My old dog Brownie never got excited about the Christmas tree or the packages under the tree or the paper on the floor when we opened packages. But the rest of the dogs and even one cat in our life loved the holiday. Most of the dogs after my first dog Brownie actually received presents so they learned what the tree and the packages meant.
Tiger was the cat I got from one of my bosses. He didn’t have all his tail and they didn’t think they could get him a home. No one knew why his tail was only about 2 inches long. So my folks took him in and he grew to be a very large cat. He was 32 inches from the tip of his nose to the tip of his short tail.
He loved Christmas or more accurately the paper from the packages. All the family was together for Christmas there were 8 of us opening presents. We started throwing the paper off our packages one time out in the middle of the living room floor.
It looked like a sea of paper. Tiger came into the room when we were finished opening packages and found all the paper. He started crawling through all the paper on his belly. We started calling the land shark because he was sure having fun in the paper. He never bothered the tree or the ornaments or the packages under the tree which was good.
When my folks owned Misty, the gray cat that the mother left to die when they lived in Mullinville. Misty loved looking at the Christmas tree. But he finally got brave and climbed inside the tree and climbed up the trunk of the tree. While he was crawling up the tree all the branches were bouncing and the ornaments were falling to the floor.
Misty’s favorite time to climb the Christmas tree was in the middle of the night and we would be woke up to the sound of the ornaments hitting the hardwood floor. Then mom would grab him, open the door to my bedroom and toss him into my room and shut the door. He spent the rest of the night on the foot of my bed. I often wondered if that was his whole purpose of terrorizing the tree so he could get in to my bedroom and onto the bed.
Moms little Weiner dog freckles wasn’t much into the tree or the packages either. He didn’t care about us opening the boxes or the mess on the floor. He would just lay by my dads chair and wait for his lap to be clear of presents and then jump up and lay down.
Jerry and I had two dogs during our marriage Miss Lady and Lacy Rene. They were both into the presents and the Christmas tree. After the pets when I was a kid I wasn’t prepared for these two cockers who loved everything about it.
Miss Lady’s favorite thing about Christmas was the presents that appeared on Thanksgiving Day. She also liked the sock reindeer that sat under the tree. She liked to put him in his place everyday and let him know who the boss was by biting his nose.
She would pick one of her presents each year and she would open it every day while I was at work. I would come in and find the paper all over the floor and the box open and the toy laying in the middle of the floor. I don’t think she ever played with it; she just wanted to know what was in it. I would shake my finger at her and say “you can’t have that until Christmas.” I would get a look that said she wasn’t all that sorry about it. I would rewrap it and put it back under the tree. This was the ritual every evening until Christmas.
Lacy might nose around under the tree and sometimes she would push one of her packages out into the middle of the floor but she never opened it. I could tell she had pushed it all over the living room floor but that was as far as she went. I didn’t have to rewrap her present every night. But Lacy did love to open them on Christmas Eve when we gave it to her.
I hope everyone has a Merry Furry Christmas if you have fur babies in your home. Remember that they love Christmas too and all the excitement of opening presents. To contact Sandy: [email protected]
