They Ate My Christmas Tree!

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

I have cats.

Cats love Christmas trees. Bunny likes to eat the tinsel, though I can’t imagine why; how good could it taste?

Buffy, on the other hand, thinks trees are for climbing, and can’t imagine why we keep whacking him when he tries to climb this one.

Callie likes to hide among the presents at the bottom. This, unfortunately, makes her the primary suspect when bows are found, chewed into unrecognizability and not always actually pulled off the gift beforehand.

Dax is afraid of the thing. Trees indoors are plainly one of those Things That Should Not Be, according to her philosophy, and she won’t go near the thing.

…and Triste ignores the tree. You, there! Pet me! Got any tuna?

I have a chum who has large dogs, a thing I have never understood unless you’re a farmer, a law enforcement agent, or you’re really into home protection, or in charge of hunting down convicts or something.

My chum is none of these. He has two large dogs, both of which are abysmally disciplined, trusting and friendly towards all humans, and pretty much entirely useless for anything except great slobbery kisses and converting twenty pounds of kibble into lawn decorations overnight.

My chum and his dear wife do not do Christmas trees. They’ve tried several times, over the years; they have two lovely little girls who would, no doubt, be enthralled by the beauty and the magic of a proper Christmas tree…

…but they don’t do Christmas trees. My chum has, like, six different stories from six different years about how those damn dogs have destroyed the Christmas tree, starting with the one in 1997 when a three-month-old puppy big enough to bite your kneecaps off decided that the tree was evil and had to be destroyed and attacked it, right there in front of God and everyone…

…to the time his wife ducked out for fifteen minutes in 2001. The dogs hadn’t so much as looked at the tree. The tree had been up for weeks. The dogs hadn’t played with it, hadn’t touched it, hadn’t laid under it, hadn’t peed on it, hadn’t chewed on it. The dogs were completely oblivious to the tree.

Until Mommy left. In that fifteen minute time frame, the dogs had trampled the presents, ripped the tree into shreds, dragged it all over four separate rooms, strewing shattered ornaments and still-plugged-in-blinky-Christmas-tree-lights across Hell and half of Georgia… and were sitting on the remnants of it, tongues lolling, apparently completely unaware that they had been bad dogs, when their appalled Mommy strolled back in a quarter-hour later with the kids…

Are there any good Pet And Christmas Tree stories out there?

2

We were visiting one of my sisters a couple years ago and her cats liked to hide in the tree. I wish I had a video camera back then, ABC or Animal Planet might have given me a bit of money for the tape.

3

Our cats each have their own reactions to “the big, forbidden houseplant” too.

Stella thinks looking at or being near the tree is an afront to her dignity. She spends the first two days stalking haughtily past it-shooting it dirty looks- then moves on to the “That is NOT there” stage.

Samantha believes that the tree is interesting, but terribly dangerous. She walks up to it, staying very low to the ground, sniffs it gingerly, then BOLTS. I can’t imagine what she thinks it will actually do.

Zoe is under the impression that the Christmas tree is a cat toy bearing plant, put there just for him. He spends every day from November 28th until January 2nd happily plucking ornaments and garland from it, then looking baffled when we object. When we go out, we are sure to come home to find at least one broken bulb. Should we catch him in the act, he gets this “look,” like “WTF? Aren’t these mine?” Zoe isn’t all that swift.

We love them all. :smiley:

4

My cats ignore it except that they can hide under it and kamikaze ankles. And Momma cant reach them under there!

However I remember one time in my late teens or early 20s I felt a whoosh of air go past, turned to see what to was just in time to see my parents tree come tumbling down complete with a very startled cat clinging to the top.

And Mom had a pic of her adorable one year old kitten (me) gazing up at the tree from her walker… just moment before pulling it over on herself. Yep that one has always been trouble.:smiley:

5

This sentence scares me.

I too have a cat named Buffy who climbs Christmas trees. Only difference is that my Buffy is female. Your Buffy wouldn’t happen t be an orange tabby, would he? Because that would be freakier than all get out!

