Or at least you’d think so if you lived with Melvin, the Official SEB Cat. We finally got the living room straightened around enough to put up the tree last night and the first thing Melvin does as we begin to pull the branches out of the box is start chomping on the fake greenery as though it were a huge salad of some sort. Since the tree has been assembled we’ve had to keep the water spritzer handy as he keeps walking up to the tree and gnawing on it from time to time. It’s a fake tree for crying out loud. It can’t taste that good.

This morning as I was watching the news he walked up within reach of me and starts nibbling away, but the spritzer wasn’t nearby so I reached down and tapped him on the side of the head and said, “No!” He turns his head and gives me his best WTF look and casually goes back to work on the branch in front of him. So I reach down to tap him again only to receive a highly annoyed glare. This goes on another two or three times until Courtney finally hands me the spritzer and he freezes in his tracks. He recognizes that water bottle immediately and he spends the next several minutes trying to stare me down as he calculates whether or not I’m paying close enough attention to notice he’s about to try chewing on the tree again. I swear the cat was trying to use the Jedi Mind Trick on me. “I am not the cat you’re going to spritz with water! You want me to chew on the Christmas tree.”

He eventually does and I give him a light squirt which sends him running for cover. So he’s not impressed with having his head lightly batted about, but pick up that water bottle and he’s outta there. So far his attempts at dining on the tree haven’t resulted in his depositing any premature Christmas gifts of his own randomly about the apartment, but it’s only a matter of time. I suppose I should break down and buy one of those little containers of grass you can grow indoors for your kitty, but I’d imagine he’s going to treat that the same way he treats the huge scratching post we bought him. Ignore it in favor of all the other stuff he could chew on in the apartment. Yes, being a pet owner is fun!