Calling all cat people. I have a problem. My daughters have a cat named Roxxy who keeps climbing our Christmas tree. She did this last year too. She gets all the way to the top, and she scratches at the lights. I think she’s trying to get the angel on top. She’s knocked over the tree once already, and I’m worried that she’s going to get her claws caught up in those lights and electrocute herself or start a fire. She jumps down if I shoo her, but I can’t watch her 24/7. I unplug the tree at bedtime, but we like to have it on in the evenings, and we can’t be in the living room every second.
Has anyone else had this problem and do they have any advice on how to discourage it. Roxxy is a really nice, well-behaved cat otherwise (well, except when she’s trying to eat my kids’ gerbils), but this tree climbing thing is starting to get kind of annoying.
I’m envisioning cutting out a large circle of cardboard, cutting a hole in the center the size of the trunk, and cutting it open from the center, then slipping it on the tree just above the bottom branches. I have no idea if it would work.
Get a skirt for the tree and spray anti-cat stuff on it. Or, if that doesn’t work, cover it with double-sided tape (most cats really do NOT like that stuff).
A big skirt. You should probably remove the double-sided tape before setting any presents under the tree.
Oh, and I haven’t tried this, but there are these cans you can get that, when they sense a cat, automatically go “Pfffft!” Cats hate that, too. Set it under the tree.
Lightly scrunched aluminum foil, if you don’t mind how it looks. Most cats refuse to walk on the stuff. Lay it out in a large enough radius to keep her away…
I was thinking put stuff through the middle the cat hates or something that blocks the middle, if it doesn’t climb the outside. You may need to stop the angel topper from lighting up, change it, of have no topper if it’s the reason the cat climbs the tree. Think how animals like playing with a moving circle of light while you move it around. Mom had a decoration with a sprig of weed the cat loved to chew on. The cat attacked it continuously until the weed was gone. She sprayed some pet be gone spray under the tree skirt every once in a while too so it wouldn’t use the tree as a rubbing post.
I have not tried this since I don’t currently have a cat, but I’ve been told that if you hang a lemon or two in the center of the tree, cats won’t go near it.
My mom ended up buying a lot of functional bell ornaments and hung them on the bottom third of the tree. I think it was partially to scare the cat, partially to warn her about what the cat was up to, so she could scold the cat while caught in the act.