Photo by Shannon via Flickr (Creative Commons License)

I thought about putting up a Christmas tree this year, and then I just started to laugh. A person with seven cats, four of them teenagers, would have to be seriously deluded to put up a tree and think it would stay standing for even one night. I can’t keep paintings on the wall below shoulder height around here, much less something as familiar for climbing as an actual tree!

So far this year my cats have broken three cereal bowls, two cat-food bowls, one nearly full bottle of vanilla, a pair of 2.5 magnification reading glasses, a really lovely serving bowl my cousin Rapp made for me in 1982, and a jar of homemade grape jelly. That’s just in the kitchen. I came home from a trip last weekend late at night, unpacking most of my bag, and then fell into bed. In the morning, it took me half an hour to find my toothbrush, located as it was in my ditty bag, which turned out to be under the bed where someone had dragged it by its ribbon-like drawstring.

Speaking of ribbons, who but a cat-lover would lock herself in the bathroom to wrap presents and then store them in the car? Vast quantities of red, green and silver ribbon have been systematically unspooled across my living room floor when I wasn’t looking, and sometimes even when I was looking. Anything faintly resembling a string is fair game, which is why sometimes I will find a used teabag under the bathtub. This will teach me to try to re-use my tea bags, the way my grandmother taught me.

What’s a Xmas decoration-loving woman to do? Well, I put a swag on the front door, so I get the mingled scent of pine, balsam, cedar and juniper berries when I enter and leave the house. So far the cats have ignored this, despite the little bell on a string of tin letters that spell out N-O-E-L which I tied to the greenery. I am intending to hang, but have not yet hung, another swag high up on a beam in the living room where I can display a few of the most iconic family ornaments without danger of ruin. The Christmas cards I’ve received are lying flat on a tray on my dining room table, quite covered with muddy paw prints.

And we haven’t even gotten to the food. Who knew cats liked pecans? Or lukewarm egg nog latte dregs? Or kale for heaven’s sake, which isn’t even a Xmas dish? All seven cats, even the one whose leg will probably have to be amputated in a few months, can and will execute a standing broad jump to the kitchen counter at any moment of the day or night. I can’t leave one fish oil pill out of its bottle as a reminder to take it, because the clear golden lozenge will appear underfoot the next morning, drained of its gooey center, the outside collapsed in on itself like a deflated balloon. You would think these cats had been starving in the streets for a month instead of having unlimited dry food in their bowls and a quarter can each of wet food every single day at 5 o’clock. The yelling and screaming demonstration they put on when I open the cat food cans is a bizarre but potent combination of baby bird and piranha.

Even though it’s almost Xmas, I have not put out little stockings for my cats. I’m a sap and a sucker for their whims, yes. My neck is covered with hickeys where two of the kittens still try to nurse. On cold nights I let them curl up next to my head on the pillow and sometimes they drool into my hair. I do indeed recite poetry to them in both English and Norwegian. But at a certain point, even I draw the line.

They can have cream on Xmas morning. Maybe I’ll split a can of real tuna into seven chunks as a special treat. But no stockings. Absolutely not.