Louis Catorze has figured out that, if he creepy-stares for food during my workout, I won’t respond. Now, before you all start piping up in his defence, this is the way it has to be. If I interrupt him things to give him even one tiny morsel, it will condemn me to a fate of having to it forever more.
So the little sod has decided to up the stakes by actually sabotaging the workout.
Here he is, settling on the mat to stop me from lying on it:
Just make yourself comfortable.Yes, his new-found gluttony is making him look wonderfully glossy. No, this does not help me in the slightest.
Note that he doesn’t scream. The passive-aggressiveness of this, as opposed to the downright aggressive-aggressiveness of screaming, is what makes this so effective.
He may be old, but he knows what he wants. It would almost be admirable, if it weren’t so annoying.
Cat Daddy and I went to Manchester at the weekend, to watch the football. And it seems that Mancunians are cat people, too:
No thanks. We get enough of that at home.
Despite the weekend being non-stop action, we didn’t realise quite how comparatively peaceful was until we stepped back through the door of Le Château, and the screaming started.
These are just a few brief snapshots of what we had to endure upon our return:
Screaming is important, but washing is important too.
Still screaming. Good grief.
There was plenty more, but it wouldn’t have been fair to subject you to it all. And it wasn’t just the duration or the volume, although both of those were pretty bad. It was also the variety of tone that got under our skin, ranging from “normal” screaming and multi-layered, throaty trills to a horrific, witchy rasp.
Blue the Smoke Bengal’s mamma has often described Louis Catorze as “loud” and “chatty”. But, apparently, when she fed him on Sunday morning, his screaming had been “murderous”. And when something is described as “murderous”, that usually isn’t a brilliant sign.
We wouldn’t mind quite so much if we were able to understand why he screams. But, after twelve years of putting up with his shit living with him, we still don’t know.
OH GOD, OUR SUMMER HOLIDAY CHAT-SITTEUR. Holy hell. She is going to be stuck with the little sod for two whole weeks.
Are we doing a morally wrong thing by not warning her about how bad the screaming has become, a bit like selling a house with massive subsidence/damp/poltergeist problems and not declaring them to the estate agent?
Or dare we hope that, by the time our holiday rolls around, Catorze will inexplicably decide to behave?
Cat Daddy told me the other day that he had “important neighbourhood news which would permanently change the way we live our lives”. I thought it was going to be about the car parking in our street, or the accursèd number 65 bus which randomly terminates mid-route and boots everyone out in some undesirable location, but Cat Daddy said it was worse than that: Family Next Door will be getting TWO KITTENS.
Thrilling news. No, really.
Cat Daddy: “Louis Catorze’s life will be RUINED.”
Me: “He’ll be fine. He lived with Blue the Smoke Bengal two doors away and he was fine.”
Him: “But that’s because Next Door was like a demilitarised No Man’s Land in between. Now it’s not.”
Me: “He can handle himself.”
Him: “What if they bully him? He’s never had to deal with a nasty neighbourhood bully cat before.”
I like to think that Catorze, as the elder statesman of the TW8 cat community, might do his civic duty and become a mentor to the young newcomers. But what is his leadership style? And on which of the following iconic teachers will he model himself?
No. (Photo from screenrant.com.)Unlikely. (Photo from nzherald.co.nz.)Bingo. (Photo from thetelegraph.co.uk.)
An Amazon parcel arrived at Le Château the other day.
Me: “Is that for me?”
Cat Daddy: “No, it’s for Louis.”
Me: “It is not.”
Him: “Yes, it is. I bought it for him.”
Me: “You bought him a present?”
Him, on the defensive: “Yes! What’s wrong with that? Can’t I buy my cat a present if I want?”
I was quite unsettled by this highly atypical turn of events, especially as Cat Daddy is always complaining about Louis Catorze’s shit cluttering up the house, but I decided to just go along with it.
