Christmas “Pet”astrophes
Melissa Dallago
Christmas is the time of year for the gathering of family, the
sharing of gifts, and watching as five pounds is added to your waistline due to
all of the delectable treats of cookies and sumptuous food. I have many wonderful memories of sharing
Christmas with my loved ones, and watching their faces light up in delight from
that special gift I picked out just for them. Yet, the memories that I treasure the most
involve my childhood experiences with my pets during Christmas time. When I was growing up we had eight cats and a
large German Shepard named Luke, and I speak from experience when I say that
having pets during the Christmas season presents its own unique challenges. To pets, especially to cats, Christmas time is
a wonderland of new experiences that provides shiny tinsel to be chewed, trees
to hide and climb in, wrapping paper and bows to be played in, and dangling ornaments
that invitingly beckon to the wandering paw and wet nose; however, it is the
Christmas tree that offers the most fascination and is often the source of all
the trouble caused by pets.
My earliest memories are from when I was six years old and we
had gotten Luke as a puppy; it was his first Christmas. Luke was moderately interested in the tree as
Mom decorated it, but he pretty much stayed out of the way, and after hours of meticulous
work the tree was a vision of pure Christmas beauty. After we had all gone to bed, we were
suddenly awoken by a tremendous crash from the living room. Mom flew out of bed expecting to find someone
breaking into the house, but instead found the Christmas tree lying in a heap
on the floor; ornaments were scattered and broken everywhere and the lights
were a tangled mess, and poor Luke was huddled in the corner with tremors of
fear shaking his body. He was clearly
the cause of the tree falling over. It
appeared that Luke had gotten overzealous in his sniffing explorations and had nosed
the tree past its tipping point causing it to fall over. He looked sorrowfully at Mom as she stood
over him shaking her head. Fortunately,
the tree had had a soft landing so the branches were in good shape and we still
had enough ornaments left after the crash. Mom knew that tree was at risk for another fall
because Luke was a puppy after all, so in stroke of genius she put the
Christmas tree in my little Red Flyer wagon and redecorated it to its former
glory. For the rest of the season, Mom wheeled
the wagon and tree into my room and closed the door whenever there was a chance
that Luke would be left alone with the tree for an extended period of time. It was quite a spectacle to witness the
Christmas tree procession each day with Luke chasing after it trying to bite
off the ornaments as Mom wheeled it up and down the hallway. The wagon worked because the tree remained vertical
for the rest of the season.
The next Christmas Luke was a full grown dog and Mom, not
wanting to tempt another tipped over tree, opted to place it on a table where
it would be well out of his reach; however what Mom wasn’t counting on was our
new cat Colby. Colby was a gorgeous gray
cat who was bursting with energy and, like any normal cat, had to explore every
nook and cranny in the house. Much like the
year before Mom spent hours decorating the tree and it was perhaps the prettiest
tree that we ever had. I have an image
in my mind of Mom standing there smiling, basking in the glow of the beautiful
tree, while behind her sat Colby with the glowing Christmas lights reflecting
back from his saucer shaped eyes as he stared at the biggest cat toy he had
ever seen. Once again, after retiring
for the night, we were woken by a thunderous crash that rattled the
windows. Mom leaped out of the bed in a
flash and with Luke running at her side as if to say, “See Mom, it wasn’t me!” found
the Christmas tree lying on the floor in utter ruin after it had fallen four
feet from the table. Branches were strewn
everywhere, and glass twinkled from the many broken ornaments, and there was Colby
reclining on the couch, the picture of pure innocence, but Mom knew he was the
culprit because he was covered in tinsel and pine needles from his climbing
excursion. In a repeat of the year
before, Mom once again resurrected the tree, and redecorated it with what
little ornaments we had left to a bit of its former pre-Colby glory. Mom then, in another stroke of genius,
blocked off the tree on the table with a green plastic fence in the hopes that
it would deter him from trying to climb to great heights once again, and that is
how our family tradition of placing the tree on a table and fencing it off our
pets was born. As I child I learned to
appreciate the Christmas tree from a distance and the fence certainly didn’t
prohibit Santa from leaving me an ample supply of gifts to open on Christmas
morning.
For the rest of my childhood we did not have any major “pet”castrophes
involving fallen Christmas trees, but we continued to deal with other pet
caused calamities. Over the years we
continued to extract a yowling, sap covered cat from the higher branches of the
tree because they had gotten stuck and couldn’t figure out how to get back down. We always had to redecorate the tree after
they removed the ornaments that weren’t to their taste, and we continued to
have to pick out the occasional cat and dog toys they added to the lower
branches. We would constantly have to
chase Luke out from under the tree as he tried to drink the tree water, and the
cats loved to wrap themselves up in the tree skirt. Each year we routinely played hide and seek
with the ornaments that they stole from the tree, and the cats showed no mercy
when it came to our nativity set. There
were always wise men and sheep missing, but never the baby Jesus fittingly
enough, which we wouldn’t find until June of the following year. And of course when it came to wrapping
Christmas presents we always had to contend with claws and teeth. It took hours to wrap and it wasn’t because
of the sheer number of presents, but because we spent so much time chasing the
dog as he stole a roll of paper, unraveling cats from the ribbons they had
gotten tangled in, and rescuing the errant cat who happened to get a piece scotch
tape stuck on their paws as they walked through the whole mess. I can’t count how many times my hand were attacked
by a stalking feline playing hide and seek amongst the paper rolls and
gifts. We think of it has work, but to
pets the wrapping of Christmas presents is their next favorite thing after
destroying the tree. It has been my
experience that you can always tell the gifts that are from people who have
pets; the cat or dog fur in the tape is a telltale sign, and the wrapping paper
usually has a couple of claw and teeth marks added for good measure because of
course the little darlings want to add their own touch to the season of gift
giving.
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