It's that time of year again. Christmas is my favorite holiday. Decorating my Christmas tree has always been one of my favorite traditions. Watching the cats take it down piece by piece is another. Here's a Christmas mug shot of this year's most likely suspect. Cats are not masters at hiding their intentions...I need not explain, the picture says it all.
But back to the tree, while I still have one. First off, I am a plastic tree person. At the risk of offending live tree people....I just can't kill a tree and put it in the house. I know plastic is not environmentally friendly either, but...I just can't bring myself to get a live one. To be honest, I really love my fake plastic tree. In Bermuda I just had a small one (they were ridiculously overpriced there). And yet again, I arrived at this new post with 2 suitcases, a couple of cats and not much else
(hey, at least I arrived with a car this time). So it was off to buy a new tree this year. I may have gotten carried away. I wanted it to be taller than me...and some days I forget I am not 7 feet tall. Fortunately I have a high ceiling.
Next step...the careful selection of ornaments. I was starting out at ground zero, so I broke my usual rule of buying one special ornament each Christmas. Pier One corrupted me with their rows of glittery baubles. Who doesn't want a reindeer with sparkly antlers and a sparkly vest?
I couldn't leave sparkly glass dangly reindeer behind either. I also found some beautiful glittery orbs...these are known to cat people as "the decoy ornaments." All cat owners have learned a few hard lessons about overstimulated the furry little ninjas that live in our homes. It is good practice to put the Christmas tree up in stages, Depending on your cat's insanity index, this process may take a full 5-7 days. Believe it or not, the Panthers are less cuckoo for Christmas than Lexi and JJ, so I managed the task in 3 days, and the darn thing has been standing for a full week now!
Sparkly glass penguin earns a spot nearer the top of the tree due to his fragility. Low hanging ornaments are often swatted down and batted about the house. Higher hanging breakables are somewhat safer, because they are harder to see and less likely to initiate the cat kill sequence. If they go down, it's because the whole tree is going down. With Lexi and JJ, I had to engineer a tree support rigging system (basically tied it to a wall), or else that thing was crashing down 2 or 3 times a day. Fortunately, the Panthers are weird, and they are far more focussed on killing things like errant twist ties than Christmas trees.
All of my old Christmas ornaments, carefully collected and hoarded over the years, made their way to my mom's tree in the years I didn't have one. I guess it's good that I got the big tree, because those ornaments are coming back my way late on Christmas Eve...when my family comes for Christmas!
Looking forward to it! And...there have been a couple of ornament fatalities....apparently sparkly bows are delicious. Bring in the reinforcements!
Wishing you all a Merry Christmas Eve! Good night!
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