Cats and Christmas Trees
andreas strauss
December 11, 2019
The holidays are here and the cat has never been in so much danger. Christmas trees hold a whole host of potential dangers for your cat. In this post we’re going to discuss how to keep your cat (and your tree) safe during the holiday season.
Potential Christmas Dangers For Your Cat
- Your Christmas tree
- Tree water
- Ornaments
- Plants
- Fire
- Christmas lights
The Christmas Tree
Cats are energetic creatures and I’d bet that yours takes of running through the house for no good reason. These are called cat zoomies. They aren’t a problem (and in my house we think it’s pretty funny). But sometimes this energy can manifest itself as climbing.
And what’s a cat to climb but for the Christmas tree? It might not be a problem if you have your tree anchored down well, but a charging cat might knock some trees over.
This is a pretty easy danger to protect against: we recommend placing something around your tree to make sure that the cat can’t sprint up to it. Wrapped gifts are the perfect protection since they’re cute and can double as cat barriers.
Tree Water
Another thing you’ll have to watch out for is your tree water. Drinking tree water won’t just dry up your tree; it might end up hurting your cat.
There’s a good chance that live trees were sprayed with pesticides and fertilized at some point. That’s great news for the tree, but your cat’s stomach won’t be so happy about it.
We recommend covering your tree water with something like aluminum foil to make sure that your cat doesn’t get a dose.
Ornaments
This danger might be greater depending on what kind of ornaments you’re using.
There’s always the chance that your cat will see something dangling and use it for a toy. No big deal for most kinds of ornaments; if it’s low enough for the cat to reach it, falling won’t do much harm.
But your cat might think that some ornaments are edible and try to take a bite. As you might expect, ornaments do not make the best cat food for indoor cats. We recommend placing your valuable, important, or fragile ornaments high and out of your cat’s reach. This makes sure that your ornaments and your cat stay safe.
Plants
Christmas plants come out during the holidays at my house. We always put up little Christmas trees where we can find space.
The biggest danger here is for your plants, not your cat. Kitties have a bad rep for knocking things over and Christmas plants aren’t an exception.
We recommend placing your plants in places where:
- Your cat can’t reach
- Your cat doesn’t go
- Your cat has enough space to walk around it
Putting plants on easy-to-reach, narrow places is a recipe for disaster. The cat won’t be hurt so much, but there’s a chance that any plants could call onto something (or someone) important.
And we always run the risk that our cats will try to take a nibble out of any plant leaves, real or not. It’s best for everyone to keep these out of the way.
Fires
Christmas is a time for fire and candles. Again, the risk here isn’t so much for your cat as for you.
Like most mammals, cats don’t care much for catching on fire. It’s a 0/10, not fun experience. So your cat won’t get too close to any flames.
But candles place a risk. Candles in jars and candelabras can both get a good shove from your kitty and end up on the floor. Your cat isn’t an intentional arsonist, but good intentions only go so far.
As with plants, we recommend keeping any fires out of reach or lighting them when you know the cat won’t be around. Your cat won’t burn him or herself, but he or she might knock something down.
Christmas Lights
Christmas lights pose a few potential dangers that all root back to the same source: your cat could start playing with them.
He or she might start playing with them and get tangled up. Once you pick yourself up off the floor from laughing, you can untie your cat and all is well. But your cat might start clawing and biting the wires.
Then everyone has a serious problem.
We recommend making sure that your cat can’t reach any Christmas light wires. At my house, we plug the tree up in front of a power outlet and then block it all off with wrapped gifts for family members and friends.
This helps make sure that our cat isn’t climbing the tree (as mentioned above) but also isn’t playing with any kind of wires that are near the ground.
Christmas With Your Cat
Christmas shouldn’t be a danger to your kitty. Watch out for the things listed above and everyone will come away happier, safer, and with a better holiday season.
Let us know in the comments below – what do you do to protect your Christmas from your cat?
This guest post was provided by https://kittybest.com/
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