I'm Going To Just Tie Him to the Tree

Did you know that Christmas trees can talk? They can. They say, "Here, kitty kitty!" over and over and over again in a high-pitched tone that only cats can hear.

Ali has confirmed my theory on this.

She says fake Christmas trees taste like chicken.

Fortunately, I am the Goddess of Christmas Trees, so I have a very complicated cat boredom system in place that works pretty well. I set the trees up early and ornament-free. Once the cats are over the novelty of the great indoors moving into the dining and family rooms, I decorate them and then quickly make them completely inaccessible with a mountain of wrapped gifts.

It works. Really. I haven't caught Ali munching on chicken-flavored tree limbs since the day I took those photos, which was like three weeks ago. She looks, but she does not touch.

Powder, in his infinite wisdom as the elder statesman of the house, is all *yawn* and  "Trees haven't been exciting since my youth, way back in the days of those really cute girls with their blond hair and their annoying 'MmmBop' song." (Powder isn't much of a boy band fan.)

All he wants to do is sit by the Christmas trees. All. the. time.

Can't find Powder? Look by the tree. He never moves.

Or, that's what I thought.

Saturday morning we started herding animals so that we could run a few errands. Everybody with four legs has to go to the basement when we're not home because they're a bunch of jerks who enjoy trashing my house. We couldn't find Powder, though.

He wasn't under the tree. And, frankly, that was the only real possibility this time of year. He's got an ass grove built into the carpet there and everything. We were in a hurry, though, so we had to just leave and assume he was setting up a revenge plot against the dogs under a bed somewhere or something.

When we returned home several hours later, there was still no sign of him. Anywhere. The Christmas tree was all weepy and sad without it's partner, the dogs ran under the beds without being caught in a steel trap, and there was food left in the cat bowl.

Clearly Powder had ninja'd his way out of the house. Again. He has escaped without notice four times this year. Each time, we returned home to find him all, "Waaaah! SAVE ME!" on the front porch. Apparently he wants out of the house, but doesn't know what to do with himself when he succeeds.

Except, this time, he figured out something to do. He was NOWHERE.

We drove around the neighborhood.

We searched the woods behind our house.

We searched yards to and fro.

No fat white cat.

I even stood on the front porch and opened a can of wet cat food. That ALWAYS works, even though Powder is allergic to wet food and hasn't been allowed to eat it in over a decade. He's an optimist, that one.

He finally showed up after Mr. Husband walked around shaking a can of treats for half an hour. Which, of course, the stupid cat is also allergic to and not allowed to eat. But, whatever.

Nearly 24 hours. Powder was locked out of the house and stuck in the cold for nearly 24 hours.

He went straight back to his spot under the Christmas tree.

Until he tried to escape again today.

Me.

Changing Perfect

I'm a little anal retentive about our Christmas trees. Yes, plural. TREES. Only Classic Winnie the Pooh ornaments can go on the Pooh tree. Only plush Boyd's Bear ornaments can go on the Boyd's tree. There is a tree that is for "everything else," but even that is controlled to within an inch of my life.

Alexis, for her part, has her very own tree. She is completely in charge of picking out ornaments for it and decorating it. This serves two purposes: 1. She leaves my trees alone because LOOK! SHE HAS HER OWN TREE! IN HER ROOM! WOW! and 2. Someday she is going to look at this amazing ornament collection she has built over the years and she is going to wonder if there were any Princess ornaments left for the other little girls when she was done. (Answer: No. I think she has managed to buy every princess ornament made in the past four years.)

The point is, she has her own tree to do whatever she wants with--she moves the ornaments, picks out ones that don't match, whatever. I don't care. It's hers.

The tree that I am most anal about is the one that resides in our family room. It's the Main Tree . . . the biggest tree . . . the tree that houses all of the gifts. It's decorated in red and white and silver with a carefully orchestrated snowflake theme. Every single ornament is carefully selected based on how well it matches with the other ornaments. Each ornament is strategically placed so that identical ornaments are never too close together. I literally spend hours decorating it each year, completely going nuts with making sure it's PERFECT. P-E-R-F-E-C-T.

This year Alexis asked to help decorate the Perfect Tree.

I started twitching before the sentence was even out of her mouth.

While she had fully decorated her own tree and even helped with the others without incident, I was admittedly a little freaked out. None of the ornaments are particularly valuable, but did I mention that the tree is PERFECT? As in Martha herself would be proud of the level of anal retentive going on? Because it is THAT perfect.

I finally decided to let the eager little monster help. It was, after all, the right thing to do. Even if just thinking about it made me twitch.

Alexis perused the tubs of ornaments and finally decided she wanted to be in charge of the glass ornaments that are shaped like candy canes. I figured it was fine, especially since I have more of them than I really need.

Alexis carefully unwrapped the ornaments and even more carefully placed them on the tree as I worked on all of the other ornaments.

When she was all done, she stepped back from the tree, looked it over very carefully, and declared it, "Perfect."

I have to agree with her . . .

. . . even if twenty plus candy canes are clustered together in one spot.