Tim-ber!

We put up our reusable Christmas tree weeks ago, but between last year's Kitten Year and this year's Young Cat Year, it has fared rather poorly. Out of eight layers of prelit branches, only two layers lit up. We changed fuses, tested some bulbs, and finally had to admit that it was old by prelit tree standards. The 800 number for the tree hadn't had it listed for service calls for years.

Relatively undaunted, we left the tree up so that the cats could be "trained" to stay out of it. We made Jesse tree ornaments and considered putting them on the tree during Advent, but we didn't actually follow through. Every morning when we woke up we stood a chance of seeing one or two cats perched up high in the branches, surveying the scene with imperious authority.

Once we came back from Christmas spent at Grandma and Toot Toot's, we decided to see how the cats might do with a live tree. After all, by that time they were lying around free in many places. We lugged it home, delighted by intoxicating smell of fir and by being able to actually use something that had already been cut. For us, the Christmas season actually starts on Christmas and continues through Epiphany in January, so starting now wasn't such a big deal.

To us, anyway. The cats stayed out of it for approximately 24 hours, but this afternoon we heard the tinkling and crashing of a falling 7 foot Douglas fir. We had minimal breakage though, and while we are mourning the loss of our Belleek china snowman from my parents' trip to Ireland, we actually escaped relatively unscathed.

Those cats.