We had an amusing weekend – John’s all for getting a Christmas tree at the earliest opportunity, so we went off to our usual tree vendor and got ourselves a fine, fragrant little evergreen.
Here’s a shot of John finishing it off (he loves that I take a picture of his butt every year).
Of course, having a new kitten in the household means some amount of anxiety about trimming a tree. Over the years we have collected a wide variety of ornaments, and we have a system: the really delicate ones go up at the top, and there is a sort of graduated arrangement whereby the sturdiest ones hang at cat-height. The older cats really couldn’t care less about the tree, but we’ve kept to this scheme over the years just in case. At first blush, Milo gave us his most innocent pose:
“Who, me?”
Then he was clearly intrigued:
“Come to meeeee!”
Then there was the tap-tapping of a wee white paw:
And then, well:
“Nom nom nom!!”
That was about the time we decided we didn’t want seed beads in the cat and threw that particular fancy away.
Milo was back to playing Mr. Innocent in no time:
Yeah. He’s getting bigger.
(Knitting content post-script: yes, those are handmade socks. BMFA “Socks that Rock” heavyweight in the “rose quartz” colorway, purchased at Stitches late-ish so I was forced to go out of my usual color comfort zone. I rather love them. They knit up in about three days and I adore the combination of delicate color and sturdy, warm boot-sock).
Milo is just too adorable. LB feigns no interest in the tree every year either but somehow two or three ornaments a night find their way onto the floor on the other side of the room… Must be the other cat that lives in the house doing that!! (there is no other cat in the house btw)
The socks look warm!!
Usually we’re pretty lucky with the ornaments and the cats just pull down the soft ones at the bottom of the tree. This year, unfortunately, we have a bookshelf next to the tree and Posey has expressed some interest in taking down the more fragile ornaments higher up. We’re having a battle of the wills at the moment — and you know who usually wins that when fighting with a cat.
Good luck with Milo!
Well, we’ll probably avoid seeing how b reacts – since we’ll be away over the holidays – but growing up, my family’s trees tended to be short on ornaments that broke when dropped (like those shiny glass balls) and the tinsel icicles went away the year after one of the cats was found gagging on one of the strands of mylar. My dad still bolts the tree to the wall; the bolts were one of the first things he installed after they moved into their current house.
Fun times.
Milo is soo beautiful. Our cats seem to ignore the Christmas tree. I know you should never put something like that in print!!!
Our first Christmas together some twenty years ago, was spent rescuing our kitten who insisted on climbing up the tree. Fortunately we were too poor to spend very much on decorations so nothing was broken.
Oh! So cute! We have less of a “playing with ornaments” problem than we do a “so this is water in this pan, eh? can I drink it?” problem.
When I was little we had a cat that ate tinsel, and in January he’d have little tinsels hanging out of his tush. Gross, but also very funny.