I love Christmas, and now that he no longer has to take finals, the husband has warmed to this time of year as well.  However, our household still has one Scrooge-y hold-out.  Our cat Carolina continues to cause so much destruction to our holiday decor I must conclude that she is a Grinch.

We have tried to include her in the festivities, even going so far as to make the cat her own little stocking to hang next to ours:

That seems to be the one decoration she has left alone in her Christmas rampage.  Her violent tendencies started early.  Her very first Christmas when she was still just a kitten, she decided the tree was a seven foot cat toy.

Admittedly, when she was four pounds, this was kind of cute.  It is somewhat less charming now that she’s more like twelve pounds.  She frequently dislodges branches from our fake tree both with her attacking from the front. . .

and just from the weight of sitting for periods of time from behind . . .

Branches are easy enough to fix.  I just have to figure out where they popped out from and attach them again.  However, over the years we have had to switch from normal glass ornaments to shatterproof.  In her daily safaris into the tree, she has broken dozens of ornaments.  When we come down in the morning, this a pretty typical fallen ornament count for a day.

The tree is annoying, but certainly not the most disturbing bit of holiday crime she has committed.  That would be the murder of the holy family.

We used to have a ceramic nativity scene that sat on our mantle that looked like this:

It was a starter set that I planned to build on, eventually purchasing the shepherds, wise men, etc.  Well, that dream died quickly.  The very first night after we had put the set out, we woke up the next morning to find baby Jesus shattered into even tinier pieces.

I gave Carolina a very stern talking to, and did a little looking into whether or not I could get a replacement baby Jesus.  Two nights later, Mary bit the dust.  Again, she was smashed to smithereens.  There was no gluing her back together.  Only Joseph remained, standing alone and undoubtedly afraid.  Our roommate at the time had a little fun and attached this post-it note prayer to him:

Miraculously, this seemed to actually work.  Joseph remained unmolested until just a few days before Christmas.  Just when we though he might be spared, Carolina decapitated him with surgical like precision.

Which is why our nativity now looks like this:

Yes, it’s Veggietales.  No, we don’t have any children, but there’s not a lot of options in plastic, non-breakable nativity scenes.  If I can draw your attention to the bottom left hand corner. . .

She has still managed to rough up shepherd Junior Asparagus and tip over the French peas dressed as sheep.  Not even adorable plastic figurines are safe.

There is but one Christmas decoration that Carolina fears.

So what’s so terrifying about this one?  It set fire to another cat before her very eyes!  The way it works is you light the candles at the bottom, and the heat makes the propeller spin.  One time while the candles were lit, our older cat Tucker wasn’t paying attention to where he was sitting, and he momentarily lit his tail on fire.  There was screaming and smoking, and Tucker did some major scurrying on the coffeetable.  It was all over in about ten seconds, but it must have left an impression with Carolina.  We haven’t lit the candles on this since, but she won’t come near it.

Sadly, Tucker is no longer with us, but the scratches he left on the coffeetable are:

So that’s the saga of our cats and the holiday property damage they have given us as their gift.  I hope that it made you laugh, as my gift to you.