Hi, all.  I, too, am curious to hear some answers to Faith's Christmas tree
question, as I KNOW my ferts will be interested-Finnegan is a monkey.
 
As for the cats and Christmas tree question, I speak from the experience of
having a LARGE cat who liked to climb my parents' 14 foot Xmas tree (very
high ceiling in our back room); my parents would tie the tree in a few
places towards the top with strong fishing line to the ceiling beams.
(From 2 opposite sides or 3 sides to help balance is best.) This was pretty
much invisible, so didn't ruin the effect, and was strong enough to hold
the tree up when kitty decided to climb it (it was probably a good idea
with a tree that tall anyway).  If you don't have free beams to tie it to
(our ceiling beams were a few feet below the peaked ceiling) you can tack
it to the ceiling molding or walls.  Hope that helps.  As for the
ornaments, we just prayed for the best and hung the more delicate ones or
heavier ones further away from the ends of branches and used sturdy hangers
that we bent around the branches extra tight.  You can always use yarn or
more fishing line to tie them around the branches.  Or twist wire hangers
around the branches (paper clips are good for this b/c you have extar wire
to work with).
 
Now I hope we hear about if Xmas trees are safe with fuzzies (i.e. if pine
needle ingestion can be really harmful)...
 
-April and the kids
[Posted in FML issue 3514]