The Child and I decorated our Christmas tree tonight. It’s our fourth Christmas in this house. When I signed the initial lease I also acquired two cats. You’ve met Monty; his former colleague Lola passed away in January. She was the chaos muppet of the duo and a complete menace at Christmas. Here she is last year, casually cruising by the tree, not plotting, oh no, not at all:
I swear to God she knocked that damn tree down five times last year – and bear in mind that we take it down on January 6th. It’s not in the house that long! This year, given Lola’s absence and Monty’s studied disinterest in new shiny things, I figured we were safe. Up went the lodgepole pine, on went the baubles, and I stood back to take a photo:
I went into the kitchen to empty the dishwasher. Monty trit-trotted past me into the living room. I thought nothing of it, until I heard the distinct sound of a cat tongue lapping at water. I had just registered that the only water in the room was in the base of the Christmas tree stand when I heard the CRASH.
Monty went streaking by me, turned a hard right and barrelled out the cat door. “Jesus fucking CHRIST,” I snarled, at the exact moment that The Child was emerging from her bath.* She hates swearing. She charges for it.
“Was that an f-bomb?” she said, eyes narrowing as she calculated my fine.
“YES IT FUCKING WAS,” I said, as I lifted the tree back to vertical.
“Well, you are salty today,” she sniffed. She picked her way around the disaster zone, went upstairs, changed, and came back down to help me set things to rights.
“Thank you for helping,” I said. “I’m sorry I yelled.”
“You owe me ten pounds,” she replied.
All’s well. My main concerns were Monty’s safety (he’s fine, just a big glossy idiot) and the dozen or so c. 1947 vintage ornaments from my grandparents’ tree (those are also all intact, thankfully).
Have any funny, pet-related festive fiascoes to share? That is what this thread is for.
*We live in a semi-detached house built in the 1930s, which around here tend to have an awkwardly placed bathroom. Ours is downstairs, just off the kitchen.
Authors In Our Midst – Chris Gerrib – A Novel This Time, not Science Fiction
scav
Late-breaking winter cleanup job at a neighbors resulted in tons of holly to deck the local halls with. Win-Win. Only pet involvement was their cats, thrilled to bits by the TV show of me removing begonia tubers from the window-boxes.
trollhattan
Kitchen-bathroom combo brings families together in unorthodox ways.
Also, saves lots of plumbing money and effort when constructing.
Cats are innate terrorists. That’s just science.
Baud
Damn inflation.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
My wife was hosting a book club (only time, the meetup person in charge of this doesn’t like my wife, is a control freak so the fact she even “allowed” her to host it was something) meeting earlier this year. Ten or so women in our cozy living room.
In comes our old, blind cat, sweetest, gentlest soul of a cat among the 30-40 we’ve had over 40+ years together. Chirpy promptly hacks up a hairball in the midst of it. Everybody laughed.
Except the organizer (who never goes to these because she doesn’t read) who’s never asked for my wife to host another.
Everybody coming to the Denver meetup on 3 Jan will get to meet Chirpy.
Oh, I just remembered another. We were hosting a small Super Bowl party in probably 1987 in our apartment. We had an old school, wood entertainment center. Our orange tabby was asleep on top. He rolled off the back he was so asleep (despite the football game) and fell down shearing the plug from cord cutting off the TV.
My wife took about 15 minutes to jury rig everything back together. He looked incredibly sheepish the rest of the evening.
Rose Judson
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: Those are both fabulous stories, especially the second one.
Back when I was still married, I was showing my then-MIL around the garden I’d just planted, and my cat at the time, a big lovable tuxedo who hated birds (I have a type) took down a pigeon right in front of us and began ripping it to bits. My former MIL literally clutched her pearls and shrieked.
CaseyL
These are all wonderful stories!
sukabi
@Baud: she’s looking to fund her future. 😀
Central Planning
@Rose – do you owe her ten pounds for written swears? Asking for a friend…
Anonymous At Work
How many British houses, pre-1950, DON’T have awkwardly placed rooms?
*stayed in Britain in a place with fridge in hallway nook near kitchen with 3 bedrooms upstairs, and both upstairs and downstairs full bathrooms.
