Editorial: My Christmas tree is cat-free and yours should be too

My daughter made us the perfect catt-free Christmas tree this year. Photo / Ilona Hanne

I love Christmas trees. Real or fake, decorated perfectly to a specific theme or looking like someone threw a whole load of tinsel at it randomly ... if it’s a Christmas tree - I love it.

Over the years I have had trees that fit into all of the above categories at some time. Some years it’s been a personally selected and freshly chopped tree from a Christmas tree farm that has left a trail of devastation - pine needles on the floor and hayfever in my Christmas-allergic husband. Other years have come with the painful assembly, branch by spiky branch, of an artificial version that seems to be determined to look like anything but a lush, full and festive fir. Some years the decorations have been put on by my children, where despite my cunning plan of giving them each a section of the tree to decorate, with the messiest child getting the hidden against the wall part, the tree still looked like an elf had thrown up. Some years the decorations have been homemade ones (thanks kindy and primary school, I don’t think I have enough salt dough angels - said no parent ever) and other years they have been carefully themed by colour, style or even fictional character (Hogwarts is my home after all).

Basically, while style, decorations and type have changed, one thing has been constant - a tree has gone up on the evening of the last day of the Stratford A&P Show and stayed up until Epiphany.

This year, however, there wasn’t going to be a tree in the Hanne household as we now have seven cats, and cats and trees just don’t mix. Despite one of my friends finding a new Facebook post to tag me in daily (thanks Lorna) showing creative ways to have a tree and keep your cats away from it, I just didn’t trust the former feral felines who now rule the place to leave a tree intact for more than an hour.

My thoughtful teenage daughter, however, was determined to come up with a solution and, so a few weekends ago, after a few hours closeted in the shed with her father, along with a few splinters in her hand and a new appreciation for power tools, she proudly returned with a cat-proof Christmas tree made from an old pallet. It may be very different to previous trees we have had, but it’s absolutely perfect - and while the cats were curious about it for an hour or so, unlike other trees they have ruined, they are leaving this one alone.

So there are no cats in or under my tree this year - and that’s how it should be. Unfortunately, as any feline rescue group will tell you - the festive season is also kitten season, meaning a lot of people do indeed put a cat under their tree this year. While I am all for people adopting a pet - and I will always argue cats make the very best companion animals - I wish people would keep their trees cat, dog, mouse, rat and even lizard or turtle-free. Way back in the late 1970s, a UK charity coined the phrase “a dog is for life, not just for Christmas” but it seems the message just isn’t getting through. In Aotearoa New Zealand, the SPCA and other animal rehoming charities are inundated in early January with puppies and kittens that overnight went from being a cute Christmas gift to an unwanted 18-year responsibility come January 1.

This Christmas, please think twice before you pop that pet under the Christmas tree, and consider other gifts instead. If you need a gift for an animal lover, instead of a pet, why not make a cash or animal food donation to a local animal charity such as The Scratching Post or the Taranaki Animal Protection trust in their name? You can also talk to the local vet about purchasing snip-and-chip vouchers to give or look into gifting a year’s worth of pet insurance if someone you know is planning a pet purchase.

So whether your tree is real or fake, perfectly decorated to a theme or colour, or has fallen victim to a toddler elf let loose with the tinsel, may it be the perfect tree for you, and perfectly pet-free this Christmas.