Earlier this week Susan got a giant scratching/climbing post for the cat. It’s about seven feet tall, green, tree-shaped, and has (or had) christmas lights wrapped around it, ornaments hanging from the limbs, and an angel on top. It kind of sounds like a Christmas tree, but try explaining that to the cat.
The past two days, I’ve come home to find the tree in shambles, surrounded by broken ornaments. The angel is now leaning at a 45 degree angle; the tree itself is slightly more upright, but not by much. Tuesday evening the cat managed to disconnect the bottom section of lights; this morning I noticed the bottom half is working, but now the top half is off.
Last night, the whole family gathered around the television to watch two Christmas specials. The first was Shrek the Halls, a new 30-minute Shrek special where Shrek discovers “the true meaning of Christmas.” This was followed by Dr. Seuss’ How the Grinch Stole Christmas. Mason has led an essentially commercial-free life to date. The majority of what he watches is on VHS, DVD, or the PiVo (which removes/skips commercials), all of which are commercial free. Watching him squirm and complain because a program is interrupted by commercials is always entertaining to me. “What is this?”, he’ll say. “Put Shrek back on!”
Also, kudos to ABC (sarcasm) for interrupting the Grinch broadcast with local, latebreaking news that a local man suspected of murdering a pregnant woman had been arrested. I realize the world continues to turn even during the holidays, but it sure would be nice to watch a 30-minute Christmas special with my kids without having to explain what murder is. Grinchy, indeed.
I hope for Don Piano’s sake you guys don’t end up quoting National Lampoons Christmas Vacation where their cat is under the chair and eats the Christmas Light Cord and Eddie chimes in and says “If that cat had nine lives, he just spent ’em all”. Now that is a Christmas tradition movie, my favorite!
You might try http://www.petronic.com/ssscat.htm Apparently it is a motion sensitive sprayer for about $40.00 bucks and even if it doesn’t work on the cat think of the possibilities for family and coworkers.
They also make a spray that makes them keep away from the tree. You spray it on something close to the tree – like the tree skirt or an ornament. The cat doesn’t like it and won’t come near it. We have had success with it before. The only problem is you have to remember to keep spraying more on there every once in a while because it wears off after several hours. You can buy it at places like Petsmart. Good Luck.