I have always been a person who not only celebrates, but also decorates lavishly for Christmas. As I have gotten older, I decorate sooner. I mean, why go to all that trouble to put up something that has to be taken down in a week or two? So Christmas decorations go up at our house almost as early as they do in the stores. Some time not long after Halloween. On the other hand, the tree usually goes up on Thanksgiving, usually during the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. (It comes down during the Rose Parade on New Year’s Day.)

This year, the tree went up the day after Halloween. Why? We had a five month old kitten that I knew would want to climb the tree. That kind of kitten…. (A couple of decades ago we had another young fur-baby who went up a tree—and he even managed to bring it down, too.)

By Halloween our new kitty had figured out how to get up on top of the kitchen cabinets, so a tree was an easy challenge. Up went the tree and up went the kitten. It’s a white tree and Scamp is a black kitten. Easy to see and equally easy to aim at with the squirt gun. After a couple of weeks the ornaments started going up. After another week some more went up. A little positive reinforcement dampened his enthusiasm to denude the tree.

The tree skirt was a different challenge. Scamp loved bunching up the felt material. After a while the presents went out. No more tree skirt fun, but he loves racing around the tree. Any of the soft-wrapped presents had to be rewrapped. Scamp figured out that the presents are a perfect set of ‘stairs’ so he occasionally climbs the tree. It’s like having little children in the house again.

Susan Kite is a member of Author’s Guild of Tennessee and has five published works of fiction. Find them: https://www.amazon.com/default/e/B00J91G0ZU/