Christmas with the Cat

My cat hates Christmas. She has a long history of destroying things - for example, she is doing her best to kill the only houseplant I've ever been able to keep alive for more than a month. But with the addition of the Christmas tree into our living room, she is having more fun than a cat should have causing chaos.

She loves the satin tree skirt, and she has developed quite a routine. She pushes all the presents aside so that she can lurk comfortably and enjoy the silky texture, and then she claws at the fabric until she ends up underneath the whole thing. Once she finds herself there, she freaks out and bolts across the room. All this activity usually causes the train that goes around the tree to jump its track. I'm just glad it's only little Lego men on that train, because many a rail-related disaster has been caused by the cat's careless actions.

And of course she can't leave the ornaments alone. There is one kind in particular that hangs and swings just right that she loves to bat around and chew on. After I moved all of those ornaments higher in the tree, she started attacking anything that is low hanging. We've gotten to the point where the only decorations that are less than three feet off the ground are the plastic ones she can't break. Most of those just happen to be covered in glitter, so the cat is twinkly most of the time now, too. She's a black cat, and it's quite entertaining to see her walking around, full of cat-like dignity, with blue and white sparkles all over her face.

The worst part is how she deals with the tree itself. When she started chewing on the branches I wasn't too worried; after all, how much damage can she do to a fake Christmas tree? Then, she started climbing. She learned how to maneuver herself into the tree and hang out on the nice, evenly spaced branches. At first, she stopped at the bottom row, but lately she's been getting bolder, going about halfway up and then just sitting there. She watches us from between the fake fronds and twinkly lights, secure in her new lair, planning world domination or whatever it is that cats think about. I'm just waiting for the inevitable moment when she tries to jump out of the tree and ends up tipping the whole thing over.

So, I guess maybe the problem isn't that my cat hates Christmas. Maybe the problem is that she really, really loves all the lovely new Christmas-themed toys I've put out for her, and I just don't appreciate the ways she shows her holiday spirit.