Franciscan Focus

Just a simple blog of a Secular Franciscan trying to live with a Franciscan focus.
(And one of these days I'll fix the template and add a Search feature. :-P)

11 November 2007

Deck The B 

The following is something I originally wrote in November 2004 on my old blog. Because I'm lazy, and because the same situation still exists (sigh), I've copied it below with minor updates.

With Thanksgiving fast approaching here in the U.S. (22 November), people's thoughts are starting to turn towards Christmas, which includes all the decorations that go with it. And that usually means Christmas trees.

Sadly for us, though, Christmas trees haven't been part of our holiday festivities since 2001, and things are lookin' bleak for this year. Why? Take a guess.

OK, here's a hint:
O TannenB, O TannenB ...

Back when we adopted our lil' sparkplug in April 2001, he was near death due to starvation, so he didn't move around much. After visiting the vet and getting proper medical treatment and good food, he bounced back ... with a vengeance. Hoo-boy, once he had enough energy, he started zooming and playing and prancing and tormenting his siblings, and hasn't quieted down since.

Now, any other cat we've ever had over the years has turned into a couch potato around their first birthday. Since we estimated The B's age at 8 months when we rescued 'im, we were fairly hopeful that he'd be Well Into Potatohood come that Christmas.

So, in August, we started watching. The months ticked by ... September, October, November ... and still no signs of spuddom from The B. Rather, it seemed like he was just getting started! Husband Mike and I were worried. How could we risk putting up the fake tree with that nutball zooming about?

Finally, we couldn't take it anymore and decided to put up the thing ... three days before Christmas. There was much rejoicing among the furkids, because as any cat lover knows, a Christmas tree is The Bestest Cat Toy Ever. While normal cats are content to bat at the ornaments and sit under the branches, our fears were confirmed when The B immediately climbed the tree the instant we finished decorating it.

After many extractions of The B, broken ornaments, and crazily dangling garland, we put the tree away just three days after Christmas. Over that short week, the poor tree looked like a complete wreck, but more importantly, we were seriously worried that The B would kill himself on the dang thing somehow. We had nightmares of him getting electrocuted by chomping on the lights, or getting hung in 'em, and that's the ultimate reason why the tree's in hiding. (An aside: If you value furniture or other inanimate things over your living pets, your priorities are seriously screwed. Seriously. Screwed.)

Maybe he'd calm down once he turned two? Nope, no dice, and no tree, either. The next year came, and we were so desperate that we considered putting up the tree without any decorations or lights. Then we figured it'd look completely depressing, so ... no tree that year.

And now here we are once more, facing Another Year Without A Christmas Tree. It's been so long that we can't even remember what our ornaments look like. (We do remember that we finally had a nice theme going, though.) But, at least we can enjoy The B's crazy antics without worry.

Eh, mebbe we'll just put a collar of jingle bells on 'im and call it a holiday.

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1 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Hey, Lisa--
What we do is tie a piece of fishing line to the top of the tree and then tie the other end to a cup hook on the ceiling. Then at least it can't fall over. But we still don't hang the breakable ornaments, because if the cat doesn't get them, the toddler will!

12 November, 2007 13:14  

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