Still Life, With Cats

Woohoo, it’s December, which means it’s time for Holidailies again! This is the 24th year, and we’re still running it, and every year I’m so happy to see all the familiar faces (plus some new ones) logging back in to their somewhat dusty spaces on the internet to update us on their lives.

Not a whole lot has changed around here since last year. We’re still fostering kittens, I’m still singing with the vocal ensemble, we’re still both working from home, and I’m still doing a lot knitting and baking.

So speaking of cats and kittens, for the past 12 or so years we’ve put up a tree but not bothered to do much in the way of decorating, because ever since we got Rupert and Ingrid, we’ve had cats in the tree and there was just no point in putting anything on it since they were going to climb up and whap it off anyway. We have joked that our tree has been self-decorating, and last year we even leaned into it and basically decorated the entire tree with sparkle ball toys, which the cats then industriously knocked onto the floor and scattered all over the house throughout the month of December. It was highly entertaining for everyone involved.

This year, however, we are trying something different. This all stemmed from me stumbling across this a while back, and on a whim, I posted to Facebook ‘Who do I know who can build this for me?’

Fast forward a couple months and a string of emails with an awesome guy who does woodworking as a hobby and was happy to take on the challenge for a little cash, and here is our new Christmas tree.

It’s multiple wood pieces that can be disassembled for storage. There’s holes in the outer edges of all but the bottom tier, so we can hang ornaments (or in this case, jingle bell cat toys), and there are pieces of carpet scratching material on the main sections of each tier so the cats have something to grab onto when they’re jumping up. Plus we still have a ginormous bag of sparkle balls from last year so I spread out a dozen or so among the shelves.

The cats weren’t too sure at first, because it was different and new, but after a couple days, now we occasionally hear bells jingling and see paws coming up to whap at the toys, or hear someone thunk onto a level in order to steal yet another sparkle ball from the ‘branches’.

We’ve still got our fake tree, so maybe some year we’ll go back to that, but since it’s basically been a seasonable climbing structure for over a decade anyway, now we’ve made it official. Plus it makes the house feel a little more festive, without shedding little plastic needles everywhere, and it’s entertaining the cats, so I call it a win.

‘Tis the season for Holidailies.