Still Life, With Cats

We decided that today was the day to put up the Christmas tree. Naturally, we had feline assistance (click any of the pictures below to embiggen).

Here is Sherman, looking oh-so-cute and innocent.

The second Richard started pulling down the ladder to the attic, however, he knew something was up.

Richard went up to the attic. I stayed below, camera at the ready. Sherman did not disappoint.

Yes, he climbed that all by himself. Shortly after I took this picture, he was unceremoniously removed from the ladder, and the room, and the doors were shut, so that we could extract all the Christmas items from the attic without also having to extract a cat.

Nutmeg, meanwhile, found the entire process boring and wished we would quit banging around in the room so she could focus on the birds outside.

We dragged the tree box out to the living room. 0.1 nanoseconds after opening it, this is what we had.

I’m not sure what he thinks might be in there. But then, this *is* the cat who is convinced that every single thing in the universe is a Thing for Cats.

Once we’d pulled out a few sections of the tree, Rupert joined the party.

Poor Azzie. He got so confused by the whole process, and sat by the open box trying to figure out what he’d missed.

Richard stuck the first section of the tree into the stand. Sherman waited all of about 2 microseconds before climbing aboard.

He was quite pleased with himself for having scaled the tree.

He was not as pleased when we tried to convince him to get out of the way so we could put the next section into place.

Of course once part 2 was up, he had to inspect our construction techniques, and also see if it might possibly now be tall enough to get to those shelves above the windows.

Sorry, Sherman, we’ve got one more section to go. Time to move, little buddy.

Luckily, there was a giant empty box, perfect for distracting him long enough so we could get the final piece assembled.

Next came the decorating. You can see that one of the ornaments put itself on the tree. You might also notice that every other ornament on the tree is of the non-breakable, safe for cats kind. Some people can put all sorts of fragile, pretty things on their trees. Those people do not live with Sherman.

And here it is, our fully decorated Catmas tree, complete with (if you make the picture larger you can see him) cat.

‘Tis the season for Holidailies.