entire thing. Christmas with your cats, what a wonderful experience for all.