Everything in the house is a toy....including the Christmas tree!

I knew when we got the Christmas tree that Rowan would assume we got him the greatest present ever, but I did not think he would be this crazy about it. As soon as it was carried inside Rowan was intrigued. He instantly poked his head out from inside his cat tower examining from a distance what all the commotion was about. After he realized it was a tree his eyes got wide with excitement. He took up shop right underneath the tree. We let him explore it for a while hoping he would lose interest, but that didn't happen. He tried to lay in the bottom row of branches, but he must have forgotten that he weighs over 11 pounds and the branches couldn't hold his weight and he fell to the ground (not to mention our beautiful noble fur now had plenty of gaps and holes, I suppose we should've spent so much time searching for the most perfect looking tree). After he put his finishing touches on the bottom branches, we shoo-ed him out so we could decorate. Obviously I should have known ornaments also double as hockey pucks, because as soon as we put them up, he took them down! You would think that shattering a glass ornament would detour him, but no, that was just as exciting. I had to chase him away from the shards of glass before he hurt himself. We then made sure all the remaining ornaments were secured tightly as possible. The next day we bought several boxes of flavored candy canes to hang on the tree. Honestly we didn't think they would be interesting enough for him to even notice, but I've been wrong before. He loved the candy canes more than the ornaments! Knocking them off the tree was a piece of cake for him, plus they come in shiny crinkley plastic wrapping that comes un-done as they break into pieces when they fall to the floor (and crinkley things are like crack to cats). He loved pawing them across the living room and underneath the tree skirt and then fetching them back out again. I will admit that seeing him carry whole candy canes across the house was pretty cute, so it was difficult to be mad at him for killing all the candy canes on the bottom half of the tree. Now that they are all gone, he seems content on just destroying the tree skirt. I'm not sure what is so threatening about a brown Walmart tree skirt, but he seriously hates it. Every day we fix the skirt and make it pretty under the tree and every day he runs and slides into it. He plays so hard in it that he un-does the velcro and it all ends up in a ball in the middle of the living room. Yesterday I even caught him beating up the tree skirt by bear hugging it and using his back legs to kick the crap out of it! But kicking the tree skirts butt apparently isn't enough, he has it out for the whole tree. I am certain that is we hadn't intervened, the entire tree would have come crashing down. He ran and dove into the tree in what seemed to be an attempt to climb to the very top, but the makers of our tree stand apparently did not test the stands ability to hold a tree up in a Bengal owners house and it started to tip with the added weight to one side if the tree. Thank goodness we were able to stabilize things before that catastrophe occurred.

Next years plans include:
No candy canes
Plastic bulbs
No tree skirt
Wall anchoring kit from home depot!