Dear JOAN — Final 12 months when we place up our Xmas tree, our really lively and curious cat, Maisey, right away knocked it around and designed a substantial mess.

We put it back again up, cleaned up the broken ornaments and mopped up the spilled h2o, only to have her right away start herself at the tree and make a different large mess.

This went on pretty significantly all thirty day period till we eventually gave up, took all the decorations off and tied the tree to the bannister. If we failed to really like Maisey so significantly, this might have been her final Xmas with us.

But below we are yet again at yet another Xmas. We might truly like to set up a tree, but we dread a repeat of past calendar year. Is there everything we can do, other than nailing the tree to the wall, to make sure Maisey doesn’t knock it around?

Sara L., Oakland, California

Dear SARA: You could try nailing Maisey to the wall, but no, no, I’m only joking.

We can hardly blame our cats for their curiosity in our trees. For a person, it can be a tree, a thing they like to climb when outdoor, and here we’ve so properly brought 1 within for them. Subsequent, we deal with it with cat toys. We might call them ornaments and decorations, but the cats know what they are.

There are a couple points you can try. The first is to scale back your Xmas tree goals. Go for an synthetic tree, and get a more compact one particular that will as a result have less ornaments. Cats can be attracted to the aroma of a “actual” tree, and an artificial one particular would not have the similar scent attractiveness.

Synthetic trees also are safer for cats that are inclined to chew — pine needles can be unsafe if swallowed — and scaled-down trees are less possible to damage the cat if they are caught beneath a slipping 1.

Irrespective of whether you go for serious or phony, set it up, but you should not adorn it for a couple of times. Maisey could possibly lose curiosity in the tree just after a few days, and then you can gradually begin adding ornaments. I might adhere with unbreakable kinds and retain family heirlooms under wraps for now.

You might also want to make investments in a even bigger, sturdier base that will make tree-tipping much more hard. If you have a actual tree, be positive to…