Funny Christmas pet stories?

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

One year, when I was a kid, we made gingerbread cookies to hang on the tree. It was beautiful, until next morning. The dog had eaten all the cookies in the lower half of the tree, and vomited in several locations. It was rather gruesome, finding gingerbread vomit with raisins.

A few years ago, my female cat kept stealing a little miniature teddy bear ornament. She’d walk around the house carrying the bear, probably thinking that it was her kitten. So what I do is, I hide the bear the rest of the year, then let her take it again as long as the tree is up. She has never shown interest in any other ornament.

Got any stories?

2

A recurring one that wasn’t funny at the time, but seems a bit amusing in retrospect:

I grew up in a rural part of western Oregon, so we had real trees each year. We also had male dogs, who seemed to think “must mark tree” took priority over “don’t lift your leg inside”.

3

The guinea pig got under the tree and ate the wrapping off the presents, revealing a Greenaway coloring book.

Fortunately it was a Kate rather than Peter Greenaway coloring book.

4

The first year we had our border collie/cocker mix we wrapped some presents for him and put them under the tree - a bone filled with peanut butter, some treats, and a pig ear. He went right to them, of course. When we gave him a package to open, he went about it very methodically, putting a paw on the package and tearing the paper carefully with his teeth until he got it open, and then going for the box inside. He enjoyed this so much we let him open some of our packages which couldn’t be damaged if he got enthusiastic. He never would do it without permission.

Since his death our Golden has figured out how to do it also. I’m convinced he is hanging around like Obiwan teaching her how to do it, since she seems to be getting smarter as she ages.

5

Similar to yours. We also had a cat that adopted a teddy bear ornament. She carried that thing everywhere and slept with it. It eventually got pretty ratty, and when our housekeeper threw it away, I was really pissed.

Waayyyyy back in about 1971 I had a dog and a cat. My sister sent us Christmas stockings that she had made, and included one for each of the pets. Unfortunately, she didn’t tell us what she had put inside of them. It turns out that the cat’s stocking had a bag of catnip stuffed down into the toe, and there were some doggy treats in the other one. We came home the day after hanging them on the tree to find the tree lying on the floor. The dog had diarrhea from gorging on treats and 'nip, and the cat was stoned out of his mind (he hid under a piece of furniture for two days). Additionally, the dog had gnawed on the contents of some ripped open presents, including my new pipe and pipe stand.

6

My mom’s first Christmas as an adult outside of her parents’ house involved a real tree and a young terrier. She was shocked at how much water a real tree sucked up. Then she watched more carefully, and saw her pooch liked to have pine-infused water.

My parents also learned to not put the dog’s wrapped presents under the tree the night before, as of course our dog sniffed them out and opened/ate them early.

We also had cats who liked to climb the (by then, artificial) tree. Mom started putting the breakable ornaments up higher and buying working bell ornaments as a form of alarm system. She’d yell when she heard the tree jingling, and one or both cats would go shooting out from under it.

7

Our tiny little Dachshund gave us a good scare: we came home to find the tree on the floor with no Duchess in sight. We were terrified of what we might find when we picked up the tree. Nope, she was hiding under the couch! Never did figure out how the tree fell over.

8

My folks had a basset hound that would chew and swallow low hanging tree ornaments. I’m speaking about the old glass ones. Bits of sparkly stuff would show up in his turds.

Never did harm him, though. Weird.

9

One year back in the early 80s when Rumplemintz was sort of faddish my brother had brought his kitten along [I think Louie was about 9 months old at that point] and we were sitting on the floor opening presents, so our drinks were set on the floor next to us. I looked down to see Louie lapping up my schnapps. Shortly thereafter there was a drunken little kitty trying to walk around - he finally decided to take a nap. Then we had a kitty with a little kitty sized hangover.

Oddly enough, he didn’t develop a dislike for schnapps, you had to be very careful around him he would drink your drink every time. I miss that little alkie.

10

Years ago my aunt stashed a large present for my uncle at my house. It was a tool chest, so the box was pretty big. We had a cat at the time who liked to jump up on the box and sleep on it. Morris would come running into the room and take a flying leap up on the box.

Christmas Eve my aunt comes over to fetch the box and take it home with her. A little bit later Morris runs into the room to jump up on the box, only to realize in mid-leap that the box was no longer there. He did the feet scrambling in mid-air thing like a cartoon character would do, then dropped to the ground. He sat there for a minute with this look like “Nobody saw that, right?” then slunk off.

We also couldn’t have tinsel on the tree because of Morris and his tinsel-turds.

11

It could have been the raisins that made him vomit, as they are highly toxic for dogs.

12

Years back, our highly interactive cockatiel Cheerio “helped” me wrap Christmas presents. Parrots are attracted to bright colors, and he’d walk over cautiously, staring at the paper, then lean in and take small triangular nips out of the wrapping paper. But the part that should have been captured on video was when he’d grab the end of a spool of ribbon and then waddle rapidly away, as if he thought he was being bad, unspooling Christmas ribbon behind him as he escaped with his prize. He did that numerous times. he seemed immensely proud of himself to have gotten away with it.