The present is a set of silvervine sticks. You’re likely to have heard of them if you’re a cat person but, if not, they’re a hallucinogenic drug for cats, akin to catnip. So it seems that Cat Daddy just wanted to watch his boy get stoned and have a good laugh about it.
Anyway, as if to spite his papa, Catorze isn’t remotely interested in his new toys. He absolutely couldn’t give a shite. So now we’re stuck with five silvervine sticks that will never be used, and Cat Daddy declares that he will never buy Catorze a present again. No, not even if he makes his seventeenth birthday.
Here is Catorze, displaying his utter indifference:
List the people whom you admire and to whom you look for advice.
I don’t have a list. But, if I did, and BBC Weather were on it, they would be firmly crossed off. With opaque permanent marker.
Mon Dieu: would you believe that the day-long thunderbolts and lightning forecast for Sunday didn’t happen?
The weather forecast that I showed in my last post was pretty damning, non? Well, it turns out that it was all lies. Most of the morning was cloudy but not unpleasant – in fact, in many ways, better than being too hot. And, during the afternoon, we even had sun and a few blue sky moments. There was no rain. Not a single drop.
Cat Daddy is absolutely livid that it was so far off what was promised, and we can’t believe that we called off the party for this. No doubt our friends all think we’re massive idiots for calling off, although they’ve been too polite to say.
The only positive in this situation is that Catorze had no idea we were throwing him a party. And, had he known, he still wouldn’t have given a shit.
When your party plans go awry, a nap on a hi-vis cycling jacket is always fun.
To cheer ourselves up, we have been trying to reschedule. But it’s proving to be quite difficult getting all the original invitees together on the same day. So it looks as if we will have to host a series of parties throughout the summer, with a constant flow of different guests, just like the flotilla from the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee. And, should the weather turn against us, we will be able to accommodate the smaller groups indoors.
The first crew of Catorze’s Sixteenth Birthday Flotilla will be welcomed in a couple of weeks’ time. We will keep you updated about the others.
Thank you so much to everyone who sent birthday wishes to Louis Catorze.
There’s nothing quite like a good old scream when you receive a birthday card.We gave him a catnip plant for his birthday. He was moderately interested for about a minute and a half.
Cat Daddy and I made the decision to postpone the Sweet Sixteen party due to the weather. They haven’t just predicted a few showers; it’s an apocalyptic thunderstorm all day, with lightning forecast at 1pm, exactly the time that we had planned to ask everyone to arrive. And, regretfully, we just aren’t able to host that many people for an indoors-only fête.
No.
I don’t know much about the Bible, but I’m pretty sure there’s at least one story about God sending thunderbolts and lightning to lay his vengeance upon some unholy abomination. And, this weekend, Catorze is that unholy abomination.
I know. Imagine that.
Anyway, the little sod had a lovely birthday, spending the morning racing around the house knocking things over, the afternoon sleeping on a hi-vis cycling jacket (because the freezer bag has been confiscated) and the evening gadding about outside. He even managed to escape out at The Front to charge up under the Beltane full moon:
Yes, that shapeless lump on the pavement is him. Yes, he’s rolling where dogs have probably shat.
We are trying to reschedule the party for sometime in the summer. With half of our guests available for the first proposed date, the other half preferring the second and a small, awkward minority (YOU KNOW WHO YOU ARE) not able to make either, it looks as if we might end up planning multiple parties.
Since Catorze loves visitors – he’s one of the few people for whom “the more, the merrier” really applies – I wouldn’t put it past him to have planned this on purpose.
Louis Catorze is sixteen today. And, a few days ago, the lucky boy received a whole side of hot-smoked salmon as a birthday present, from one of his wonderful pilgrims.
They underlined the instruction on the delivery note. TWICE.
I was initially against the idea of Catorze having extraneous food whilst being treated for hyperthyroidism. However, since he’s been doing much better on the medication, we have decided that we might allow him a few small pieces of hot-smoked salmon, just this once.
I know that I have said this before, but never in my life did I think he would live this long. Whatever evil power universal force is keeping him going, we are both grateful and astonished.
