Put the garland down!

Our cats, who usually maintain relative order in our home, lose their minds when the Christmas decorations come out.  They dance on counters, bask on top of tables...  We routinely find the dining room table cloth all askew, salt and pepper shakers asses up, chairs knocked over.  All three cats looking up and saying "It wasn't me."  Apparently, I need to cut a piece of carpet pad - you know the non-slip kind - for our dining room table.


We have three cats.  Minuit, the crotchety, Steve the mellow and Lola the sneaky. The Christmas trees went up last weekend.  (If I could afford to have a tree in every single room of our house, I would.  Why?  Because Christmas makes me crazy. CRAZY with HOLIDAY JOY!!)   Every waking minute since the erection of said trees has been spent policing the impending destruction of them. The Dining Room tree barely up, Lola was 5 feet up its trunk, golden eyes peering at us from its faux greenery depths.  This is a cat who likes to sleep on top of the pointy edged Victorian radiator in the bathroom, so I guess that balancing on wire spoky branches poses her no challenge.

"Ha-ha!" she meowed.  "I am here!  IN THE TREE!!"

David and I shared a glance.  "We're going to need heavy-gauge fishing line."

Remarkably - I came back from Canadian Tire having only purchased the fishing line.  Do you know how hard that is for me to do?  Especially when they have colour-coordinated aisles of Christmas decorations?!?  It took everything within me, not to grab the white 7-footer under my arm, scan it in the self-checkout and run wildly about in the parking lot shouting "TREE NUMBER THREE!  TREE NUMBER THREE!!!"

Instead, I came home sans extra tree (cue sad Charlie Brown music) and David secured screws to the tops of door frames and underneath the fireplace mantle so that we could tether the trees, you know, just in case...

"LOLA!  Get down!  DOWN!!!"

"You are no fun."

"STEVE!! DROP IT!!"

"But it feels so good in my mouth."

And Minuit there, sitting in the POÄNG sniggering at me and them, licking her paw and running it along her ears.  Lying in wait.

Rustle... rustle... rustle...

"MINUIT!  Put the garland down!"