It was way too cute for me to actually get mad about. ~:>

13

When Bernie cat was alive, you could easily tell which presents came from our house - they were the ones with chewed up bows. One year I put a huge bow on a present, it was at least 12" across. In the middle of the night I heard her howling, came out to see what was wrong - she got her head stuck in the bow. She also loved to “help” wrap presents, by stealing tape, ribbon, and (of course) bows.

Now we have Lucy, who thinks the tree water is the best water EVAH! A usually placid cat, she becomes a maniac for tree water. Last year we had to duct tape a plastic table cloth around the stand, safety pin the tree skirt closed, and taped it down to keep her out. She still managed to get in. This year we’re going fake just to make it easier on us.

And then there’s Dot. She of the “ooohh pretty shiny”. No ornament is safe from her. Like others, we keep the critter ornaments towards the bottom of the tree, but she has no issues with climbing the tree to bat down anything that sparkles.

14

Not really funny but my son wanted a Christmas rat because of some book he was reading with a white rat. We gave him the little rat which he loved and a few minutes later my english setter came in the house saw the rat and swallowed him in one bite. My son was only 3 so got over it pretty fast but he was very upset for a little while.

15

Moving from IMHO to MPSIMS.

16

Many years ago my mom had a cat–born a stray out in the country–who was dedicated to mousing. She would spend hours patiently sitting in front of the kitchen cabinets, awaiting her chance to pounce. Unfortunately, she had somehow missed a crucial step in her training, and had no idea what to do with the mouse once she had caught it. Now, by this I don’t mean she simply didn’t know how to kill it. I mean she really just wasn’t sure what should happen next, and it seemed to be a great source of puzzlement to her. “I know my mom told me something…but, what was it she said? Oh, why didn’t I pay attention that day?” My mom, meanwhile, had no desire to have dismembered prey all over the floor, so she took advantage of the cat’s confusion and would coax her into handing over the mouse, a bit spit-covered but generally unharmed. Mom would drop the mouse in a shoe box and race outside, where she would release it in the back yard, careful not to think about how it was probably heading straight back to the house.

After many years, the cat, who was a bit…guileless…came to realize that my Mom was going to trick her into giving up her mouse. She dealt with this by running from my mom, mouse dangling from her mouth. She always got a wild-eyed look at this point. “What do I do with it? What’s the next step? What do I do?!” So one day shortly before Christmas, I was sitting in mom’s living room and I heard the familiar, “No! No! Give it to me! Drop it!” The cat came racing in, carrying the mouse, dodging my mom, and trying frantically to remember the next step. My mom was right behind her, still calling, making lunges to try to reach the cat.

It was all too much for the cat. Somehow, in her attempts to escape my mom, she dropped the mouse. Right under the Christmas tree.

Everything came to a complete halt as the three of us watched the branches of the Christmas tree ripple from bottom to top, like some sort of invisible mechanized ornament had gone mad.

Mom, regaining her senses, exclaimed, “Grab the cat!”

I wasn’t sure why this was necessary at this time.

“Grab her! Before she decides to follow it up the tree!”

Fortunately, this possibility which hadn’t occurred to me, hadn’t occurred to the cat, either. Instead, after a brief ground search, she returned to the kitchen cabinets to resume her hunt there.

Epilogue #1: The mouse did eventually emerge, appearing along the top of the drapes. I placed him in Witness Relocation.

Epilogue #2: One day when the cat was very old, my Mom came home to find her sitting proudly beside a deceased mouse. The mouse had no obvious injuries, and we entertained the possibility that it had in fact died of natural causes, but we didn’t mention this to the cat, and instead praised her for having finally completed her life’s goal.

17

I brought my two Chows over to a friend’s house around Christmas one year. Both of them were wonderful dogs, very well behaved and housebroken. While we were talking, the male dog went over to the Christmas tree, sniffed around it, paused for a moment to think, then lifted his leg and peed on it. We all thought that it was both funny, and an understandable mistake on his part…

18

What a great story, sweetie pea. I do love a happy ending.

19

Christmas Eve, 1982. I had a 6 month old Gordon Setter puppy named Holly who was soooooo well behaved. Holly never did anything wrong in her entire lifetime.

Well, except for this one thing, Christmas Eve, 1982…

My family always did our gift giving on Christmas Eve, and then the tradition was to drive around looking at the lights. For some reason, that year the 'rents didn’t want to take any of the dogs along like we always did. Holly was always sooooo well behaved, we decided to not crate her, she’ll be good…

So, we drive around for a couple hours and come home, pulling into the drive way. And there, lying against our glass patio doors, is the Christmas tree. In shreds. Broken ornaments, tattered garland. Many of the ornaments were hand-made sculptures made of dough, of each of our pets painted and shellacked. These had been eaten. Every one of them.

And there sat Holly, grinning ear to ear.

It was her one act of rebellion in her entire life.

20

Well, there was the time we went from the Thanksgiving dinner table into the kitchen and found the family cat on the counter, shoulder-deep inside the turkey carcass. I’m sure the only words coursing through his tiny brain were “meat cave… meat cave… meat cave…”