Cat Daddy, after a few glasses of Pinot: “He thinks it’s all about him. He has no idea about God or the universe.”
Erm, that’s because he thinks he IS both God and the universe.
Bon anniversaire, little sod. Here’s to another year of the Sun King lighting up our lives.
Matilda from across the park is ready for Beltane.
It’s Beltane soon and, this year, it coincides with a full moon. These magical big hitters together usually spell trouble in terms of feline madness, and this year is no exception.
Rodan climbed next door’s tree and was seen (and heard) massively upsetting a magpie. The humans suspect he was trying to go for the nest, and the disturbance was so bad that they had to resort to the hose.
I would’ve gone for “It must be some other black cat”, but never mind.
Meanwhile, Louis Catorze has caught Le Rat. And it’s an absolute giant, a third his size.
Cat Daddy, later: “It didn’t look that big when we saw it the first time. Obviously it’s had time to grow.” Ugh.
I was so shocked that I screamed when I found it. I’ve had to deal with dead prey a zillion times so I ought to be used to this by now but, after a completely fallow year last year, we didn’t think Catorze would do it again. The fact that we WANTED him to do it, too, cemented the idea in our minds that he absolutely wouldn’t, just to spite us.
My scream was loud enough to draw Cat Daddy. Unfortunately it was also loud enough to draw Catorze who, somehow, managed to arrive first at the scene, even though he was upstairs and Cat Daddy wasn’t. And, sure enough, when the little sod saw that I really didn’t want him to approach the rat, that was exactly what he did.
I had dreadful visions of him grabbing it between his jaws, racing upstairs and hiding it in some mystery place, but luckily he then heard Cat Daddy’s voice behind him, decided that his papa was more appealing than a stinking rat corpse, and pitter-pattered off towards him instead.
As ever, because I worry about people not believing me when I say how big Catorze’s kills are, I take photos of them with a pound coin for scale. This time was no exception. One person later commented, when I shared the photo, on how tiny the coin seemed alongside the gargantuan rodent. Another said that they almost didn’t spot the coin, because it was so dwarfed by the rat.
My sister: “I’m pretty sure some people have really small dogs that size.” Saint Jésus.
For a few horrifying moments we thought we were out of plastic bags, but Cat Daddy eventually found an Ocado one. I transferred the monster (the rat, not Catorze) into the bag before setting off on that familiar, well-worn route to the park bin. Naturellement, being a gloriously sunny day, the park was full of fellow townsfolk enjoying the sights of the sun, the lush, green plants … and me, desperately stuffing a suspicious package into the bin.
(Yes, I had to use some force to stuff it in. The rat was so enormous that the package didn’t slide conveniently through the hole, as I had hoped.)
At least the Sweet Sixteen party will be a (relatively) ratless zone. But … has our introduction of wet food reignited Catorze’s desire for proper flesh?
Here he is, pictured not long after the grim discovery. I don’t know what that is on his chin but, if I think too hard about, it I might never want him near me again.
That first white bit is his fang. The second could be a drop of rat juice.
Obviously the black cat emoji 🐈⬛ is one of my favourites. And, yes, I am still absolutely enraged that they only introduced it in 2020, whilst the ginger cat, and the weird yellow cat face that looks more like a gerbil, were in existence for years prior to that.
However, I actually only use the black cat emoji very rarely. This is partly because I’m not that sure whether Louis Catorze even is a cat. But it’s mostly because the others serve us well in communicating his nonsense to others, especially since we don’t know how to even articulate the stupid shit that he does.
To describe him, we often use these: 😈 🧛♂️ 👻 🎃
And, to describe our feelings towards his bullshit behaviour, we often use these: 🤣😳😱🤦♀️😢😖😫🤯😡😬🤢🤮🤷♀️
(Obviously our responses are not limited to just these; Catorze is skilled at eliciting infinite emotions from us, most of them negative.)
