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Je crie, donc je suis

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Sa Majesté Louis Catorze, Le Roi Soleil, supreme ruler of Le Château, sworn enemy of canine foe and scourge of Ocado delivery drivers.

  • Les empoisonneurs rayés

    Cat Daddy and I have just spent a few days in East Sussex, visiting my sister and her family. If you ever thought your cat was an insufferable pest when it came to food, you really ought to meet South Coast seagulls, whose food-bullying is like nothing on earth. 

    These evil, feathered demons think nothing of causing you physical pain if there’s even the slightest chance that you might surrender your last chip, scratching any exposed flesh that they can reach. They’re even known to deliberately target children because they’re smaller and more vulnerable, and they know what time and where the snack-laden school pick-ups take place.

    If you’re ever wondered what a baby seagull looks like, voilà. If you see one looking lost and distressed, IT’S A TRAP.

    My younger niece, aged seven, made the fatal mistake of holding her doughnut just a little too high in the air, whilst in the playground during our visit. She won’t be doing that again. 

    Anyway, one rather unfortunate discovery during our time away was that my tabby cat allergy, which I thought had gone away, is back. Oui, Mesdames et Messieurs: freakish though it sounds, it is possible to be allergic to cats of some colours but not others, and tabbies are my kryptonite. 

    Naturellement, this meant that Otis and Roux did everything felinely possible to cover me and my belongings in their fur. Otis woke me at some excruciating hour with his peculiar meow, sounding just like an affronted seagull, then slept on my stomach. As for Roux (whose voice also sounds like that of an affronted seagull), this is how I found her on our second night there:

    Might I add that she was on my side of the suitcase, leaving Cat Daddy’s clothes completely untouched.

    I have visited Otis and Roux in the past without triggering my allergic symptoms. Do allergies just disappear and reappear? Or could it be the fact that this visit took place during peak hay fever season, when my histamine hackles are already in a state of high alert, causing the problem to be so much worse?  

    Bastard poisoner.
    Bastard poisoner.

    As part of my quest to find out, I am planning a trip to Mothra in a couple of weeks’ time. It will be very interesting to note any responses, or lack thereof, as Mothra’s fur is very different from Otis and Roux, both in texture and in the type of tabbiness. 

    Mothra’s body is more mottled than striped. Also: Mothra wants sushi.

    For more Catorzian capers, please visit http://louiscatorze.com

  • Ni manger, ni vivre (Partie 23) 

    Cat Daddy and I have just finished the last of Louis Catorze’s birthday hot-smoked salmon. And the whole débâcle drove Catorze absolutely insane from start to bitter end. Cathie, if you’re reading this, this is your fault. 

    First of all, there was the screaming. “But he screams all the time anyway.” Trust me, we know this. But, when hot-smoked salmon is involved, it’s so much worse than usual: louder, longer, more urgent, and with at least 738 utterances which we have never heard before.

    Then there was the disturbing flicking of his head from side to side, sniffing the air like a Jurassic Park velociraptor. Occasionally he would go to his plate and sniff it, to see if the irresistible aroma was coming from there. And, when he discovered that it wasn’t, he would turn to us, glare threateningly and let out the most agonised, ungodly wail. “Perhaps my loving êtres humains have put some salmon in my OF COURSE THEY HAVEN’T, THE SELFISH CONNARDS!”

    I also had to repeatedly wrestle him off the kitchen worktop, where the hot-smoked salmon had been placed. Yes, he only weighs 2.78kg, and I weigh considerably more. You would be surprised at how difficult it is to remove a small cat from a place when he doesn’t want to be removed, especially when said cat is able to summon, at will, the strength of ten angry grizzly bears. 

    Anyway, the hot-smoked salmon is now gone, and we won’t have to worry about the bullying and intimidation until the next time we want to eat it. But that’s just kicking the can down the road until the next time we eat it, isn’t it? The little sod is going to get us at some point. 

    Manifesting the next round of hot-smoked salmon.