6

Grr I fear that as long as I have dogs in the house, I shall never be able to put up a Christmas tree again. Or cats for that matter. My male dog chases the cat, the cat runs up the tree, my male dog tries to run up the tree after the cat…sigh

Had I known these things happen, I would have never gotten the animals. So for the past tow years, we put the tree up, but haven’t decorated it. This year thought I’m determined. We bought some wood and some screen you can buy rolled up. We are trying to make a contraption out of it. Something that can be folded up when we come home. Something tall enough for my 45 lb dog. I am not giving up this year.

So no, no good tree stories from me.

7

Never in my entire life have I had a speck of trouble with my critters and the Christmas tree, other than a really stupid dog who kept forgetting the tree was there and barking at it. Oh, and a kitten who liked to lie on her back, batting at low-hanging ornaments.

8

My family had one cat that spent its first Christmas running up and down the tree. My parents said it was up and down the tree so fast they didn’t have time to react. However, the only damage to the tree that year came from me (I was 2). My parents had hung some foil-wrapped chocolate ornaments on the tree, and one was just a little bit out of my reach. Not only did I pull the tree over, I broke my mom’s favourite ornament.

Subsequent cats, as well as that first cat once it grew out of crazy kitten mode, have more or less ignored Christmas trees except to sleep underneath them and occasionally bat at low-hanging ornaments or ribbons on presents.

9

Guinastasia: Buffy is a longhaired orange tom, only tom currently in the house, excepting yours truly. He is not named for the TV series, but based on my rules about cats.

Y’see, once you FEED a cat… and give the cat a NAME… it’s your cat.

Buffy integrated himself into the herd one day, and wandered in with everyone else, you see. My wife still marvels about how the other cats didn’t growl or hiss or even really seem to notice him. He was one of the gang from day one… except that my wife blocked him from entering with one foot, remarking “Who are you?”

He looked up as if to say, “Well, you called “kitty kitty.” I’m a kitty,” and began trying to climb over her foot to get in.

She wouldn’t let him in, of course. Not OUR cat. But remarkably laid-back and… domesticated. Rather than leaving, he simply hung out on our porch all day. Finally, my wife began leaving food out there for him. “I’m not going to let him starve,” she said.

“A cat won’t starve to death, honey,” I said. “A cat will move on, looking for food. Unless you put some out there for him. Then he’ll decide this is home.”

But who listens to ME around here? “Don’t give the cat a name,” I said. “When you give the cat a name, you’re attached. You might as well invite him in, then.”

So the cat became “that buff-colored cat.”

The day my wife and daughter began calling him “Buffy,” I knew we had another &%$# cat…

Took two Christmases to break Buffy of the habit of climbing Christmas trees. He wasn’t a tinsel eater, he wasn’t an ornament batter… but Buffy likes high places. He saw no reason at all why he shouldn’t trot under the tree to the trunk and begin insinuating his way, branch by branch, to a comfortable spot at the top, the better to survey his domain.

Three times, the weight of ten pounds of tomcat at the top of that damn tree caused it to topple. You’d think a cat would learn. Not Buffy, though. Stubborn. I mean, if it ever gets into his head that cats could theoretically fly, he’d be the cat to do it, out of sheer iron stubborn perseverance.

Finally began tying the tree to a wall hook, driven into the ceiling and secured with a length of monofilament. And swatting the damn cat, whenever we caught him lurking around the tree…

10

Tee likes to lounge in the branches. We have an artificial tree and there is a section that has been permanently bent into a shape remarkably like a hammock now. The first year we had him, I heard ornaments a-jingle and went to investigate. I found him in the tree, and banished him to the basement for the night. The next morning I opened the door, he streaked out, ran up the tree, knocked the star off the top and streaked back down into the basement. Don’t tell ME he didn’t know what had gotten him banished! After that, I just gave up. So now the bottom section of the tree is a hammock, and I just live with it.

