Jon Already Put up his Christmas Tree. Where are his Cats At?

Last week, we gave out our tips for keeping your cat out of your Christmas tree. But our Web Developer Jon had already put his tree up, and noticed that his cats were more than a little excited about it; they were jumping.

Read on for the story of Jon’s experiments as he attempted to create the perfect repellant.

In the honeymoon phase

Jon’s two cats met the tree when it arrived this December. He and his wife placed it in the corner of the living room, near the window. The window has a sill, which is roughly one foot from the tree, while a TV stand sits about two feet away from the tree. You’ll notice that Jon ignored one of our best pieces of advice (set the tree up away from jump-offs!) but we’ll forgive him.

Some detective work required

Jon noticed that the tree (which is fake) was getting all roughed up (see pic to the left), but couldn’t tell which cat was causing the trouble. He decided to find out.

“First thing, we moved the tree out from the corner a bunch to see if they were jumping into it from below. Nope. No jumping was involved,” he said.

Jon finally figured out which cat was the culprit (Molly) through the discovery of gray tufts of hair in the tree.

“Since we know that Molly is the more stupid of the two cats, we knew that we had to make the tree undesirable for her,” Jon said. No amount of scolding helps Molly get the picture.

The experiment commences

“First thing after that we tried was apple cinnamon air spray,” said Jon. “We heard that cats don’t like the bitterness of the spray. After fumigating the tree, it made the apartment smell great, but alas, didn’t keep the cat out of the tree.”

Next came an analysis of past deterrents for Molly.

“Our cats hate the feeling of sticky things. A while ago we had an issue with them scratching the door jams. To stop that, we rolled up large loops of clear packaging tape,” Jon said.

He decided to apply this principle to the tree, rolling up some smaller tape pieces and coating the lower tree branches, near the trunk where Molly climbed.

“Second, (my wife) loves to eat clementines, and we’ve heard that the smell of citrus is a deterrent for cats as well. So after she finished eating one of her clementines, we ended up wrapping the peel around the base of the trunk,” said Jon.

“That was on Sunday, and they haven’t touched the tree ever since.”

While Robin and Molly are still hanging out around the tree skirt, and their curiosity may not be totally satisfied, neither cat has climbed the tree since the addition of the tape and orange peel.

What are you special deterrents for keeping your cat out of your tree? If you’re interested in supplemental support for the kind of stress holidays can cause our animals, check out Calming chews here.