My cat climbs the Christmas tree – How to avoid it

The holidays are approaching and with them the moment to put the Christmas tree and decorate it. But this family moment that we love to prepare is synonymous with difficulties for many cat owners: these naughty and playful creatures like to climb our Christmas tree or destroy it a bit as a game.

To avoid that this long-awaited moment becomes a little nightmare for our acrobatic cats, in we are going to give you a series of tips for prevent your cat from climbing on the Christmas tree. Keep reading and discover our proposals:

The first step will choose the most appropriate tree type for us and for our cat.

Between a natural Christmas tree and a synthetic one maybe the latter is the safest option: your needles are less sharp than those of a natural tree, and you can choose a small one, which can be a good option if your cat is a puppy or if things go very badly and the tree falls.

Choose a tree that has a very firm and solid base to keep it as stable as possible in case your cat jumps on it. If you still choose a natural tree, keep in mind that your cat could get poisoned if it gets to drink water from the tree and absolutely avoid using fertilizers or products that could be harmful to your cat.

We advise you to avoid very tall trees, because if in spite of everything the cat climbs the tree and it falls, the damage would be greater.

Then we will try to place the tree in the most appropriate place to prevent our cat from climbing. We have to place our tree in a clear place with space around avoiding objects or furniture nearby because they would be a strong temptation for the cat that could climb on them and jump on our tree.

It would be ideal fix the tree to the ceiling or the wall, to give it more stability and prevent it from falling easily. If possible we should close the room in which the tree is at night or when no one is present to prevent the cat having access to it.

When you’re done, let the feline smell and explore everything. Reinforce it if you do not try to climb with a “very good” or with a caress, but, if you try to climb. The best thing will be to place some kind of object that prevents you from getting too close, like a small fence.

Now that we have placed our tree, we are going to cover the base of the tree with aluminum foil. The presence of aluminum paper has some repulsive effect for the cat because he does not like the texture of the aluminum foil or nail his nails in it, so we avoid climbing at the base to climb the tree. It also allows you to avoid urinating at the base of the tree.

It was time to choose the decorations for our tree. First we must avoid ornaments that are too attractive for our cat, like objects that hang a lot, that rotate or make noise, and it is better to avoid electric garlands because they attract a lot of attention from cats and could be very dangerous for them. We will also avoid objects filled with catnip (Nepeta cataria) would be very dangerous for the health of our cat, and we will be careful with decorating the tree with food or sweets: chocolate is toxic to our cat.

We advise you to use cloth ornaments, or ornaments unbreakable, Y de big size to prevent the cat from swallowing them, such as dolls or big balls. After putting the tree we advise you to let your cat get used to it a few days before placing the ornaments.

If you have more questions about Christmas ornaments and the safety of your cat, we recommend visiting dangerous Christmas ornaments for pets.

At last the fun time came to decorate our tree and place the ornaments. If possible, it would be better to decorate the tree when the cat is not present: seeing us move the ornaments would greatly increase their interest and cause them to see them as toys.

We also advise you that do not decorate the lower third of the tree, more or less the part that is at eye level of the cat: as there is no object at your level, it will decrease your curiosity and your interest in the tree and thus the probability that you will skip the Christmas tree.

Discover how to make a homemade scraper for cats and surprise your cat this Christmas with an unexpected gift. We also recommend you visit cat toys to get ideas this Christmas.

If you want to read more articles similar to My cat climbs the Christmas tree – How to avoid it, we recommend that you enter in our behavior problems section.