Twas A Few Days Before Christmas - And The Cats Ruined It.

If you follow us on Facebook and Twitter, you probably saw our adorable puppers in The Dodo last week:

Do we really need the bells, people? Is that necessary? 

Every single pooch sporting Christmas gear got adopted. So we thought...hmmm. Can we try this with our cats?

Not putting them in costumes, of course. You can put the nicest cat ever in a costume and it will immediately look like a man-eating mountain lion. It might actually flay you alive, too. Cats do not like costumes. We appreciate that.

But what if we put them in Christmas sets? After all, it worked wonderfully last year when this little muffin sat in a gift box and almost broke the internet.

I can haz adorbs?

Being as brilliant and resourceful as we are, we set about gathering holiday props and constructing elaborate sets to highlight our amazing cats. There's no way this could go wrong, right?

Malcolm, our incredibly experienced and talented volunteer cat photographer was trepidatious about this whole thing. But we soldiered on.

Two things happened:

The cats had a blast.

Disco pawty! Kill the ball!

And, in the great tradition of cats and holiday decorations, they laid waste to the sets.

This is the last time you will ever see this ornament alive. 

We sort of knew this was going to happen when we put a prop down next to our first model, a high spirited kitten named Timmy, and he gave it this look:

Your moments are numbered, little tinsel tree.

A second later the tree was on the ground where Timmy joyfully set to kicking the snot out of it. It was like MMA fighting but with a kitten and Christmas tree. 

We won't even tell you what he did with the ball.

I'm going to need some lima beans and a nice Chianti.

We then decided to try an adult kitty and went with Pumpkin Pie, who thought this was possibly the best thing that had ever happened to her. 

Ermaghawd! Ribbon!

There was no prop or decoration she didn't want to interact with. And by 'interact with' we mean 'destroy',

Ermaghawd - Christmas ball!

The only thing that kept Pumpkin Pie from trashing everything was that she got adopted. Right when we were shooting her a nice lady came in and fell in love. Godspeed, Ms. Pie. We hope your new home is full of decorations and your new owner is not too fond of them. 

With Ms. Pie gone, we turned to our FIV+ gals, Princess and Loretta Lou. Famous for being rock solid and affectionate, we were certain they would treat the holiday theme with the correct amount of gravitas. 

I said I wanted BOWS, people!

We thought wrong.

Loretta Lou tried. Despite being famous for being a clown, she spent a couple of minutes contemplating the ornament...

Meh. I don't see what the hoopla is about. 

But then decided to play with a ping pong ball instead.

What cat doesn't like to sit in boxes? We thought boxes would be a no-brainer. 

Look at how nicely my face fits in the corner..

Again, we thought wrong. We wound up with a whole new genre of photos: the butt in a box. 

Does this box make me look fat? 

We gave up.

What's the moral of this story? 

 Holidays are more fun with cats around. So many boxes go un-sat in, so many ornaments don't get knocked off the tree without them. If we haven't reminded you that during our Home For The Holidays Promotion is going on through December 31st, we do now. $15 adopt fees.

• No kitties were harmed in the making of this - all glitter and potential uh-oh items were used under supervision and immediately cleaned up.
• Happy day! Loretta Lou and Princess went home together two days after this shoot. 
• Tyler, our final kitty in a tree, is actually adopted. He only has three legs but can ruin a decoration with the best of 'em.