The DU Lounge

Three cats in the house...
My Goblin Cat loves pipe cleaners to the point of stalking and pouncing anything that looks like one up to bottle brushes and fake Christmas trees.

Her first Christmas at about a year old, she sped bouncing through the house like a dog the with a medium sized fake branch she actually pulled up from the center "trunk" piece it hooked onto, dropping small (unbreakable) ornaments behind her.
We had that tree for 10 years, but that 7 lb kitten totally destroyed it by Christmas Eve.
We were left with duct taped and super glued trunk and branches and paper cut-out ornaments falling over the presents because little plastic or styrofoam ornaments made what was left of the tree to lean over like the Charlie Brown tree.
Next year, we got a heavier fake "pre-lit" tree.
She pulled it down the first night it was up; we found her in the happily curled around a tangle of now grotesquely bent branches, stripped of "needles" in huge patches now strewn all over the floor.
We put it up again that afternoon and put balloons and crumpled aluminum foil in the (still bent and partially bared) branches because that's supposed to keep cats out of the tree...

Nope. Next morning, tree on the floor, trunk stalk bent so lower branches wouldn't fit back in, and half the balloons popped.

We went out and bought a real tree at the exchange (cheaper than on the outside, but still - ouch!). She bounced up, took one sniff, and walked off flicking her tail.

So real trees from now on. Now that the grandkids are old enough not to break my great-grandmother's antique glass and tin ornaments, this year looks pretty classy. Only problem is that we don't want to put up the now-traditional pipe cleaner garlands...

Haele