Doc Sardonic
We have a small wind chime ornament that used to go on the tree before we stopped decorating, to alert us to the presence of one or more of the cats in tree. Tree was also supported by a 3 point tether arrangement so if the big one got in it the tree would stay vertical.
Ryan
10 pounds aren’t what they used to be, unless she’s ahead of all of all of us and Trump’s Make America Tariffs Again bears fruit. Adorable tale nonetheless.
SpaceUnit
Not a pet story but when I was five years old I crawled under the Christmas tree to plug it in. It was in a corner of the living room and the outlet was behind it. My brother who was two years older freaked out and tried to stop me even though I’d already plugged the damn thing in a dozen times. Guess he thought I was going to electrocute myself or something. We tussled and ended up knocking over the tree. Our parents were really mad. I remember it like it was yesterday.
We still fight every year about who’s fault it was. It’s become a Christmas tradition.
ETA: We had a dog named Charlie who watched with great interest. Does that make it a pet story?
Spanky
Since you asked, here’s Bandit versus the Christmas Balls.
Ohio Mom
We were just serenaded by a group of carolers. I saw them in the subdivision earlier, it took them a while to make it over to our house. Finding we are Jewish (the gold cardboard menorah hanging on the door gave us away), they sang three Hanukah songs with great gusto.
Before they started, I asked if they were affiliated with a group, raising money for a cause, what brought them here? They insisted they weren’t but when they left, they gave us a bag of goodies.
It was a wierd assortment — a tissue pack, memo pad, some random candies (smarties and a mini chocolate bar), two homemade dreidel cookies, a bag of Hanukah gelt, and a telltale card from “World Changers Church.” I am not surprised they were prepared for Jewish families, our neighborhood has a lot of us.
If I ever see them again, I plan to ask about the prohibition against lying. I enjoyed their singing but finding out I was being proselytized leaves a bad taste.
Lovely tree by the way, Rose.
H.E.Wolf
In my mid-20s, when I still looked younger than my age, I worked in production control at a small high-tech startup. Basically my job was to run laps around the departments in Manufacturing, and solve all the bottlenecks to the best of my ability, to which end I learned how to say “hello, how are you” in various languages. (Also, “the boss is a cabbage head”, but that’s another story.)
I once stomped out to the loading dock after an extremely infuriating encounter with somebody, and said that exact 3-word swear.
The macho employees in Shipping and Receiving all clutched their metaphorical pearls in faux horror, and called me “Sailor” for months.
MagdaInBlack
Rose, I am delighted to learn you swear just like me =-)
Rusty
My daughter made salt dough to make Christmas ornaments with a paw print for each of our pets, the two dogs, Juno and Bear, and the two cats, Winnie and Higgs. Went great, good impressions, she baked them and we had them up off the counter where the big dog Juno can’t reach them. Or so we thought. Came home from church to find the pan on the floor and no ornaments. Recipe is one part salt to two parts flour and some water, so lots and lots of salt, enough for an overdose. Off to the emergency animal vet then!! They made both dogs vomit and then blood work. The small dog Bear was fine, seems likely Juno, the big dog ate all the ornaments (Bear and Juno are in August of the calendar, Calendar B, I think). So Juno gets to stay overnight for treatment. At emergency vet prices. The total is very painful, there goes a hunk of my bonus I’m hoping for. Why do we have pets? (Even I’m missing Juno right now). Sigh.
geg6
None of our pets have ever caused a problem with the Christmas tree and Lovey has never even seen one because I quit decorating for the holidays years ago (except a wreath on the door). But I decided that, since much of this year sucked so bad, I would get a new tree and put it up. So I ordered one of those pre-lit, pre-decorated ones that just folds up with everything on it for easy set up and takedown (I have some sentimental ornaments that I’ll add). I ordered it on the 8th, saw it in the warehouse in CA on the tracker on the 10th and…there it has sat until Friday when I saw it made it to OH. When I checked this morning, it had finally made it to Pittsburgh and was on the truck for delivery. It is supposed to finally get here by 8 pm tonight. I was really worried it wouldn’t get here before Christmas. And it may not because it’s FedEx and they suck.