Tasha, who we fear is insane, likes to nibble on the lights. She has gotten shocked and she has bitten glass, but this did not stop her. Last year we finally got lights that have larger plastic covers (they look like old-fashioned C7 lights, but they’re just lightbulb shaped covers for the mini-lights) and that at least slowed her down a bit.

Cara hides under the tree and growls at the dog, Gracie. This causes Gracie to drop to her chest in puppy mode and bark, tail wagging furiously. The only way to solve this is to shoo Cara out from under the tree, an operation that requires a broom (or a roll of wrapping paper used as a stick) and someone to hold the dog, and involves lots of hissing and growling on Cara’s part. Then the action stops for a bit while Cara sulks in the basement, to be repeated twice daily until the tree comes down in early January.

11

The only problem we ever had with our cats and Christmas trees was resolved by not hanging breakable ornaments on the lower branches and periodically rehanging the ones that mysteriously kept “falling” off the tree and “rolling” across the room.

On the other hand, some friends of ours had an interesting experience. They had recently acquired a cat, Timmy. When they first put up their tree Timmy decided to try to climb it and knocked it down. They set it back up, and almost immediately it got knocked down again. Well, as it turned out, Timmy was due for a trip to the vet to be neutered, so they decided to take him in that day, to give them a chance to get the tree up and decorated without further interference. When they brough him back from the vet, my friend swears that Timmy stepped out the carrier, looked at the tree, shuddered, and ran into the other room. He never went near the tree again. They think he was afraid of what else they’d cut off.

12

This’ll be our first year with the cat at home for Christmas. We shall see how he deals with it. I may or may not have stories in a few weeks.

13

My Basset Hound sleeps under the tree and drinks out of the tree stand. He also eats the tinsel, but I think this is just by accident…he might be lapping it up with the water.

We’ve gotten to putting the bell ornaments on the bottom branches so we know when he’s under there.

14

How do you know your cats and dogs eat the tinsel? Does it come out all shiny in their poo? How festive!!! I wonder if there’s such a thing as green and red tinsel…that would be extra christmasy.

>sings< Mr. Hanky, the Christmas poo! He loves me, I love you…

15

Yes.
Yes, it does.

16

BuckleberryFerry, my Bassett does the same thing. We didn’t realize she was doing this until the tree started to dry out and turn brown because she was drinking all its water. So I cut out a piece of old window screen and fastened it to the tree stand with clamps so she couldn’t get in there. This made her Deeply Unhappy- for days after I put the screen on, she’d do the Basset Slink under the tree, find the screen, back out of there, and then start howling. She loved the tree water too much.

17

Oh dear god, don’t tell me you people put those *@#@@ icicles on your trees when you have pets! You should NEVER, ever leave things like that where an animal can get at them. Linear foreign bodies have a nasty tendency to pass unevenly, causing the intestines to bunch up. Then the pressure and tension causes the tinsel (or thread or yarn or rope or mop) to start slicing up the intestine. The animal starts bleeding into its belly, and sometimes not even immediate surgical intervention can save them.

Please, please, if you want to have tinsel on your tree, use the garland instead. The icicles aren’t worth the time, the money, the aggravation, or the loss of your little friend.

18

We didn’t, CCL. We used the garland. Damn cat chewed it OFF the garland…

Well, at least we didn’t have the “bunched intestine” problem you discussed. But it did give Bunny’s li’l turdies an interesting sparkling gold effect…

19

Not my own story, but pretty great: I once visited friends who were iguana-sitting for other friends. Their tree looked kind of beaten up, but since it also had planet ornaments and a Frankenstein head at the top, I figured it was just their taste in trees–you know, pity the poor unwanted tree kind of thing. While we were there, this four-foot iguana walked into the room and climbed up into the Christmas tree, winding itself around the trunk and hiding its head near the top. Needles and twigs rained down. They said it was his favorite perch. It was one of the most hysterical things I’d ever seen.

20

Then maybe you should switch over to wide ribbon or the bead-type garland. Those tend not to be so tempting to tear up and chew to pieces.