Kittens and Christmas trees

[mislis787]

This is my kitten, Tova.
Or, it was. She's much bigger now.
She's never seen a tree of any kind, since she's only about 5 months old. I've only had my tree up for 4 days (I couldn't help it, I love the Christmas season!) and she's already knocked it over, destroying an ornament and some tinsel in the process. I've ome home from work and found her sleeping in the tree!
My question is: how can I train her to stay away from it? My older cat, Ebee (seen here) has no problem with trees and hasn't even looked twice at the Christmas tree. A friend of mine who owned Ebee before I did said she never had to train him to stay away from it, he was just never bothered by it. But she had to use a spray bottle on her other cat to get her away from it. I've tried it once on Tova and now she won't let me touch her. I want to try something else. What can I do?

[Dearpie]

Cute kitties!

Do a search for Christmas Tree in just the two cat sections, and you'll get a couple of threads with this same question, and several suggestions. 

[Dawn Rae]

Growing up we couldn't keep our cat out of the Christmas tree so I ended up just running fishing line from the tree and fastening it to a curtain rod (tree was in the front window).  She could sit in it and, at least, it wouldn't tip over, break ornaments, and crush her...it worked pretty well and never even got too crooked

[mislis787]

Great, thanks for the advice!

[JessL]

My memories of Christmas as a kid include having the tree wired to the wall so it wouldn't tip over, and having a selection of fat stuffed angel ornaments that went along the bottom so when the cats batted them off the branches they didn't break.

This year will be the first year that our 2 1/2 year old male has seen a Christmas tree, so it'll be interesting...my BF is already resisting "putting ugly holes in the wall" to wire the tree.   

[tattered_teddy_bear]

I'm not sure how much you can do besides fastening it to something or keeping her in a different room.  For future x-mas trees you should stay away from tinsel, it is known to get stuck in kitties intestines and causing major problems, since you little one is so interested in the tree you should keep a VERY close eye or lose the tinsel.

good luck!
 

[Eileen]

This is what I am planning on doing for my Christmas Tree this year:


I saw this on a rabbit forum, and with my 3 cats, and newly aquired rabbit,Gulliver, I anticipate my tree not looking too good, pretttty quickly this year.
I have a white Precision puppy pen that I plan on putting around the tree.
If it works, I can enjoy my tree, and not be mad at the pets.
I think it'll probably keep the cats away, but I'll let ya know!

[fishsansbike]

haha. this is the first year that we have had a tree because i felt that my kids were finally old enough to not pull up on it and have it fall over (possibly on them) or pull the lights etc. so i get a tree get it halfway decorated (with safer lights, paper ornaments, inexpensive garland) and wake to the fake branches bent almost straight down. every day we wake up and some of the branches are on the floor, and the bottom half are always bent straight down. my adult cats don't pull on it, they just like to climb inside and sit. however my male is so heavy he bends the branches or makes them fall out.

my solution? easy! we just have a mangled christmas tree! lol i cannot really correct or deter them because they ONLY do it when we have gone to bed. (i sneaked up on them several times to check out the situation.) but the kids like the tree anyways, and they laugh at the cats messing it up.