John Revolta
“TEN FUCKING POUNDS??!!!?…………………………………………………oh, fuck”
HeleninEire
I’m in the new Moynihan Train hall in NYC. Wow…they did a great job. Meeting my sister who is coming in for Christmas. The place is PACKED of course. And of course her Amtrak train is late soooooo as it follows…..of course I am in the bar! $17.42 for a glass of wine! LOL. I truly do love New York. And that’s not snark!
zhena gogolia
@geg6: Oh, don’t say that, my igourmet cheese (due on Dec. 18) is supposed to arrive tomorrow via FedEx.
zhena gogolia
@HeleninEire: Those situations can be fun. (She says, sitting in her recliner with a glass of (much less expensive because it came out of a bottle I bought) wine.
HeleninEire
@Anonymous At Work: Same in Dublin. A lot of those houses were built before indoor plumbing. When indoor plumbing came around they put the bathroom next to the kitchen cuz it was way easier to plumb everything at once.
HeleninEire
@zhena gogolia: I’m having a great time. I wasn’t gonna come out to meet her because it’s 15° in NY right now. But even though I will see her throughout the week I always like to have one-on-one time with her.
Baud
@John Revolta:
Recursive profiteering.
Miss Bianca
@John Revolta: lol!
ETA: That would be me!
zhena gogolia
@HeleninEire: that’s great
zhena gogolia
Rose does great threads.
Soprano2
My mother got two kittens sometime in the mid-90’s. We put up a tree at her house every Christmas. Those two ran up the tree and toppled it over. Mother took all the ornaments and lights off it and threw it out in the back yard (it was a real tree). She was so traumatized by the experience that she never had a tree again!
Scout211
The next door neighbors to our first home had cats and a big fluffy, goofy dog. They had so many problems with tipped over Christmas trees due to either the cats climbing the tree or the big, clumsy dog running into the tree that they started hanging their Christmas tree upside down from a hook on the ceiling. It was very odd looking, with lights and ornaments, all upside down.
Prescott Cactus
I wish I could lose 10 pounds . . .
Splitting Image
One of my favourite little Christmas stories is Mark Evanier’s account of meeting Mel Torme in Farmers Market in Los Angeles.
If you don’t read Evanier’s blog, he’s a comic book writer and director of television cartoons. He has the best stories about working with Jack Kirby, Daws Butler, Mel Blanc, and a whole bunch of others.
He is also the main creator of Scrappy Doo. If you’re a certain age, you should probably read his six-part account of how that happened.
NotMax
Christmas tree?
There’s an app for that.
:)
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@MagdaInBlack:
https://flic.kr/p/2qBnuSV
scav
One appt in Chicago I looked at had the refrigerator entirely out if the kitchen and all alone at the end of a dead-end hall. Never figured that one out. Building couldn’t have been older than the teens and those tended to be sane if smallish.
Mischief the three legged siamese never knocked over the tree, he merely systematically ate off all the feathered tails of the cardinals attached to same. This was about the same year that Stevie unwrapped about a third of the vintage garland of little packages. Both apparently lived in hope. The vintage garland still goes up every year.
zhena gogolia
@Splitting Image: Wow, that is terrific, thank you.
Prescott Cactus
That’s why they gave you the smarties and a mini chocolate bar, two homemade dreidel cookies and a bag of Hanukah gelt, to kill that bad taste.
Ruckus
@H.E.Wolf:
As an actual ex-sailor – USN, and working in machine shops for about 60 yrs, swearing is not just within my language range, it at one time was the most practiced words that would come out of my mouth. And I believe that the USN time gave me the most practice – even with a few years long head start working. If I remember correctly, the only time swear words were not used in the USN was when official communication was happening officer to enlisted or ship to ship communication while refueling/restocking/transferring someone at sea. (Transferring didn’t happen often but it was interesting to watch, and I’m so very glad I NEVER had to do that) We had a fella that took a fall out at sea and broke his leg or knee, can’t remember which, and had to go by transfer basket – a wire basket that most adult humans could lay down in – to another ship so that he could be taken to hospital. It did NOT look like fun, not in any way, shape or form.
zeecube
@Doc Sardonic: With 2 curious cats and 2 dogs who go nuts every time they hear tha UPS truck rumbling down the street, we secure our Xmas tree and presents underneath with cicular dog fence. So far, seems to be working.
