Make pet harmless, the rule at Christmas? (6)
I believe the answer is:
declaw
'make' is the definition.
The definition and answer can be both related to change as well as being verbs in their base form.
Maybe you can see an association between them that I don't see?
'pet harmless the rule at christmas?' is the wordplay.
I cannot really understand how this works, but
'rule' could be 'law' (law is a kind of rule) and 'law' is found within the answer.
'christmas?' could be 'dec' (Dec is short for December, the Christmas period) and 'dec' is present in the answer.
This accounts for all the letters.
This explanation may well be incorrect...
Can you help me to learn more?
(Another definition for declaw that I've seen is " Probably trim cat".)