Cats and real Christmas trees....

Astrocat2012

Most of my cats over the years have not been too bad but each one had their own attraction.

One unusually had a sweet tooth and woke us up one night by trying to remove the foil off the chocolate santas.

Another loved specifically these wee red bows and would swipe them all off the tree over the course of a few hours.

I found my current cat in the tree once, much like Simon's cat. He was still young at the time though and is less fussed these days.

Oh and I too had a cat who ate the lametta tinsel and it did indeed come out the other end as glittery poo in the litter tray!

Air_Cooled_75

I've had to pull tinsel out of one of our cats bum

calicocat

Air_Cooled_75 wrote: »

I've had to pull tinsel out of one of our cats bum

I've had this in the past with that really thin stuff you throw all over the tree, it was two kittens, had to take them to vets who said never pull it out. Thing is they both had it and kept chasing each others bums...so we had to keep cutting it back with sizzors until all out. oh and it went in red and came out silver.

I always had to rope or string real trees and nail to the wall as they would scale them like a real tree.

Jojo_the_Tightfisted

Natural or plastic trees - all will be resting at a funny angle surrounded by scattered baubles soon enough.

My tree will be roped to the bannisters. And I'm willing to bet that it will still be battered repeatedly by the little git.




(I haven't used lametta strands since I first found sparkly disco poos in the litter tray one year)


Going to have a bit of sad moment though - old girl used to climb into the decoration box as soon as it was opened and go to sleep buried in the tinsel every year without fail. This will be the first year with only the bumbling fool to deal with.

meritaten

we bought a new tree this year- today in fact and of course OH and I got it out of the box and set it up. Well, we had to make sure it worked didn't we! its a six foot slimline black fibre optic - and Barnes was fascinated! oh dear - I see trouble ahead!

Chris25

Angelicdevil wrote: »

Hehe thanks for your anecdotes, they made me chuckle!

I think I'm going to give it a go and see how they react.... I think I'll put my expensive glass baubles towards the top of the tree and hope for the best!

we've had a real tree for about 30 years except for the year that we got a rescue kitten in November. I had a sneaky feeling he would be a climber (he well and truly was ) & we thought it might be safer to just have a twig tree that year.

Most of our cats haven't really bothered with the tree after the initial bit of sniff around and play with the lower ornaments.

One cat used to bat away at them and take off the pine cones and hide them around the house. He also loved some little fabric stars with bells in - because of those, we often knew where he hid them because we could hear where he went.

One particular night, we watched him furiously playing with one tree ornament then realised that the hook had caught in his claw - luckily we were there.

I've heard horror stories of glass baubles; they shatter so easily, usually into little shards, so we've only used them with old cats that haven't been interested in the tree at all. It might be worthwhile holding out on those and see how your cat reacts to a real tree first.

Chris25

meritaten wrote: »

Reminds me of the year that my First Dog Anni ate one of my dads presents which was under the tree! It was a large box of chocolate liquers.

but - I did have to laugh when the vet was told she had eaten a whole box of choc liquers - he said 'Bring her straight in - but don't let her drive'!

:T:rotfl::rotfl:

mellymeepmeep

First Christmas with my Lily we decided to get a real tree and very naively I covered it in expensive M&S glass baubles, it looks absolutely gorgeous but in the middle of the night there was an all mighty crash... thought we'd been burgled but I ran into the living room to find my fluff ball of a kitten surrounded by complete christmas carnage, staring up at me with the 'it wasn't me' expression i'd come to know so well!!!! Never again haha!

calicocat

Well I have put my tree up (not real this year) and have only put lights on so far to see how things pan out for a couple of weeks and how much interest she pays it.

I will leave it like this for a couple of weeks and then work out what decorations to put on it as mine are glass and I now have laminate flooring so if she goes for it there would be glass all over.

Years ago I had red lights, had to change this as she has a thing about the colour red and I found her chewing them.


So far zero interest so here's hoping...and will avoid red baubles.

Angelicdevil

My real tree is up, it's a beast! So far I've just put the lights on it and they don't seem that interested.

The rabbit is showing more interest!

I'll be keeping a close eye on them this weekend though.