MagdaInBlack
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: That’s me. Last year for Christmas, a friend sent me a ” fuckety” kitchen towel, printed with a string of fuckety fucks. She knows me well.
Eta: I’m an office manager for a body shop, I am not alone in my colorful language.
twbrandt
@Splitting Image: oh that Mel Tormé story is fabulous!
dnfree
@H.E.Wolf: Not a pet story, but I think the only time I ever swore in front of a client (when I worked for a consulting firm), there was an issue we had tried to explain repeatedly to the Engineering Manager. Finally one day the light dawned, and he said “You mean…..?” I said “No shit, Sherlock!”, I was so astounded.
Trivia Man
Our first year with kittens and we had a new house. A 1920’s bungalow with lots of real wood everywhere. Decided to put the tree on the sun porch, great view of the street from there with lots of windows. Both cats turned out to be very interested i climbing and we had several topples before we even had any decorated. My idea – screw a hook in the cross beam above and run some string down to a lasso around the top of the tree. Success! Still had climbers but it stayed upright that year and several more after.
coin operated
I’ve had maybe a half dozen Maine Coons in my life. None of them were ever interested in the Christmas tree. They were, however, prolific gift-givers all year long.
MagdaInBlack
The first year we had a cat at Christmas, my mother made her a large catnip filled mouse. That cat wrestled and chewed on that mouse for a good hour, then stood up and staggered off to the bedroom. We did not see her til the next morning Must have been some high end catnip.
Not so much fiasco as inexperienced user Christmas story.
BellaPea
The first year we had a real Christmas tree in our gated community house, I only had one cat, our sweet Bella (left us in January 2021). She would sit quietly under the tree, just peacefully looking around. We decided to get an artificial tree the next year, when we had adopted our rowdy P’Nut (also passed this year in February). We went to visit my mother-in-law for Christmas, and when we came back, the entire tree was knocked over and several ornaments were broken. Bella looked at me like “I’m sorry, I’m not a part of this accident.” P’Nut did not give a S**t. So I was careful from then on to put the tree in a place where kitties could not get to it. These past few years, we have had a small tree that sits on the console in the window. Our current beautiful kitty, Callie, will jump up to sit beside it, but does not bother it. Lucky, I guess third time is the charm.
H.E.Wolf
@Ruckus:
The person in Manufacturing with the real USN line of language was my co-worker Rachael, the 60-something wife of a career Navy man. She cast me into the shade!
H.E.Wolf
@dnfree:
*snort* :-)
karen marie
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: Might I recommend mineral oil for your cat? Three out of four cats I’ve had would drink it out on their own. It’s a marvel.
I have a bowl that probably holds a tablespoon which I leave next to the cat’s food bowl. They help themselves. My current cat (three years old) has never puked up a hair ball, probably because I’ve been more consistent with refilling the mineral oil bowl. The cats don’t drink it up all at once. It takes at least several weeks before the bowl is empty.
I started this with my “first” cat back in the mid ’80s on recommendation from a vet. I told him I’d been giving her vegetable oil to help the hairballs down, and he was aghast. Apparently veg oil is absorbed by the intestine, where mineral oil is not, so it can glue hair pulled through from the stomach onto the side of the intestine, causing a blockage.
The mineral oil does not create any problem such as loose stool or greasy butt but does a great job in pulling hair through the cat’s GI tract so it’s pooped out instead of piling up in their tum-tum and transformed into a surprise gift when you get out of bed in the middle of the night or in front of company.
dnfree
@MagdaInBlack: What annoyed me was when I was the only female in a meeting, and one of the other participants would swear, then look directly at me and apologize in a fake tone of voice. “Oops, sorry, dnfree!” I would look directly back and say “Either apologize to everyone or to no one.” It was just one of those coded ways of saying “Too bad we have to have meetings where women are present, because it cramps our manly style.”
