If you celebrate Christmas, you may envision your home beautifully decorated for the Holiday season. When you have cats, who are natural climbers and just inquisitive, this can put a damper in the actual execution of having decorations. You may see a beautiful glistening Christmas tree while your cat is eyeing a temptress, taunting them throughout December.



My husband and I always love decorating our tree. This year, we are blessed to have four cats and our newest addition that we have had since January of this year, is only one years old and this year is his first Christmas. Now, we are lucky because he is incredibly well behaved, but even he may not be able to resist such a tempting object, especially since he LOVES lights. We wanted to kind of plan ahead of time for protecting our tree and felt like we needed to do something different from what we have done in previous years. Our concern with our other cats has always been that some of them like eating the artificial tree; this obviously makes them vomit, and we don't want to see our babies vomit! One of our cats likes eating plastic, and she would go under the tree and devour the tape off of the wrapped gifts. Each cat is unique, and the more cats you have, the more tricky it can be able to address the issue with each personality because cats don't respond the same to the deterrents you may put in place.

When we had only three cats, we protected our tree by placing two curved Scatmats around the tree. They are 50X12 and are a safe way to keep your cats away from objects.

PetSafe ScatMats use a harmless static pulse to keep your pets away from unwanted areas. ScatMats can be used on furniture, countertops, doorways and even window sills. The mats come with 3 levels of correction so you can adjust the strength for timid, average or stubborn pets.

We have a large Scatmat in front of our front door as added security that our cats won't attempt to run outside. My husband and I decided to think of a new idea for this year to protect our tree is because although scatmats are a very good product, we wanted something that provided more coverage. Our cats are incredibly smart and unfortunately; the scatmat doesn't "train" them to avoid an area - they know what it looks like, and if it's gone, they continue doing whatever we were trying to stop them from doing in the first place and they know not to step on it, not to actually avoid the area. Our tree is 7 feet tall and its pretty full, so it makes it difficult for the curved mats to protect it as much as we need. For example, the two curved scatmats still left gap areas around our tree; you would probably need about four if you really wanted to secure it and make sure your cats couldn't get through. Last year, we had our two curved scatmats around the tree, but one of our cats could get to the tree to eat it. We put a PetSafe SSSCAT Spray in one of the areas with a gap, but he was still able to get close to the tree and eat it. We contemplated on buying two additional Scatmats but in the end decided to try to protect our tree with a clear ribbed rug.



I found some on Amazon that were 26" X 6'0," we decided to purchase three of them to have more protection around our tree. When we opened the box and opened one of the rugs, we weren't so positive that the cats wouldn't want to walk on it. Two of our cats went on it, and although you could tell they didn't like it; they still stepped on it, which made me feel like this wasn't going to deter them at all. We decided to give it a shot, and we rolled out all three rugs and put up our Christmas tree, and it has been a success. Obviously, you lay the rug down different than you normally would, the ribs have to be up. If you put your hand on it or step on it, it's not a pleasant feeling, but it's not harmful to you or your pets. Surprisingly, it ended up looking pretty under our tree.


If you are debating how to protect your tree in a safe way and decide to try one of these ideas, let me know! For us, the most success has been with these ribbed mats, and it is more cost effective since the Scatmats are around $50 each. There has been no vomit full of fake pine needles, no thrown decorations and no ripped up tape. This was a true success, and I hope you find a solution that will fit your cat's unique personality.