Diafol 1, Christmas tree 0

Diafol has a new hobby. I'm sure he's not alone among his feline compatriots in wanting to scale the Christmas tree. I've seen enough cat videos over the years to know they love to climb stuff. He is a cat, therefore, he will claw his way up whatever obstacle presents itself, be it a living room curtain, my pant leg, or the Christmas tree.

It started off with him batting at the ornaments on the lower branches. Then he progressed to leaping up to smack things or grab at the light cords. And about a week ago he decided he would attempt to summit the entire 7 1/2 foot tree.

Drew's girlfriend Olivia suggested I get a spray bottle and blast Diafol every time he started on the tree. That works, sort of. If you do happen to catch him in the act, a spritz or two will cause him to jump down and run away from the scene of the crime. But he quickly learned that if none of us were in the room to guard the tree, it was all his.

Which was bad enough when he was only knocking ornaments off. He's a lot bigger now than when we put the tree up. We keep feeding him, he keeps growing. Given enough attempts, it was only a matter of time until he toppled the tree. Which he did this afternoon when I was in the kitchen preparing lunch. I ran in just in time to see him riding it down to the floor. I'm no artist, but it looked a bit like this:

Let's call that the Pounce per Ounce graph. As the number of attempts (Pounces) piled up, and the weight of the cat (Ounces) increased, it was inevitable the tree would come down.

It is back up now, with two support ropes anchoring it to the nearby walls. Most of the remaining ornaments are near the top of the tree. He's broken four glass balls. The others have all been removed. I try to tell him Santa won't come if he keeps it up, but as Olivia points out, he's only living up to his name.