Christmas tree time

Issues:
Live or artificial?  Mrs. Phactor is no neutral on this score it must be a live tree, abeit one soon to die.
It's the sense of it, the presence of the foliage, the aroma.
Fir or pine: Again no neutrality; it will be fir, it's the aroma.  The preferred tree is a balsam, but as nice ones have proven so hard to find in recent years, Fraser it will be.
Sooner vs. later:  Sooner! Buy as soon as trees arrive in your area and put their trunks in a bucket of water in a cool place, they don't get any fresher. Our tree will be bought tomorrow & placed in water until the house is ready for it's installation. Ours stays in the unheated garage.  Sometimes the tree gets a spray of wiltproof, ask for it by name, but timing on this is tricky. This year it was too warm to spray rhododendrons & other evergreen dicots before this.  Often it then gets too cold. Tomorrow may be mild enough to do them all.  Wreaths do better with a dunking in water over night and then wilt -proofed.  Just wish the bloody stuff wasn't so expensive. 
Is this  a green crop?  Yes, the trees are a crop and its sustainable. Trees are not being cut in the wild unless your name is Arlan (a Texan) and you like field grown Junipers, red cedars. They do smell good too, but oh do prickly. 
How do you keep cats out of your tree?  How do you keep cats from doing anything? Our current kitty-girls find the trees interesting, but they don't try climbing them. Drinking from the tree stand's water is more interesting, but still as an old practice indestructible ornaments including some bells get hung on the lowest branches just in case, and any ornament that looks too much like a kitty toy must be hidden up high or it becomes a kitty toy.  The young of our two has broken a couple of small ornaments that attracted her attention (making it their fault).

Does a pet share your bed?

A rather shallow study concludes that you get a better nights' sleep if you don't let a pet sleep on your bed.  You must be kidding?  Like it's your decision!  Like it's your bed!  Yes, the kitty-girls do sleep with the Phactors, mostly in the winter, and usually one at a time; most non-sibling cats won't tolerate a second cat on the bed. Tuesday night the cat who is scared of thunder slept with us for comfort as storms rolled through the area.  Last night was very cool, so the cat who likes the warmth of snuggling slept with us. Yes, one of our cats, a big lug of a Maine coon cat used to take up a lion's share of the bed at times and he snored or at least breathed very heavy, and he could push you out of bed too. And one likes to check to see if you are really asleep my poking your nose with her paw.  And you might think that banning such activity would allow you to sleep better, but what planet are you from?  How many times do you think you'd have to throw a cat off the bed only to have them return the second you drift back off to sleep?  Well, cat tossing will keep you busy instead of sleeping.  OK you say, just close the bedroom door.  Sure, if you like sleeping without air flow in an ACed isolation chamber of a bedroom, maybe, but if the Phactors closed their bedroom door, which probably doesn't latch anyways, there would be two cats working very hard, and noisily, trying to open the door, and whining and crying when they can't.  One of our cats is surprisingly persistent and quite confident of her ability to open doors. If pulling doesn't work, try pushing, especially using both front feet.  Jump up and grab the door knob. Pull the door against the jam over and over: bump, bump, bump...  Stand up and use your front paws to scratch at the door vigorously. Try sleeping though some of that. The only thing that TPP can conclude is that this "pets off the bed" advice is from a pet-less nimrod whose knowledge of the real world is so limited that taking their advice on anything is not advised.  Yes, and make sure a soft blanket remains on the foot of the bed because we's likes it there.  Did TPP cover everything?  (A cat is looking over my shoulder, and if this isn't written right, TPP won't be getting a decent night's sleep.)