We bought a fir tree from a local farmer this weekend, and set it up, but just with lights so far. This is the first holiday season for the kittens, and we aren't yet sure how they will handle the temptations. They have already proven themselves suspect by pulling at branches and chewing on lit bulbs. Squirting them with water seems to work only when we are home to wield the spray bottle, as evidenced by a broken lamp and shattered ceramics.
We have been unplugging the tree lights before leaving the cats unsupervised, and I am leaning towards skipping the most fragile ornaments this year. SodaBoy complained that those are the nicest ones, and of course, I agree (which is why I don't want to subject them to the spastic enthusiasms of these silly kitties). Our other cats never posed a threat to trees or ornaments. My hope is by next year these two will have settled down some.
I feel a little uncomfortable being such a nervous nelly about my ornaments. This is the only time of year when such decorations can be enjoyed, after all. However, I have had many of these ornaments for 20-30 years now, and they wouldn't bring me much pleasure smashed into smithereens. Decisions, decisions. I think I will stick with wait and see for now.
I can always toss caution to the wind next week.
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7 comments:
I don't blame you for hesitating ... when my cat was a kitten, she destroyed all of our ornaments.
I hung my ornaments last night. The only problem I anticipate is if my elephant-sized cats knock over the whole tree. They are not inclined towards going after individual ornaments (usually).
Can't you hand the pretty ones high and midway out the branches, sort of securely? Or would they climb out there too?
When my children were little we hung the unbreakable ornaments near the bottom and the breakables at the top, but kittens are better climbers than most small children.
I'd save the ornaments if you don't think they're safe, they'll be more Christmases when the kittens are cats.
Perhaps you could hang your delicate ornaments in the windows out of the cat's reach.
Are they climbing the tree?
Well, by Tuesday the tree had been up for a few days with no major mishaps, so I hung about 1/3 of my least destructible ornaments. Since then I've found a dozen on the floor in various locations around the house. Sigh. I don't think we've reached critical maturity yet.
Our cats knocked our entire tree over when they were kittens. Twice.
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