Shiny Dangly Twinkly Temptation

December 12, 2010 12:00 PM

Simon's Cat Vs. The Xmas Tree (previously) - The Battle Between Christmas Trees And Cats Continues.
posted by The Whelk (47 comments total)

I love this. I grew up in a house that usually had 2+ xmas trees and a cat. A very brave, climby black cat. And she knew the danger of the xmas tree (my dad LOVES xmas trees), so she only climbed the one outside.
posted by strixus at 12:02 PM on December 12, 2010

We put up our tree last night. Cat is on the floor, i turn around to get an ornament, and the cat is suddenly 5 feet in the air, climbing up the tree like stairs.
posted by spikeleemajortomdickandharryconnickjrmints at 12:12 PM on December 12, 2010 [1 favorite]

Christmas trees. The cat's mortal enemy. Just like dogs, mice, birds, spiders, other cats, vacuum cleaners, bathwater, car rides, citrus, and your sleeping face.

Cats have a lot of mortal enemies.
posted by jabberjaw at 12:16 PM on December 12, 2010 [25 favorites]

Just wait until FOX News gets wind of this latest battle in the War On Christmas!
posted by briank at 12:26 PM on December 12, 2010 [3 favorites]

This is the best post ever.
posted by torisaur at 12:44 PM on December 12, 2010

Yay!
I've missed Simon's cat.
posted by bibliowench at 12:45 PM on December 12, 2010

You forgot this clip.
posted by MaryDellamorte at 12:47 PM on December 12, 2010

Jesus. It's like someone made a documentary about the goings on at the Benson house over the last 24 hours.
posted by elmer benson at 12:54 PM on December 12, 2010

I feel bad that there are some bad TeleTubies in the YouTube comments, I can't share it with my friends and family, some if whom are Black.
posted by Katjusa Roquette at 12:57 PM on December 12, 2010

This is why we're afraid to get a Christmas tree. But we're going to get one anyway. Probably.

(It would be the first time for two of our newer, younger, climbier cats. They're no long hysterical kittens, but they're still, you know, cats. So hmmm.)
posted by rtha at 1:02 PM on December 12, 2010

Don't forget Garfield's history with Christmas trees.
posted by Nixy at 1:02 PM on December 12, 2010

I feel bad that there are some bad TeleTubies in the YouTube comments, I can't share it with my friends and family, some if whom are Black.

I recently installed a GreaseMonkey script to hide YouTube comments. My quality of life has substantially improved.
posted by brennen at 1:04 PM on December 12, 2010 [4 favorites]

This is why spray bottles were invented.
posted by maryr at 1:05 PM on December 12, 2010

...and clearly the "you'reakitty!" tag should be used more often.

And you're sitting!
posted by maryr at 1:06 PM on December 12, 2010 [3 favorites]

I have now showed this video to Yorvit. I explained that it was a cautionary tale, and not a "how to." I'm not sure he understood the difference, but he watched intently.
posted by gingerbeer at 1:08 PM on December 12, 2010 [4 favorites]

We all have the same cat.
posted by Joe Beese at 1:12 PM on December 12, 2010 [7 favorites]

[No criticism intendend of the post. I laughed my ass off at this when I saw it somewhere else earlier this morning. I just mean that, fundamentally, felis catus comes in only one model.]
posted by Joe Beese at 1:14 PM on December 12, 2010

This is why spray bottles were invented.

QFT. now i just imitate the "pssst! pssst!" sound of the spray bottle and they scamper away.
posted by spikeleemajortomdickandharryconnickjrmints at 1:14 PM on December 12, 2010 [1 favorite]

This is our first year with cats and Christmas trees. They were both very curious when it was put up, but neither of them has shown much interest in it after the first day. I think Max has been eating some of the lower branches, but all the ornaments are still in tact. Doppler was curious until he got poked in the nose by a needle and hasn't been back since.
posted by backseatpilot at 1:24 PM on December 12, 2010

More Simon's Cat! Yay!
posted by angiep at 1:40 PM on December 12, 2010

I confess that my favorites are the ones where the tree wins. Can you tell that my Gelato is a mean spirited cat, prone to bite and scratch if I don't read its mind and obey its wishes pronto?
posted by francesca too at 2:18 PM on December 12, 2010

I thought the battle was between cats and things that are nice.
posted by orme at 2:30 PM on December 12, 2010

Look at it from that cat's perspective. Kitties like shiny things. Kitties like climbing things. The only thing that would make it better for the cat is if our tradition involved having live birds on the tree.
posted by birdherder at 2:37 PM on December 12, 2010 [4 favorites]

When I was growing up we had a twenty-five pound attack cat named Tiger. She was massive, fearless, and strangely nice to the endless parade of lost kittens I kept finding. She was known for chasing large dogs, sitting on peoples' chests while they slept, and knocking drinking glasses over for fun and entertainment.

