Holiday Manners for Cats

Your humans may bring a large evergreen tree into the house and cover it with lights and decorations. This is an important part of celebrating the holidays for them, no matter how strange it seems to you.

Keep the following hints in mind to keep peace in the family:

• don’t consider the tree holder to be your personal water bowl

• don’t try to climb to the top of the tree

• don’t bat the colorful balls or other decorations

• don’t chew on the cords wrapped around the branches or running from the tree to the wall

Your humans may decide to throw a large party. Contrary to your assumption, this party is celebrating their holiday traditions, not honoring YOU! Remember:

• although there are mountains of food on the buffet table, the humans selfishly don’t want to share—put up with this insult gracefully

• if you must beg for goodies, be discrete

• be friendly, even when strangers sit in your favorite lounge chair

• be understanding of those humans who, oddly enough, do not properly appreciate feeling your soft head rubbed on their leg

Your humans will bring home bags full of interesting stuff and will wrap it all up in colorful paper and put the wrapped boxes under the tree.

• Do not assume that all the gifts are yours

• Do not under any circumstances use the gifts as scratching posts

• Do not rip open the boxes to check out the interesting smelling things inside

A fat man in a red outfit trimmed with white fur may stumble out of your fireplace in the middle of the night. His loud laugh is not meant to annoy you, and he doesn’t mean to leave sooty footprints in your favorite spot to curl up by the fire.

Under no circumstances should you climb in his bag to investigate and, please, DON’T SCRATCH HIM!

Help your humans RELAX by voluntarily curling up on their laps and purring while they pet you. This is a stressful month for them. Show understanding and patience!