    For more Catorzian capers, please visit http://louiscatorze.com

  • Die Katze, die Mäuse fängt, ist gut, aber die Katze, die sie verscheucht, ist ebenso gut

    Share a proverb you think is completely wrong and make your case.

    The above proverb means, “The cat who frightens mice away is as good as the cat who eats them”. It’s not that I think this proverb is WRONG, as such. It’s more that I’m mystified as to how my family has ended up with cats who neither frighten nor eat mice but who, instead, bring them into the house and leave them to run riot. 

    Perhaps we ought to invent a new proverb, as follows: “Useless is the cat who brings mice into a place where there were previously none.”

    Otis and Roux: useless.
    Louis Catorze: equally useless.

    For more Catorzian capers, please visit http://louiscatorze.com

  • Tu vas faire de moi un de ces gros chats domestiques, inutiles et contents

    What’s a moment in your life that felt like it was straight out of a film?

    Unbelievably, despite being witchy, I haven’t actually seen THAT many films or TV shows about witchy women. But I know that every single one of them ought to share a house with a black cat and, if that cat also happened to have vampire teeth, so much the better.

    Louis Catorze is getting his Hocus Pocus on.

    For more Catorzian capers, please visit http://louiscatorze.com

  • 34°C à l’ombre

    It really wasn’t fun last week, having to endure searing heat whilst living in a small, terraced London house designed for temperate-to-cold weather. Even my Oura ring thought I was dying: 

    Yikes.

    It wasn’t easy for black animals covered in fur, either. But Louis Catorze managed to tolerate the raging hellfire, partly due to knowing all the cool places in which to hide (such as under the thick tarpaulin covering Cat Daddy’s bike), but mostly thanks to us skivvying around to ensure his wellbeing before our own. 

    This is what we did to make sure he was comfortable: 

    • Storing his Cool Cat Club canned wet food in the fridge, and serving it cold. No, he didn’t like fridge-cold food before. But he does now.
    • Placing ice cubes in his water. However, he is quite disconcerted by the sight and sound of them bobbing around on the surface, and prefers to wait until they are fully melted before drinking. So the onus is on us to know when he wants a drink, then go back in time and add the ice cubes fifteen minutes prior.
    • Ice cube massages. These are non-negotiable, and Catorze has just discovered that combining them with a fan is extra enjoyable, despite never liking the fan until now. 
    • Cushions on the outdoor sofa 24/7, so that he can sleep there all night and avoid the furnace-hot Château. 

    If you didn’t do any or all of the above for your cat, then what the hell is wrong with you? Get to it, inefficient humans! You still have time to organise yourself before the next heatwave.

    As soon as Cat Daddy’s guitar came out, Catorze was off outside. Yes, he chose a slow death by heatstroke over hearing even one chord of REM’s Everybody Hurts. 
    An ice cube AND the fan, y’say? Ouais! (And, just out of shot, there is an ice cube resting on his rump.)

    For more Catorzian capers, please visit http://louiscatorze.com

  • La folie lunaire

    I don’t know what’s going on with cats at the moment, but they all seem to be on some sort of synchronised bullshittery bonanza.

    I taught an online lesson a few days ago, and all was going well until I asked the student to pick up the novel and turn to chapter 53. Her fluffy Norwegian Forest Cat, Daisy, then attacked the book, actually biting and tearing a huge chunk out of the very page that we needed for the lesson.

    My student screamed, “Madame! Elle mange mon livre! Daisy, you’re so naughty!” And, in the absence of having a middle finger to raise, Daisy rolled onto her back and purred.

    A Daisy lookalike, posing to protect the identity of the real Daisy. (Photo from zooplus.co.uk.)

    Rodan and Mothra have been equally disrespectful. My sister, whilst working from home, was interrupted, first, by Mothra, with a bird in her mouth. Then, as soon as my sister had sat down again after dealing with that bird, Rodan rocked up, with a second bird in his mouth. Meanwhile, a third one, having apparently witnessed the massacre, sat in the willow tree in the garden, going absolutely apeshit. Both cats were locked indoors for the remainder of the afternoon, and we fear that, now that they have a taste for avian flesh, the summer is set to be absolute carnage.