When we put the fake tree up she did not scale it. But she did pull the ornaments down, chew on the lights' wires, and try to strip the fuzzy fake-tree greenery off the metal frame. We couldn't go without a tree, because we did the whole Christmas thing, and although it was Florida and thus fairly nice outside we couldn't kick the cat out for an entire month. She jumped on the tree only once - sending it careening into a shelving unit full of fragile picture frames, causing my grandmother to shout loudly in Estonian that, kurat, these horrible animals, and she was supposed to be enjoying her retirement, and that tree didn't come cheap and it needed to last - but not list, which is what it did forever after Tiger threw herself at it. She bent the plumbing-thick metal frame. I don't know how. Attack cats are special.

My mother studied the cat, and the tree, and came up with a compromise. Since Tiger had learned not to jump on the tree, she was limited to what she could get to from the ground. She was a massive cat, wide but not tall - shaped kind of like a bulldog, really, and could only reach about two and a half feet off the ground if she stood on her hinders.

For years we decorated the top two-thirds of our leaning tower of christmas, and the cat stayed out of it (except to sleep in the 1950s plastic-and-asbestos tree skirt underneath) and eventually people stopped asking why, because when you have an attack cat the size of a Thanksgiving turkey you learn to make allowances. I always had to leave glasses of water out for Santa, because when the goddamn cat knocks eight ounces of milk into shag carpeting, you have to rent a steam cleaner and everyone is unhappy.
posted by cmyk at 2:52 PM on December 12, 2010 [18 favorites]

Katjusa Roquette -- Since you can't tell if your friends who would be offended by the comments have installed the Greasemonkey script, there is also quiettube.

For cats on counters, we had great success with the SSScat, a motion sensing spray bottle. Worth its weight in youtube videos.
posted by autopilot at 2:58 PM on December 12, 2010 [3 favorites]

My god this was funny, especially the one with the jingle-bells tree. Now I'm going to youtube and look for SSScat, can't help myself.
posted by Namlit at 3:32 PM on December 12, 2010

What you do is you get a bunch of very loud jingly bells, and hang them all over the bottom branches. Between my own running over when I heard them ringing, and the loud and unexpected ringing just freaking him out, Zach learned to stay away from the tree. (The bigger problem, actually, was him playing with the ribbon on the packages underneath.)
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 3:53 PM on December 12, 2010 [1 favorite]

All our cat (Martini) wants to do with our tree is sleep underneath it. We hypothesize that it allows her to pretend she's outdoors (even though she kind of fears the great wide world). As an added bonus, everyone gets the gift of cat dander with their presents.

That "leap of faith" video is frickin' hilarious.
posted by Go Banana at 4:10 PM on December 12, 2010

I've never had the pleasure of having a Christmas tree, but every year, without fail, my dumb cat declares war on the menorah. STUPIT KITTY! FIRE IS BAD!

someone once told me that cats mellow as they age. they lied. my 9 and a half year old little demon seems to be accelerating as he approaches old age.
posted by Cat Pie Hurts at 4:11 PM on December 12, 2010 [2 favorites]

Here is a picture of my childhood cat Murphy climbing out of the tree with spoils.

Murphy was a character in all the best senses of the word. I miss him and his fuzzy brown nose.
posted by JustKeepSwimming at 4:17 PM on December 12, 2010 [9 favorites]

Our kitties haven't destroyed the tree... yet... and don't seem too enthused about doing so, though to maintain their dignity, they will knock over the occasional ornament from the bottom of the tree. Neither of them have been motivated enough to try to climb the thing and I'm certainly not dropping them any hints there.

The weirdest thing about our cats and trees would be that real vs. fake, there are drawbacks either way. One cat will eat any and all plants. And she is too stupid to stop eating them and thus we would inevitably find barfed up pine needles festooning the apartment. Not the look we're going for. So, we have a fake tree. Which the other cat... licks. She just sits there and she licks the plastic. It's like we brought her an Everlasting Gobstopper, she's so happy with it. She loves licking plastic bags and can hardly believe her good fortune that there is this GIANT. PLASTIC. THING. just waiting for her to lick it.

It's clearly preferable to eating the tree, but man is it ever weird.
posted by sonika at 4:43 PM on December 12, 2010 [3 favorites]

For those of you who enjoyed the story of Tiger the Attack Cat, I dug up an old photo of that dear old monster under the tree.
posted by cmyk at 5:07 PM on December 12, 2010 [3 favorites]

We didn't even put up our tree this year after all of Ruby's shenanigans last year.
Cat 1-Tree 0.

The videos reminded me that I've made the right decision.
posted by Hop123 at 5:14 PM on December 12, 2010

Yay Simon's cat!
posted by PhoBWanKenobi at 5:33 PM on December 12, 2010

The Kringus arc on PVP
posted by MrLint at 5:34 PM on December 12, 2010

someone once told me that cats mellow as they age. they lied. my 9 and a half year old little demon seems to be accelerating as he approaches old age.
posted by Cat Pie Hurts at 7:11 PM on December 12 [2 favorites +] [!] No other comments.

