Off the Mark by Mark Parisi for December 05, 2019

I thought those ornaments were billiard balls at first.

As though cats can’t climb trees …

Yea nice try lady it’s not going to work.

“But Mittens, that’s YOUR half to decorate!”

Aim higher, cat.

She’s only made the cat mad now!

Gonna have to be an inside job.

We used to do this when we had cats and our children were small.

Everyone loves a challenge.

Those times when I’ve had trees, I did it as much for my cats as I for myself. And interestingly, there were never any problems.

Our dog is neurotic. The cat is psychotic. The cat prefers to live in the garage, so no problem. The dog is afraid of plastic bags. So we hung some from the tree for a couple of days. He now stays away.

O tannen-bummer!

OK…JUMP UP onto it. It’ll hit her on the wy down…

Draw the same thing with kids. ;)

It’s Christmas—put a few non-fragile decoy ones down low for kitty.

In my experience, this is a recipe for Christmas tree devastation.

The reason I don’t put my tree up anymore.

I had many cats and only one of them caused any trouble with the trees she would climb inside so I had to wire it to the wall every year and at least she stopped knocking it down but she could make it shake.

It’s either that… or the tree gets hung from the ceiling!!

Don’t laugh, I used to use fishing line to anchor the top of the tree to the ceiling.

As if that would stop him!

It doesn’t matter. The cat will climb the tree and knock them off. Only makes it “slightly” less convenient.

Hmm, I bet if I claimed to the top of her backrest I could jump to that pointy thingy on the top.

There is another solution, but I suppose she wants the cat.

My darn cats climb up inside the tree and knock the balls off

We don’t have any breakable ornaments. The lower branches get extra-durable items like bells and plastic candy canes. The middle branches have ornaments that are twist-tied in place. Neither the dogs nor the cats seem to bother the upper portion of the tree.

The glass and fragile ornaments get hung over doorways or some other place out of reach. The tree gets cat-proof ornaments.

Oh, like that will stop a cat. “Game on,” they think…

Works for the dogs, but not the cats. We stopped doing a tree after our GSD ate an ornament

I’ve never had a cat that climbed the Christmas tree, and they have always ignored the Christmas ornaments. Maybe I have been lucky.