    Mothra feigns innocence.
    Rodan takes refuge in the fire pit.

    Catorze’s cat-cousin Zelva is usually pretty well-behaved, but her human (my mum) has not been without cat chaos: one of the neighbours’ cats chose her garden to have a disagreement with four magpies, who then took it in turns dive-bombing the cat. Eventually he caught one of them, and my mum had to race outside to separate them and allow the magpie a chance to escape. 

    Hopefully the massive credit which she has now earned within the corvid community will make up for the utter horror of the situation. (And I bet that, whatever the nature of the altercation, the cat started it.)

    As for Louis Catorze – well, just being himself is enough. You read what happened during our vet visit the other day, non?

    What’s going on with them? It can’t be a coincidence that we happen to be approaching a Blue Moon? 

    Not Catorze’s best look.

    For more Catorzian capers, please visit http://louiscatorze.com

  • Cela ne devrait pas arriver chez le vétérinaire 

    If there is a less fun place than the vet during a heatwave, I don’t want to know what it is. And it’s even worse when said visit ends up being a catastrophic waste of time. You don’t have to ask me how I know this, because you’re about to find out.

    Louis Catorze needed a blood test, because the vet was refusing to prescribe more Methimazole without one. We wouldn’t ordinarily have agreed to it unless he’d had symptoms, but we didn’t really have much choice.

    Cat Daddy and I sat in the waiting room whilst they carried out the test and, during that time, other patients came in. These included Cosmo the chubby* retriever, Eddie the shouty tabby, and Midnight the just-spayed tortie. 

    *This is not a judgement on my part. I have no idea how much a retriever ought to weigh, but there was a big set of weighing scales in the waiting room and, when Cosmo hopped on, the staff gasped upon learning his weight. His mamma then turned to him and said, scoldingly, “Cosmo! You need to lose weight!” as if Cosmo would a) understand, b) give a shit or c) do anything about it.

    So it was a packed-out house by the time the vet came out to give us the happy news: the test hadn’t been able to take place, because 2.78kg Catorze had fought off all the staff like a katana-wielding ninja and wouldn’t have it.

    Oh. Mon. Dieu. 

    “He has a lot of fight in him for an old boy!” were, I believe, their exact words. Hearing that, whilst feeling everyone’s eyes boring into me, was the moment that I actually felt my soul leave my body. 

    Anyway, they ended up letting us buy the disallowed Methimazole regardless, I imagine because they felt sorry for us. And we now need to give the little bastard some Gabapentin an hour before his rescheduled visit, whenever that may be, to sedate him. The vet also mentioned signing an “off licence form” which, disappointingly, isn’t a voucher to get a free bottle of vodka with the blood test, but to confirm that we understand that the Gabapentin is human medication (or some such thing – I was too busy withering away with embarrassment to take it all in). 

    Catorze was deathly silent all the way back and rewarded us with two piles of puke when we reached home, one of which was the biggest I’ve ever seen and probably twice his body weight. 

    Cat Daddy: “Oh my God, that’s a big ‘un!” (It then transpired that he was looking at the small pile, and hadn’t even seen the big one.)

    So, with our expectation originally to have answers as to how much the Methimazole was helping and whether it was stuffing up Catorze’s kidneys, we now, instead, have to rearrange the blood test and somehow drug the little sod beforehand. And I would be prepared to bet my house on it being raging hellfire temperatures again on the next appointment day. 

    What a time to be alive, albeit barely.

    Bastard cat.

    For more Catorzian capers, please visit http://louiscatorze.com

  • Mon esprit est en feu, mon âme est en feu

    It’s still too bloody hot in London. In fact, the hottest place in the whole country on Bank Holiday Monday was about half a mile from us.

    Holy shit.

