Guests
And let's not forget the stress of all that new company coming in and out of the house. Cats are creatures of routine. Some are quite sociable and will welcome each new guest. Pounce is such a cat. He loves parties, for he can move from lap to lap, licking the noses of unsuspecting visitors. Other cats, however, will run and hide, refusing to come out until hours after the last person has vacated.
If you have indoor cats, be careful guests do not inadvertently let your cat out. Put up signs, and inform guests that your cats are not allowed outdoors; ask them to please be careful and close the doors well behind them. You might want to allow only one door to be opened and closed, thus eliminating the worry of more than one escape route for the cat(s). The Christmas snows are not the time you want to be searching for a lost kitty. If you can, supervise the door each time a guest arrives or departs.
If your pet will be happier, keep her locked away in another room, particularly one she finds comfortable, such as your bedroom where your scent is prominent. Be sure you provide your pet with enough food and water and a clean litter box to last until she is able to be released. Keep the door locked, or a No Entry sign posted clearly.
Holiday Foods and Alcohol
We love all the foods of the holidays: Christmas cakes, cookies, fruitcake, and plenty of other delicacies to tempt the palate. Your cat should not be tasting these treats along with you, even if she begs. Chocolate, especially, can make a cat very sick. In high enough quantities, it can be fatal, particularly to small kittens.
Potato chips and like snacks might not be fatal, but should also be off-limits, or only allowed in very small quantities. The salt content is terribly high, and too much can cause a chubby tabby. Fortunately, most cats don't like human treats like chocolate and chips, but there are definitely exceptions.
Precious is one of these exceptions. She is a cute little nineteen-year-old Tortie who adores Doritos and other cheesy snacks. She is allowed a very tiny portion, only on rare occasions. If you have one of these junk food kitties, moderate any snacks, remember no chocolate, and be careful of quantities.
What would the holidays be without a holiday turkey or ham to add an enticing aroma to the air? Imagine that same aroma if you possessed 5OO million olfactory nerves (as opposed to a human's 5 million)? Wow! How can any feline resist? But resist she should! Though it is all right to feed your kitty a few boneless scraps, please be careful where you dispose of the bones. They can splinter within the cats' digestive tract and cause ruptures that may be fatal.
And how humans love to indulge in a bit of the spirits during the holidays! But please keep Kitty out of these festive indulgences. Alcohol is quite toxic to cats. At the very least, it can make your beloved feline extremely ill.
Plants
We all adore the look of beautiful Christmas wreaths and flowers. But some can make your cat very ill, especially the most popular of those: poinsettia. Though not as toxic as once thought, they can still produce vomiting and diarrhea, which can lead to dehydration. In a small kitten or older cat, this can be fatal. It might be nice for us humans to sneak a kiss under the mistletoe, but the plant is deadly to cats. Some other plants to watch out for include: Christmas rose, holly, philodendron, and dieffenbachia. For a list of plants poisonous to cats, please visit: www.cfainc.org/articles/plants.html. If there is an emergency, you can call the Animal Poison Control Center at (888) 426-4435.
Love Thy Pet
And, last, but certainly not least, don't forget to love your pet during this special occasion. This can be a very hectic time of year with guests, family, cooking, wrapping, and shopping. But in the midst of all the hustle and bustle, Kitty still needs your attention. Now more than ever is a time to celebrate not only the season, but the love and joy that your cat brings to your heart!
The Purr-fection of Christmas Ritual
Wendy Christensen
Hey, Mom, come quick, you gotta see this! Two snowplow guys are fighting out in the road. One of 'em slid off the street into the wall and then the other guy showed up and hit two mailboxes and crashed into the first one, and then the one guy took off his gloves and threw 'em at the other guy, and both their hats fell off and…"
"Ryan! Go back outside, can't you see I'm busy?" Her chilly words freeze the boy's gush of words. "And take Jen with you. She's making too much noise with that game box of hers. I have to have these done by three-thirty."
From her perch on the window ledge, Moonflower raises her head and gazes, questioning and bemused, at the excited child and his overwrought parent. "Humans!" she seems to mutter to herself, though the only sound is her gentle purr. In a tiny, graceful, quintessentially feline ritual, she blinks three times, stretches one paw toward the sun, and returns to her feline dreams.
Snow-booted feet scamper, the door slams. For a moment, all is quiet. Then, in a sudden burst of guilt and worry, the beleaguered woman jumps up, runs to the door, flings it open, and shrieks, "And stay away from those plows!" Sighing, she goes back to the cluttered kitchen table, where she's hand-painting two dozen paper plates for the cookie exchange. Much as she'd like to, she can't skip this competitive annual neighborhood ritual—and its ritual obligations.
Oh, those obligations! The checklists, the gift lists, the to-do lists. The expectations, the guilt, the commitments, the compulsions, the burdens, the chores, the shopping. Finding a parking place at the mall. Baking twelve dozen cookies by Tuesday morning. Facing dreaded Mother-in-Law, and her perfectionist wrath, specially honed for inciting holiday stress and fear. And what if Uncle Bill gets drunk and disorderly at dinner again? The hype, the craziness, the expense—they get worse every year. But what can a mother do?
The answer is right in front of her, dozing and purring on the window ledge in the sunshine.
Christmas, at its best, is a timeless ritual recognition of human kinship, and of our deep connection with the rhythms of nature. By observing this mid-winter milestone, we join hands in an endless chain with our fellow humans, past, present, and future. As part of this great chain, we celebrate in faith, anticipate in hope, and honor with love and humility the return of the sun. Each year, our long-ago ancestors watched with alarm as the hours of daylight inexorably dwindled. With mounting disquiet and dread, they anxiously measured the times of light and darkness. Would the sun fade away forever this time? We can only imagine their relief and gladness when the decline stopped, and—very gradually—the daylight time started to, once again, lengthen. The winter solstice salutes the life-giving sun, and commemorates its unhurried but unmistakable return. Over the millennia, various religions have overlaid their own feasts and festivals on the ancient solstice observance, deepening its vitality and significance, layer by layer.
We humans need rituals like this, just as we need stories, those universal narratives we repeat to each other and to ourselves, to help decode the mysteries and enigmas of life, the universe, and everything. Stories and rituals keep us grounded, connected, and sane. But here in the U.S., in the early twenty-first century, the rituals of Christmas have become a kind of ritual madness.
Cats, as anyone who has lived in their company knows, adore rituals. For such intelligent, curious, and adaptable animals, they're endearingly fond of their daily routines. But unlike humans, who tend to overload rituals until they collapse beneath the weight of expectation and disappointment, cats treasure the simple, cyclical daily-ness of life's routines. A special food bowl, filled at a particular time, in a certain place, by a familiar person who announces dinner with the same reassuring words and phrases, in the same loving tones—that, to a cat, is the most perfect of rituals. No hidden agendas, no point-scoring, no score-settling, no frills, no surfeit. Just ease, peace and grace, cheer, comfort, and sharing—curiously, just what Christmas is supposed to be.