It's Caturday! Here's Some Cats in Christmas Trees!

Nobody loves Christmas like cats love Christmas! We haul entire trees into our homes and deck them out in dangly shiny baubles, who else could we possibly be doing this for?! I come from a family of cat-lovers, and it's basically a family tradition that kittens spend most of December living in the Christmas tree. (Also, it's the first night of Hanukkah tonight, but my Jewish best friends went out of town before I could get pictures of my dogs in yarmulkes with a menorah. Oy vey.)

Solstice is filling in for the star here.

The Hellions were probably born in September, so they were quite young and ridiculous for their first Christmas. That was the last year I tried putting breakable ornaments on a tree. 

James in his natural habitat.

One year I tried putting up a tiny 2' tall tree, hoping that they would ignore it since they couldn't climb it. Nope. They wrestled with it, chewed on it, and could not rest until it was laying flat on the ground.

Not pictured: kitten.

About ten years ago, while living with my parents, I brought home a tiny orange kitten that my brother named Schrodinger. We suspect Schro was the offspring of feral cat, and a lot of cat personality can be genetic. Schro has always been a bit wild.

Pictured: kitten.

That was the year I either weighted the tree stand down with sandbags, or tied it to the wall.

Ravel lives here now.

I got the Hellions from my irresponsible neighbors that let their unaltered female cat have litter after litter. Six months prior to the birth of my hellbeasts, that poor kitty had a litter of black and white kittens. The neighbors were giving them away to anyone, so I picked out a pair and gave them to my father for Father's Day. 

Pamina just hanging out.

He was annoyed for about half a day ("What made you think I needed kittens?!") and then fell in love ("I have babies!") Somehow, Pamina and Ravel are just super sweet, personable cats. I suspect the Hellions had a different dad. An evil dad.

Tucker loved Christmas!

Our first Christmas tree-dwelling kitten was my sister's Tucker. He was born in November of 1999 or 2000, and was just a few weeks old when he discovered the holiday spirit.

"If you need me, I'll be in the tree."

We lost Tucker to cancer a couple of years ago, but his memory lives on in my family's somewhat peculiar tolerance of kittens climbing Christmas trees. There's not really any good way of keeping them out, short of suspending the tree from the ceiling, so there's nothing wrong with embracing their kitten-ness, putting the breakable ornaments away for a season, and letting them enjoy the holiday. Just stick with non-toxic decorations, and avoid tinsel.