    Naturellement, Louis Catorze thinks that now is the time to sit on my lap. No, he hasn’t suddenly decided that he likes me. I imagine that this new-found desire is mainly due to his ever-growing need for attention. The fact that I could get heatstroke and die – even a 2.78kg cat can generate A LOT of heat – is a bonus. 

    Catorze clearly feels that his need for attention is greater than his dislike of bare skin. Here he is, lying on me, and you can clearly see that his arse end is on my bare legs: 

    Feeling hot, hot, hot.

    We’re due to remain in sizzling (by UK standards, anyway) temperatures for most of the week, so I guess I can look forward to more of this. And, in true cat freak style, I won’t move a muscle until Catorze decides that he wants to leave. 

    For more Catorzian capers, please visit http://louiscatorze.com

  • Dans les ténèbres éternelles, dans le feu et dans la glace

    Merci à Dieu: it’s half term. For most teachers, this means switching off the dreaded weekday alarm and having a lie-in. For me, however, this means being woken by a bastard cat, forty minutes before my weekday alarm would ordinarily have gone off. 

    I have no idea why Catorze has decided to do this now. Part of it is probably because the sun is up earlier. But I expect it’s mainly because he’s a shite.

    Because it’s been a veritable hellfire here, Catorze has been enjoying his ice cube massages again. The little sod LOVES an ice cube massage. He especially loves it when I rub his fur the wrong way, not usually a favourite of thing of cats, but I guess that when it’s hot, it must lift the fur and expose their skin to the cool air.

    Cat Daddy: “Please don’t tell me you’re using all the ice cubes that I’ve been saving for my cocktails?”

    Ok, I won’t. 

    Here are some shots of Catorze’s just-massaged fur. And, yes, one of the reasons we do this for him is because he looks so funny afterwards: 

    Hehe.
    Hehehe.
    Hehehehe.

    For more Catorzian capers, please visit http://louiscatorze.com

  • Juger autrui, c’est se juger

    What is the meaning of life?

    Boxes! And every single cat in the world agrees.

    Rodan loves a box.
    Baby Mothra loves a box.
    Roux loves a box.
    Cleo loves a box.
    Antoine loves a box.
    Boots loves a box (especially a personalised one).
    Otis doesn’t mind a box.

    I have just bought myself some new shoes. And Louis Catorze is delighted about this, because he has been able to commandeer the box and use it as a bed. Yes, ANOTHER bed. In addition to the 1,643 beds that he already has. 

    The good thing about this is that he now chooses to sit there, instead of on my exercise mat, so I am able to do my workouts uninterrupted. However, a Kate Spade shoe box being used as a viewing platform has a certain … haughtiness about it. Somehow it makes me feel even more inadequate being judged from there than when he gave me a hard time from the mat.

    Just look at him: 

    The ace of Spade.

    It’s giving “royal box at the theatre meets foreman of the jury” vibes, non? 

    For more Catorzian capers, please visit http://louiscatorze.com

  • T’es-tu déjà senti comme un sac plastique?

    If you have ever met a British person, you will know that we all have at least one massive plastic carrier bag in our house, filled with numerous smaller plastic carrier bags. It’s practically the law here in the UK to have one of these; any Brit claiming not to is either a liar or has never been shopping.

    We have such a bag in our dining room, where it sits collecting smaller plastic carrier bags until we have enough for a worthwhile trip to the supermarket to recycle them. One day, Cat Daddy went into the dining room to find the bag upended and its contents strewn across the floor. 

    Naturellement his first thought was … me?

    Sorry, what?

    Now, I admit that, sometimes, when looking for something, I pull everything out of a box or cupboard, and I may be slow at putting everything back again. But THIS? Come on. 

    I think we all know the identity of the guilty party. 

    Louis Catorze frequently sneaks into the dining room and, when we pass by, he either hides or darts out again, as if not wanting to be seen. We also hear noises in there – rustling, banging etc. – but, when we look, we can’t tell what’s out of place and what’s not. So we just leave it, assuming that it’s either Catorze or a poltergeist and knowing that we can’t really do much about either. 

