My daughter loves to decorate. Me, well, although I appreciate a well-coiffed space, I think all the moving growing up molded me into the don't care too much about the frou frou creature that I am now.
I do love a reason to celebrate though. So, right after Thanksgiving when my kiddo came stomping into the house with our Christmas tree and all its accoutrements, I definitely cracked an anticipatory smile.
Every year, for the entire month that the Christmas tree adorns our living room, I know there will be stealth incursions, all out shock and awe attacks, and the occasional entire tree nuking incidents.
Because I have pets.
For example. Many, many Christmases ago, I found this really cool tree on the side of the highway. My step son, who is three years younger than me, gave me his trademark doofy grin and bailed out of the truck to retrieve the forlorn evergreen. It was a Charlie Brown Christmas tree on steroids. What I mean is that it had about the same amount of foliage (as lush as Bezo's hair) and was mounted on an x of dimensional lumber. It was love at first truck leaping.
We did that sparse little tree proud. It was a little over 6 feet in height and we loaded its limited branches with lights, tinsel, and glass ornaments my grandma found out in her fruit room. They were the most glorious 1960's creations, in shapes that Jefferson Airplane probably wrote a song about.
Now, at the time, we only had one cat, Harvey, a Bengal striped creature of an IQ the equivalent to turnips. I knew the tree was safe from him because he would sit for hours and stare at the light flashing in one of the metallic glass bulbs.
I should have known, however, that Boss Hog was a danger.
Boss Hog was our Boxer cross puppy. A fawn colored mammoth of a dog, who looked boxer in all ways except his nose was not smashed. He turned into the greatest dog of all time, a true GOAT. The dude could hold an entire basketball in his mouth and jump a six foot fence all day long while fetching said basketball. A finer athlete I have yet to witness.
But back to our tree story. We left home to run to town for something, and Boss, Boomer (our Australian Kelpie) and Harvey were holding down the fort. Boss was a year old and had never offered to chew on anything, I mean the dog was an anomaly as far as young dogs were concerned.
Like, all that remained was the cross piece of wood that the tree had been mounted too. And when I say gone, I mean vanished. There wasn't a branch, piece of tinsel, or glass bulb to be found. To this day I believe he ate it, a premise that I will prove with evidence in a later Boss Hog post, as the dog had superpowers of digestion.
A few years later, after many standard cat tree attacks, an incident occurred that still makes me chuckle every time I or my kids put up the tree. We have a fake tree. If I want a real one I can walk out the back door and hack one down, but why wreck the future fence posts or firewood? I go cut cedar and white fir boughs for the tree smell, and the fake tree solved the animals eating it problem. For a while anyway.
Well, the hubs wanted a lighted, spinning tree, so one year he came home with one after Christmas because they were like 70% off or something. The following year when we put it up, I gave him props because it was rather pretty and super high class. That tree made me feel super fancy.
We had a cat named Squeakers at the time, a massive grey tabby who talked more than a political commentator. He had a fondness for the tree that bordered on obsession. I had a Super Soaker 2000 that I used as a Squeakers tree deterrent, but one morning the cat did something that still has me laughing.
I walked out to start the wood stove and noticed it was really rather silent. Well, except for the engine that spun the tree sounded like it was, laboring. I noticed that Squeakers wasn't around, which was kinda odd, as he tended to be messing with the tree. Upon closer inspection I found him.
The cat was laying on the branches in the middle of the tree, riding it like a loaf of bread on a carousel horse. He was just sitting in the tree, purring. He also did not come out of the tree for hours at a time. I didn't have the heart to spray him if he was just sitting there joy riding. I mean, I kinda wanted to join him.
A couple of days ago my daughter put up the tree, my mom helped her. It was a very pleasant domestic scene of celebratory togetherness. We have a couple of six month old kittens that live in the house with us, Baby Yaga and Teela. They are very unique pair of sisters. I figured that as rambunctious as they both are, the tree would be in peril as soon as it was erected.
However, for the first few days nothing happened. I figured I had struck the cat lottery and was finally going to get to enjoy the tree without fighting for the right too. Did you know that I am an floof-brained idiot sometimes?
Last night as I was playing around with Dcrops, I heard the rustling of a tree being toyed with. I stomped out to the living room and saw Yaga and Teela tag teaming the dang tree. Teela already had a strand of tinsel in her mischevious maw, and Yaga had her crazy eyes on. Destruction was imminent.
Luckily, I have bottles of lavender hydrosol we distilled this summer lying pretty much everywhere around the house. I sprayed those two terrorist felines back into compliant Zen faster than you can say mom glee.
However, I knew by the look of murderous glee in Yaga's luminous yellow eyes that a revenge op is being planned. So far she hasn't struck yet, but I know its a matter of time.
But I suppose that's part of the spirit of Christmas, right? Engaging in a battle of wills with those you love?...um, sure...
And as most of the time, all of the images in this post were taken on the author's evidence gathering and probably going to be swatted into the toilet as an act of feline retribution iPhone.