Ealbert
@HeleninEire:
The reason you see bathrooms off the kitchen in older homes is because when they added plumbing to the home, they took over the walk in pantry so they didn’t have to make a new room or take over a bedroom. And, as you said it was close to the kitchen so all the plumbing was in one small area.
karen marie
@Soprano2: My solution to that problem was to only put lights on the tree and no other decorations. I haven’t had a tree in over a decade. I miss having a lovely live tree in my living room. Unfortunately, when I gave away my decorations, I foolishly gave away my tree stand.
frosty
@Ealbert: That’s the way ours was set up when we moved in. When we added an addition to the back we closed off the former pantry door and made a new bathroom entrance off the family room. Results: It felt more private and even better: lots more kitchen counter space!
A Good Woman
Decades ago I had an orange & white cat named Tulip. I took her, and her buddy Demon, home with me for Christmas. Neither bothered the tree, although Demon helped himself to a large potted plant that he decided was a better kitty litter box than the one I had prepared. Tulip spent the visit behind the tree in a corner surveying her new domain. She came out for food and the litter box. The rest of the time she watched us from behind gifts and the tree trunk.
Ruckus
@H.E.Wolf:
I really, really, REALLY do not think that the gender of the person that had been in the USN makes a whisker’s worth of difference in the use of swear words. It doesn’t seem to in real life either…… possibly that’s just my experience….
VeniceRiley
@BellaPea: I am on team tiny tree as well. It’s worrying free! But Reggie did get into my travel bag and chewed the head off an electric toothbrush and swallowed it today.
I look forward to discovering it on the garden soon.
Wife worked the weekend, and was busy catching would be present givers flinging tennis balls full of drugs over the fence, and other shenanigans not fit for a family blog.
Geminid
I saw a neat photo today. The caption:
McCarthy and Derderian are sitting on a floor with a hookah in front of them. Derderian is playing an electric guitar while McCarthy gazes at him. Paul looks really stoned, like maybe there’s some hashish in the hookah.
I saw this on a twitter account titled “MENA Visuals,” MENA being Middle East-North Africa. It’s run by an Egyptian woman based in Alexandria.
She posts old photographs of all kinds, ranging from a woman harvesting saffron from a meadow full of crocuses to Harlem residents greeting Egyptian President Nassar in 1960, when he visited New York. She also puts up short music videos like:
I know a lot of people don’t mess with Twitter, but maybe somebody is reposting MENA Visuals content like the picture of McCarthy on other platforms.
H.E.Wolf
@Ruckus:
I share your opinion!
Yutsano
I’m missing the shenanigans my parents’s kittens are getting up to. They’re both part Siamese although only the sister is the vocal one. Thanks to the knucklefucks in Congress I will be working tomorrow. Then I will be driving home on Christmas Eve. After that I got a waiver from my boss to work* at their place until the weekend. So it will be relaxing.
*The main IRS computer shuts down for reprogramming on December 27th. It won’t come back online until January 2nd. So it’s basically three days of doing not a lot.
WTFGhost
I had a rough time with a couple of cats in the ‘hood, Rumpleteaser and Mungojerrie, I believe. You wouldn’t think a cat could fire a .38 special bullet, much less conceal the teeny gun that fired it, by… let’s not go there.
Thankfully, when word hit the street that Ol’ Deuteronomy got kitnapped, I found a showboat magician who distracted the crowd, while I pulled off a cunning rescue… then, who could resist? I loaded him into Mr. Mistoffelees “reappear” chamber, before anyone knew he was missing. So they all thought Mistoffelees did the whole thing by magic!
What?
Well, maybe it *was* a dream, but it was far more interesting than the cat antics I’ve experienced, so there.
Kayla Rudbek
@karen marie: I used to intermittently put a little Vaseline on Mister Dairy Junkie’s front paw so he wouldn’t get hairballs. He didn’t overly complain, just licked it off, and he was a loud Siamese cat so you always knew when he was unhappy.
WTFGhost
@dnfree: Brutal honesty, I think you just capsule-summarized Trump’s victory. Too many people thinking too much stupidity, and they they heard of maturity, and want no truck with it.