We have two (fake…but very good quality fake!) Xmas trees. In the past few years we have used only the smaller one, which fits nicely on one of our dining room cabinets. The second one is a tall and very handsome tree…more than two meters high. But we haven’t used it since Priscilla was a baby (she is four and a half years old now).
Of course, once Peekaboo joined our family, we knew that we had to give up any thought of having a tall tree…Peekaboo is the cutest little cat in the entire universe (anyone who is lucky enough to meet her agrees that there is something truly compelling about her…irresistible little creature), but her nickname is Ms. Mischief. Just have a look at her roguish eye, which should be blue!, and flattened ears in this photo…and you will understand why we chose to wait until she was a bit older before tempting her with the tall tree.
Well, she is more than two years old now, so this year we resolved that we could safely put up our taller Xmas tree. We did so by degrees, in order to avoid certain events from possibly occurring…such as Peekaboo trying to climb to the top of the tree, toppling it, hurting herself or the others in the process, chewing on the decorations and having to be rushed to the vet and so on. On Saturday evening we brought the tree down from the attic and assembled it in the living room. The cats watched us but didn’t participate in any way. As soon as we had finished, we sat down to see what they 
would do. I had my camera ready, of course!
Well, truth be told, very little happened. All they did was take turns going under the tree and sniffing it. Oh, at one very exciting point (yawn…), Priscilla decided that the tree was dusty and needed to be cleaned up a bit, so she began licking it passionately (she is our psychotic OCD miniature tiger…she likes to lick plastic and metal and so on…and e.g. goes bonkers over arugula, the bitterer the better…). I finally discouraged her from licking the fake branches, telling her that it wasn’t arugula…And, after seeing this photo, I have proclaimed her to be the longest-tongued kitty in th
e world…
Incredibly, my cats showed very little interest in the bare tree. Okay, I thought, perhaps they will perk up a bit when they catch a glimpse of the ornaments tomorrow morning…
As planned, on Sunday morning we brought down our big box of mostly unbreakable Xmas tree ornaments and began decorating the tree. We thought that this would finally spur the kitties into action. Once again, they gathered around to watch (yawn stretch ho hum yawn) but kept their distance. Once we had finished, they did sniff a few ornaments but otherwise seemed extremely bored and eventually ambled off to take their usual mid morning nap. I confess to having felt a bit disappointed…!!! Okay, very disappointed.
And then I heard it…the noise I had been hoping to hear: whack whack whack! I went around the tree and found Peekaboo precariously perched on our china cabinet’s narrow ledge, happily and…doggedly batting away at all the ornaments within her reach. Finally, something to photograph…but gone are my dreams of becoming popular and famous on Facebook or YouTube…sigh…
Oh well…can’t have everything…and, after all, the fact that our tree is still standing and that all the ornaments are still hanging on it is a GOOD thing…(incidentally, we don’t put tinsel on our Xmas tree…very dangerous for cats, especially our OCD, eat-anything-toxic cat! Beware of tinsel!)
P.S. An important notice for all Freelite folks: please go read Aramis’ new, important comment on my December 11th post…especially if your numbers are high but you don’t have any other really wacky myeloma markers. I think you will find this comment most reassuring…
Happy holidays! My cat, just like yours, ignored the tree at first but maybe a day after we decorated, she started knocking ornaments off the lower branches. Once she’s got them on the floor, she holds them in her front paws and kicks them vigorously with her back paws. I think she’s trying to kill them o_O