Christmas Trees, Robins and Cats

I was doing an early Christmas Fair last week and I was selling amongst other things some white peace doves with a percentage going to UNICEF. I had done the same years earlier with a pleasing amount going via the same charity to the Iraq War child victims so felt it would be a good idea to do something similar for the war in the Middle East at the moment.

One of the visitors and I started chatting about Christmas Trees and bird decorations and she told me a quite delightful story of how one year her cat had given her the shock of her life.

They had put up the tree and some decorations and gone out to do something else. When they came home they could not find their cat anywhere and became very worried.

A little while later when they were settling down for the evening they were surprised to see an additional decoration on the tree which they were sure was not put there by them.

They were right! There were two glowing eyes deep within the recess of the tree and at first they had rather a start when they saw them. Then said lost cat emerged blinking from the tree where it had clearly been sleeping, stretched, smiled and stalked off in the manner a cat who has successfully rused its owners!

It put me in mind of when I was a little girl my parents had quite a collection of Christmas ornaments: the traditional glass balls, the angel, the multi coloured lights which inevitably fused every single Christmas, as lights always did in those days, and the other old family favourites, which are so different to the decorations favoured nowadays.

As was traditional then, the Christmas tree did not go up until just before Christmas Day, right towards the end of Advent, and so was an event of huge excitement. My favourite decoration was a little, extremely realistic, Robin, which was always placed near the top of the tree, as near to the angel as possible.

Two days before Christmas, just after we had finished decorating the tree, we all dressed up and went to the local Carol Service which was very exciting, for we were allowed to stay up late and would have hot chocolate on our return home.

Well that was the plan anyway. The Carol Service was lovely, we did stay up late, we did have hot chocolate and opened the penultimate window on the advent calendar, but we also came home to a scene of utter carnage in the sitting room where the Christmas tree was.

Well, had been, to be more precise! The tree was lying down, the lights inevitably fused, the shiny glass baubles were for the most part shattered, the angel lying in a most undignified position, but worst of all was the Robin…

Which evidently in our absence had been murdered.

Poor wee thing, lying there with its bloodied breast and badly mangled feathers, looking even more real in this scene than it had done when it was perched high up on the tree.

My parents had the grace to laugh. Apparently the cats had been stalking the Robin since the tree was decorated, and clearly had taken the opportunity, in our absence, to commit a bit of bird genocide, by climbing the tree and killing the not so real bird! Imagine their shock, when the tree came down, the baubles shattered, the lights went out…

The Robin actually lived to live again in the restored tree having been mauled, not killed, the glass ornaments were not so resilient, the angel was resurrected on high, and the lights relit, and though the tree was somewhat less splendid and shiny, order was restored.

We found, too, two very frightened, though probably unrepentant, cats who had met their match at the top of the Christmas tree.

This year the Christmas Tree was similarly under attack but from the base:

When I put the white birds on the Christmas Tree as in the picture I did not think that the naughty lurcher Lucy, was some forty or so years later about to commit a sin of similar proportions to our naughty Siamese, if you please.

We came home to find a very dead defeathered and disemboweled white dove lying in the middle of the sitting room floor. Needless to say Lucy was very pleased with herself until she saw my face.

Alas the tree is now bare of birds for fear that she may deflock the whole tree of its feathered bounty. So much for peace and good will in this household! The doves have been moved to a place of safety for now…

If you would like any doves like these you can buy them here.

Thank you for reading; I hope your Christmas Decorations survive better than mine!