After several days of stuffing his greedy little face with Orijen Six Fish, Louis Catorze’s appetite faded as soon as I placed an order for a further supply. (Lizzi, if you’re reading this, I know you told me so.)

The order took a couple of attempts to go through, as if the Apple Gods were trying to warn me. But, luckily, the unhungriness was only a temporary blip and he is now back to being an eating, screaming machine, as he was when he had the appetite-enhancing pill.

Cat Daddy’s Helpful Comment of the Day: “F***ing ridiculous. Expensive food and beauty oil [referring to the Omega 3 vol-au-vents]. It’s like living in a fancy spa with Raymond Blanc cooking for him.”

Cat Daddy and I, on the other hand, are existing on stale bread and stagnant rainwater in order to keep Sa Maj supplied with his various dietary and wellbeing paraphernalia. But then it’s never been about us, so tant pis.

We have half a pack of Lily’s Kitchen Marvellously Mature left, and Catorze appears to have forgotten that it ever existed, which is exactly what we want; continuing to give it to him would be rather like continuing to give him heroin despite successfully getting him onto methadone. We have found a new home for it, though: later this month, along with the 1.5kg of Thrive and the 862kg of Canagan, the Marvellously Mature will be making its way to some hungry kitties in SE20 (more about them next time).

Here is the little sod, waving goodbye to his old food and hoping that the recipients enjoy it:

When Louis Catorze decided that he didn’t want to eat Canagan anymore, despite the fact that he’d eaten it perfectly happily for TWO WHOLE WEEKS BEFOREHAND, Cat Daddy and I decided it was time to deploy the Orijen. This was not a decision that we took lightly, given that it would send us spiralling into debt*, but we didn’t know what else to do.

*Here is a comparison, using a dry food pack of around 1.5-1.8kg as a guide:

⁃ Supermarket or commercial brands: approx. £2-3 per kg

⁃ Mid-range but still perfectly decent brands: approx. £7-10 per kg

⁃ Posh brands: approx. £12 per kg

⁃ Orijen Six Fish: £16.66 per kg, +£2 for the Regional Red (red meat) variant, +£4 for the Tundra (game) variant

I could get better value from the massive 5.4kg pack but we don’t have room to store it, and I refuse to buy a bag of cat food that weighs more than my cat. Plus, if anything were to GUARANTEE our mutual friend ceasing to like it, it would be the purchase of a huge pack costing this much:

Anyway … very tentatively, we gave Catorze a dessertspoonful of Orijen without his old food, and we barely drew breath as he approached it.

SAINT JÉSUS: HE ATE IT.

Then he ate another portion. Then he ate two more normal-sized portions. And when Cat Daddy came home from the pub later, Catorze did such a screamy, starey number on him that he drunk-served him a fifth – and most likely enormous – portion.

Cat Daddy’s Helpful Comment of the Day, sent by drunken text that night: “I told you he knew there was better food around. He’s just polished off a whole bowl like some craved [sic] animal who’s never eaten before.”

Be warned, Chat Noir owners: their power is growing. We thought it only happened in October, but it’s started early. Until now, never would I have believed in mind control so intense that it could compel me to buy the most expensive cat food in existence, to pray for said Chat Noir to love it AND to feel pure joy when he did. Catorze is Charles Manson in feline form.

Mind you, by that point I was so worn down by this whole sorry saga that I would have been grateful if he’d eaten asbestos and drain unblocker. And they would have been cheaper.

Le Grand Changement’s twists and turns are more dramatic than an episode of Line of Duty, and I cannot believe I am having to write this.

After a thoroughly successful Grand Changement (or so I stupidly thought), Louis Catorze has decided that he no longer wants to eat Canagan. And, naturellement, he made this decision AFTER we subscribed to six-weekly deliveries of Canagan at £35 a pop, the first of which is already here.

We initially put this down to temporary Summer Unhungries, but then he did the same thing again the following day. And, at the end of that second day, when I finally gave into the screaming and served a portion of his old food, he ate it.

This is worse than having the opposition score a 94th-minute winner in football. This is more like having them score long after the full-time whistle and the referee deciding to allow it.

Whilst it probably sounds comical that he’s so contrary, the reality of a cat who chooses starvation over new food is hugely stressful. We are utterly dismayed and mystified by this/him. We did not deviate from the instructions in the slightest – apart from using just one bowl when we saw how much the little sod was perturbed by two bowls, and apart from that one time early into the programme when Cat Daddy drunk-fed him Canagan on its own, WHICH HE ATE. So we can’t understand why this hasn’t worked.

Cat Daddy’s Helpful Comment of the Day: “Maybe he knows you’ve got more expensive food [the Plan C Orijen] for him, and he’s holding out for that?”

Me: “Sorry … what?”

Cat Daddy: “Maybe he’s just sensing it from you. Maybe you’re giving off vibes.”

Me: “Giving off … BETTER FOOD VIBES?”

Cat Daddy: “Yes. I mean, wouldn’t you do the same thing? Wouldn’t you stop eating boring old cod roe if you knew someone was hoarding caviar?”

[Silence, tumbleweed, crickets.]

We have no option but to unleash the money-vaporising, poverty-trapping weapon of mass destruction that is Orijen. And we are giving serious consideration to serving it alone, without the Lily’s Kitchen; it seems to be that, if Catorze can still see and smell his old food in the bowl, he will eat whatever is with it … but when the old food is taken away, however snail-slow the transition, he’s no longer interested. So we may bin the gradual changeover and find a food that he likes enough to eat on its own.

This defies all advice out there, due to the risk of puking and stomach upsets. But, let’s face it: dutifully following advice to the letter has achieved nothing so far.