What damn fool told you 9.5 is old? You, sir/ma'am, have just passed the break-in period. With proper maintenance and lubrication, your cat should live to an appalling age.

For reference, here are my 16-year-olds, the Fat Man and the One Cat Demolition Team.
posted by toodleydoodley at 5:43 PM on December 12, 2010 [2 favorites]

Oh, I gave up on Christmas trees a whole decade before I swore off Christmas. Before that, I would tie twine to a nail on one side of the windowframe, around the trunk a few times, and over to a nail on the other side of the windowframe, just to avoid complete mayhem.
posted by FelliniBlank at 6:07 PM on December 12, 2010

The Cat is just level one. Boss level are Babies between infancy and toddlerhood - just at the point where they can stand and walk and grab the ceramic snowman hung without enough forethought and spike it for a touchdown, yet can't really understand language much beyond "cookie" and "bye-bye."

At my folk's house last night were four babies in that range, and a two year old for an added frisson of mayhem. We were there to trim the tree, and we started after dinner, when the little devils were hopped up on generic applejuice, pasta, Gummy's home-made cookies, craisins and Sesame Street On Demand.

Big. Mistake.
posted by Slap*Happy at 6:21 PM on December 12, 2010

For those of you who enjoyed the story of Tiger the Attack Cat, I dug up an old photo of that dear old monster under the tree.

Wow, your cat should have had a smaller cat to sit next to her; so that when your cat would say something like "bargon wan chee kospah, ha, ha, ha," the smaller one could go "HEEE hee hee hee HEE hee..."
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 6:22 PM on December 12, 2010 [9 favorites]

Wow, your cat should have had a smaller cat to sit next to her; so that when your cat would say something like "bargon wan chee kospah, ha, ha, ha," the smaller one could go "HEEE hee hee hee HEE hee..."

I am facepalming because I recognized that instantly.
posted by Thistledown at 6:32 PM on December 12, 2010 [4 favorites]

Wow, your cat should have had a smaller cat to sit next to her; so that when your cat would say something like "bargon wan chee kospah, ha, ha, ha," the smaller one could go "HEEE hee hee hee HEE hee..."

I am facepalming because I recognized that instantly.

Oh god. Me too.
posted by cmyk at 6:46 PM on December 12, 2010

Wow, your cat should have had a smaller cat to sit next to her; so that when your cat would say something like "bargon wan chee kospah, ha, ha, ha," the smaller one could go "HEEE hee hee hee HEE hee..."

I am facepalming because I recognized that instantly.

Oh god. Me too

I think that if everyone who recognizes it comments, this is going to become a long and boring thread.

That said, me three.
posted by ocherdraco at 6:48 PM on December 12, 2010

We always had to tie the tree to the wall to keep it straight (or relatively so) given the sloping floors of the old farmhouse we lived in. Because of our cats, the tree had only solid metal or other non-breakable ornaments on the bottom third, but when Fat Cat (aptly named Mischief) decided to start a climbing regimen, we tried the usual remedies of water bottles and hissing noises, but my mom finally figured out how to stop him. She wrapped the vacuum hose around the bottom of the tree, put the canister next to her recliner, and plugged it in. Any time the cat got a little too curious about the tree, Mom would lean over and turn the vacuum on, leading to the immediate exit of the cat from under the tree. That went on the entire month the tree was up that year. The next year, she did the same thing just a couple of times to remind Mischief of the protocol. Then she just left the hose there, unattached to anything. It was enough to keep him from climbing for many, many years until he finally became an old-man cat and lost both interest and ability in climbing. By his last winter, at the ripe old-man cat age of 18, sleeping peacefully under the tree seemed to be his favorite activity, so Mom left the tree skirt for him under a little table long after the tree was taken down. RIP little buddy...
posted by BlooPen at 8:10 PM on December 12, 2010 [6 favorites]

I hate videos like these because they make me miss owning cats.
posted by Decani at 3:58 AM on December 13, 2010

Boss level are Babies between infancy and toddlerhood - just at the point where they can stand and walk and grab the ceramic snowman hung without enough forethought and spike it for a touchdown, yet can't really understand language much beyond "cookie" and "bye-bye."

Word. The little guy I nanny for was just on the brink of his second birthday last Christmas. Every day, the ornaments got higher... and higher... and higher... up the tree as his parents tried to place them to elude his grasp. It was like a receding hairline of ornaments.

This year? He understands that when *I'm* here, we look with our eyes, not with our hands. As soon as dad comes home though... it's ornaments off the tree and candy canes straight into the mouth. He's old enough to strategize and knows who the easy target is.
posted by sonika at 5:46 AM on December 13, 2010

See, this kind of carnage is exactly why the wife and I have decided that the tree just isn't worth the trouble.

Now we just smash the ornaments ourselves and stick the bows onto the cat's heads from the outset.

No reason they should get all the fun.
posted by quin at 3:05 PM on December 13, 2010 [1 favorite]

This video is why I'm a dog person.
posted by auralcoral at 4:26 PM on December 13, 2010