The Tale of the Christmas Tree Eating Cat

Charlie is our "middle child".  We got Elvis and about 8 months later we decided it would be fun to have a "brother" for Elvis.  Elvis is ridiculously mellow and thought he'd enjoy a kitten in the house.  We went to the rescue to look at kittens and we saw a sweet little-malnourished and thin-but SPUNKY little guy.  He was so underweight and gaunt, but he had so much energy!  Naturally, we fell for him.  The next week, I brought him home.  We named him Charlie and our adventure with the crazy cat began :)  

From day uno, Charlie was a handful.  When I say handful, I actually mean two handfuls.  M was in the police academy, so I had to help Charlie adjust by my lonesome.  He slept on my face (literally) when he actually did sleep and the rest of the night he laid in the crook of my neck curled up with whiskers in my face, purring.  All.night.long.  I couldn't kick him out of our room yet though, because our sweet mellow Elvis apparently didn't like our idea of giving him a friend.  Elvis was pretty vicious toward baby Charlie for a couple months.  Now, they are the best of friends, but then, we were sure Elvis was going to off our new addition so I suffered through sleepless nights hoping this little skinny waif would calm down.  

Four years later, no dice.  He's STILL that same spunky wild crazy needy little cat.  We love him for it though.  We got him in August when he was 12 weeks old and when Christmas rolled around that year we realized we had a problem.  We put the tree (3-4 ft fake) up and Charlie ate the needles.  We moved the tree, but as you know if you have cats, they can get to anything :)  We didn't worry much until he started eating ornaments.  A glass ball fell off the tree and shattered.  Charlie ate the shards.  No I'm not kidding.  We took him to the vet and they didn't see any issues with his stomach, so we just watched him.  He had a lot of fake Christmas tree needles in his hairballs/vomit/poop, but no blood and no sign of trauma.  We shrugged it off.  When he wasn't eating tree needles and ornaments, he was napping on the tree skirt.  We couldn't (and still can't) get this Christmas loving cat away from the tree!

Every year when the tree goes up, Charlie is right there supervising the whole operation.  He plays in the tree and ornament boxes and bats around any loose tissue paper.  We usually put the tree up in mid-November and take it down in mid-Jan.  Charlie never leaves the tree's side.  Ever.  Last night we found him perched in his usual spot, on the window sill behind the tree, chewing on the fake needles.  He was nice enough to look up for me so I could get a seemingly innocent picture of him.  He's a riot!  Thankfully, he has no interest in chewing on the light strands, we'd really have a problem then. 

See, told ya ;)

*True Story*  Right after we got Charlie, I was talking to M (he was in the police academy) on my brand new (like 3 day old) cell phone.  It was plugged in to the outlet to charge and I was laying on my bed.  All of the sudden the phone died.  I thought I got a lemon.  After further investigation, I sat up and the phone cord came with me.  You know cell phone chargers don't have *that* long of charge cords.  Sweet little innocent Charlie had chewed through the power cord.  Luckily, that was the only time he chewed any kind of electrical cord...but at that point I knew we were in for trouble!

EDIT:  As I was finishing up this post I saw big brother Elvis saunter downstairs and head straight for the tree.  He looked at it for a second, rolled around on the tree skirt gazing at the lights from under the tree and jumped right on Charlie's favorite window sill, then started chewing on the tree.  Crazy cats we have.

He starts out much like Charlie.  Sweet innocent kitty face.

Then its all over.  I'm shocked we even have needles on our tree! 

Hope you and your pets/kids are enjoying this Christmas season!