    Obviously, one day, Catorze decided to take advantage of our inefficiency and went wild in there, leaving destruction and devastation in his wake. Cat Daddy picked up all the bags and stuffed them back into the large bag. He also said that Catorze was no longer allowed in the dining room but, given that the little sod has a Cloak of Invisibility, I don’t see how we can possibly stop him. 

    Here is Catorze, photographed at the precise moment that he realised we were powerless against him:

    He’s smiling, isn’t he?

    For more Catorzian capers, please visit http://louiscatorze.com

  • Manger comme un Roi le matin (Partie 5)

    The flimsy, gossamer-thin silver lining of both of us being at home during Louis Catorze’s food bullying is that the impact is halved. However, when it’s just one of us home alone, that person really does feel the full force of it. 

    Whilst I successfully escape and spend my day with the comparatively cushy task of teaching teenagers, poor Cat Daddy is trapped with a screaming, creepy-staring, gorging cat. This was just one of the messages that he sent me last week (with the Unrepeatable Expletive blanked out for decency): 

    That evening’s Boys’ Club saw Catorze uncharacteristically drained and sleeping through much of the usual sport and rock music video viewing. 

    Cat Daddy, the next day: “I think he’s knackered because he stayed awake all day to get more food. He’s exhausted himself through greediness.”

    Is this even a thing? Oh dear God. 

    For more Catorzian capers, please visit http://louiscatorze.com

  • Je ne désire que la tranquillité et le repos 

    The first of Louis Catorze’s birthday flotilla parties took place on Saturday. Sadly, having worn himself out from screaming all morning, the birthday boy let us down by sleeping through most of it, and his guests barely saw him.

    He liked my party dress.
    Catorzian emblem on the apple pie.

    Although it wasn’t blazing sunshine by any means, we were still able to sit outside for a few precious hours.

    When the outdoor sofa is deployed, we know that CST – Catorzian Summer Time – is here. The little sod LOVES the outdoor sofa. However, should anyone join him on it, he’s an absolute pest. For the two hours that I last attempted to sit and read on the outdoor sofa, I was subjected to the following: 

    • Headbutting and nuzzling of my book 
    • Chewing of the ribbon bookmark 
    • Clawing of my arms 
    • Whining like a dying dog … oh dear God, the whining …

    As a result I managed to read a grand total of four (4) pages of my book. Yes, in two hours. And, naturellement, when I put the book down, Catorze decided that he no longer wanted my attention. 

    We have another [checks notes] three months of this. I’m not sure how we will cope, although at least we will be away for two weeks of it.

    Absolute bastard cat.

    For more Catorzian capers, please visit http://louiscatorze.com

  • Ta maman ne danse pas 

    I have decided that, rather than ignoring my Oura ring’s passive-aggressive messages telling me to move my lazy arse, I probably ought to start taking some notice. Otherwise there’s not much point in having a fitness tracker. 

    I have started dancing to try and achieve my step target, either when I come home after school or in the morning when I know it’s going to be a sedentary day. There’s no technique as such, just bouncing around to dance classics from the 90s and the early 2000s. 

    Unfortunately Louis Catorze is not a fan of this at all. 

    The last time I did it, he approached me, rearing up on his hind legs and screaming himself witless. So I decided to, erm, pick him up and dance with him in my arms. 

    He didn’t hate it. But he didn’t love it, either. When I put him back down again, he pitter-pattered off into the hallway and watched from afar, his face a mixture of disdain and sad resignation. 

    Unfortunately I pinged my ankle fifteen minutes in. I’m not super-happy about this but it’s great news for Catorze as he probably won’t have to put up with my dancing again, at least not for a while. It wouldn’t surprised me to learn that he’d summoned the powers of darkness to make this happen. 

    Here he is, making his feelings clear. Disapproval from a distance is still disapproval, non? 

    “You’re embarrassing yourself, salope.”

    For more Catorzian capers, please visit http://louiscatorze.com