Eating Christmas

A couple weeks ago I hooked up with a blog reader (Hi Jon!) for a donated little Christmas tree. At four feet tall, it is a perfect addition to our living room. I have another little tree coming from my holiday posse in Michigan (Hi Lu!) which will go in our dining room. Two small trees equals Christmas, right?

The little tree in the living room is covered with red and white lights which match our new paint job with an appallingly Martha Stewartesque charm. After the Great Purge, I saved about ten tree ornaments, all of which have something to do with the kids: Baby's First Christmas, handmade ornaments from preschool, et cetera. In other words, the little tree is a concentrated bolus of holiday cheer.

The concern with such a small tree and two very active dogs was of course, canine holiday annihilation.

Thing is? The dogs are supremely unconcerned.

Thing is? It has become a feline jungle gym.

I remember when I was a kid and we had a tall tree and one of our cats decided to climb it. It was at least possible to extract the cat from the branches with relatively little harm. In this instance though, the cat is fat and the tree is small.

It started with ornament hide and seek. The first few days of having the tree up resulted in finding ornaments in strange places, behind the sofa, under the table. I'd walk into the living room to find the knitted Santa that I made years ago lying splayed on the floor like a victim on "Christmas CSI".

The thing is, I'd never catch him at it. I would be upstairs and I'd hear ornaments being battered around but the second I came downstairs, he would vanish.

Cats are like Baptists. They raise hell but you can never catch them at it.

But yesterday morning was a little different. I came downstairs to discover the entire tree on its side with the ornaments all over the living room and the cat lying directly on the tree in an intoxicated state of misbehaving bliss.

He looked up at me and meowed happily. He was very proud of his achievement, why, he had even eaten a glittered pine cone that was probably fifteen years old! Delicious!

I figure it will at least make cleaning the litter box interesting in the next couple of days.