Here he is, having the cheek to look weary and resigned at OUR behaviour, when it’s very much the other way around:
Le Rat is still at large. This is very concerning news, especially as Louis Catorze’s Sweet Sixteen party is just days away.
Meanwhile, on the south coast, Catorze’s cat-cousin Roux managed to catch the mouse/rat that she’d brought into the house in the first place, only to release it into a different room which has more hiding places. This is quite an achievement (although not in a good way).
No, you just relax whilst everyone else runs around trying to catch vermin that YOU BROUGHT IN.
The rodent was eventually caught, although this was 100% down to the endeavours of the humans in the household. They laid a humane trap, and it turns out that the rodents of the south coast are suckers for the irresistible allure of peanut butter bait; their uninvited guest was soon discovered inside the trap, thrashing around.
So the humans have won this battle. However, the summer hasn’t even started yet, and we all know that this is Otis and Roux’s peak playtime. How many mice, rats, shrews and birds will they bring home this year?
And what do I have to do to galvanise Catorze into action here? Given his tendency to do the exact opposite of whatever is wanted or needed, I’m giving serious thought to erecting a “No Rat-Catching” sign in Le Jardin …
Because our house is so small, the only area large enough for me to do my morning workout is the kitchen. (Oui, Mesdames et Messieurs: despite Le Château’s grandiose name, it’s only really Château-y if you’re a tiny, 2.7kg cat.)
Unfortunately the kitchen is also Louis Catorze’s prime creepy staring spot. And, because there is no door between the kitchen and the rest of the house, I can’t shut him out, much as I would love to.
My workouts typically last around forty-five minutes, and Catorze happily sits there throughout the entire thing, statue-still, creepy-staring at me. Occasionally he takes a break to gaze mournfully at his empty bowl, but then he resumes the unsettling eye contact.
This was the view between my knees whilst doing sit-ups:
Saint Jésus.SAINT JÉSUS.
Cat Daddy has lengthy physio stretches to do every morning, and he experiences similar treatment.
Catorze was never like this when we gave him fish-flavoured wet food. He liked it, but this level of bullying and intimidation (for chicken-flavoured food) is something else entirely.
Louis Catorze still hasn’t caught the rat. I expect most of you probably knew that anyway.
Catorze! Où est le rat?
I was starting to feel quite ashamed to have a cat that didn’t do its ONE JOB, but it seems I am not alone in suffering from such feline uselessness.
Zelva, who is probably not far off the same age as Catorze, has never caught a thing in her life. Not only that, but she and her supposed prey socialise together. I KNOW.
A nice afternoon get-together with the pigeons.
Otis and Roux are devastatingly efficient at catching prey. However, they then bring them into the house and release them, leaving the humans to figure out where they are and how to trap and remove them. There is a large mouse (or perhaps a small rat – nobody is quite sure) currently hiding behind the tumble dryer at Otis and Roux’s place, and neither cat is doing the slightest thing about it. Roux even went as far as to clamp her jaws around it, lock eyes with one of the humans, then release it again.
Does my family have the most incompetent cats in the world? Or are they doing this on purpose, just to spite us?
Otis proves that conducting Rodent Duty does not lead to fewer rodents on the premises.Roux takes a break between stints of bringing in rodents and watching them run riot.
This was the sight, and sound, that greeted me after work not long ago:
Cat Daddy could hear this from inside. Did he come to my aid? He did not.
I don’t know whether Louis Catorze escaped out at the Front or whether he was kicked out because Cat Daddy had had enough. Not that it really matters because, either way, yes, he really was managing to drown out the sound of the passing plane with this cacophonous racket. And these screams weren’t even the worst ones. The ones that he did when he initially spotted me, and whilst I was taking my phone out of my pocket, were BEYOND horrific.
Luckily none of my neighbours were around to witness this. That said, they already know what Catorze is like.
We are days away from a full moon Beltane. We can’t cope with more madness. Please, spare us.
louiscatorze.com 