The cold bitter air with lights all around, families together and laughing, a nice Christmas dinner on the table, until disaster strikes.

“My family was in the kitchen eating dinner when we smelled something and the cat dashed into the kitchen,” senior Taylor Rosansky said. “Everything ended okay. We stopped the tree that was on fire and the cat was okay. Now, looking back, it is actually pretty funny because t was our first year with an artificial tree.”

The cat, nine-year-old Snickers, ended up chewing the wires on the Christmas tree, causing it to catch on fire. Rosansky’s family pushed the cat away from the tree and they kept it turned off. Rosansky’s experience highlights the potential dangers Christmas brings.

“One year when my family was putting up the tree, my sister Nora Kate decided to put our dog Finn in the tree,” senior Sam Porten said. “She thought it would be funny and act like he was the tree topper. We had to take down the tree to get the dog out and had to cut some of his hair off.”

Finn, a Jack Russell terrier, was only five at the time,and walked with a limp afterward. “He’s was back to running up to new people and playing with the neighbor’s dog now,” Porten said. “Nora Kate hasn’t tried this again because she was embarrassed that she even tried it.”

Holiday dinners can also cause mishaps.

“Every year we go to my grandparents house in Montana and we have a turkey,” senior Hunter Tosto said.“One year it burnt, so they threw it outside. My grandparents live by a wolf conservation so they smelt the turkey and started howling.”

After the family gave the wolves the turkey, the wolves ended up coming back everyday for food.

Dinners aren’t limited to turkey.