In the epic and century old battle between the desire to have a beautifully decorated treee and the housecat’s desire to destroy…I mean play with…the beautifully decorated ornaments, I thought it’d be interesting to start this thread again.
For those who have cats? How do you prevent Mr/Ms Kitty from making the Christmas tree his favourite toy? Is it possible to win a battle with a stubborn cat? If you have any ideas on how to do this please share.
I don’t have a cat now and we never really had the problem with cat when I had one when I was little. As long as the ornaments were not at the bottom she wasn’t tempted.
So in your opinion can a cat and christmas tree co-exist in peace
Also feel free to substitute dog or ferrett or parrot or gerbil, if you’ve had Christmas tree issues with them.
*(I know this because Saturday is the only day that she rests, and doesn’t wake me up at 5:30 in the morning. Also, if she just ate meat, she won’t steal cheese from my plate.)
Our three year old cat reverts to a three month old kitten under the tree, swatting at balls and tinsel so, if anything, we kinda encourage it. Pretty easy to just hang the fragile stuff a ways higher.
the superkitties at casa scubaqueen are in the same league as yours. while turk the magnificent is a little more refined about things since he’s older, my girl is your three-year-old and then some. :rolleyes:
what is it about the shiny swattables anyway… if 4 am kitty soccer matches under the tree aren’t enough, her royal self - otherwise known as ‘maggie the girl squirrel’ - is reknowned for her ability to climb my yucca plants as well as my LIVING ROOM WALLS. a christmas tree doesn’t even make her blink.
i came stumbling downstairs one saturday morning half-conscious and looking like an extra from ‘the walking dead,’ (“coffffeeee…” i rasped) only to have the utter living shite scared out of me when previously-mentioned ‘girl squirrel’ launched herself at me for her morning petting and snorgles from the **near top of the frickin’ christmas tree ** as i walked by. :eek:
somewhere in the past, someone suggested i wrap thick aluminum foil around the tree trunk. something about the stuff doesn’t feel good in kitty claws and was known to discourge feline climbing expeditions.
to my amazement, it actually did work on my little hoodlum and effectively put the kabosh on future outings up the tree.
OTOH, turk, pretty much only concerned with the shiny swattables, didn’t care one way or the other.
Last Christmas as I was leaving for work I opened the front door to get the paper and a bird nesting in the wreath on the door flew inside and went straight into the christmas tree. I figured the wife would find it later so I didn’t call or anything. Apparently she near stroked out when, hanging ornaments, that bird exploded out a foot from her head.
Nah, nothing quite so fun. We were always worried about the ferrets climbing the tree or gnawing on tinsel/light cords, so we mostly tried to keep them away from it. A big pet playpen did the trick there. Our few closely-supervised “check out the tree” times showed that yeah, they’d definitely start trouble if we didn’t watch them constantly.
Our rabbits have only been with us since February, so we’ll see what they think. Probably a lot of chewing will be involved.
Mom and Dad’s first Christmas as a married couple involved a live tree, and a new dog, a fox terrier. Mom was surprised at how much water a live tree used up, and how often she had to refill it. Of course, she eventually heard a loud lapping sound under the tree, and caught the dog partaking of pine-infused water straight from the tree stand.
For some reason, none of our cats have ever wanted to climb the tree and the lower level of ornaments are cat-safe so they can feel they got away with something.
You don’t. Sadly, we just ended up buying a bunch of generic ornaments last year, rather than put our regular ones on. It looks like we’ll be using the new ones again this year – we just can’t trust Annie.
(The other cats would bat at them, but Annie sees the tree as her own personal playground)
