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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.

  • Qui Zoom qui? (Partie 3) 

    Cat Daddy had another Zoom call the other day, which meant that I was on prison officer duty minding Louis Catorze in a locked cell. 

    Just before the call started, Cat Daddy told me that he had already contained the inmate, so all I had to do was go into the front room and join him to make sure he didn’t escape. I darted in quickly, in case the little sod tried to slip out … but, upon closing the door, I realised that there was no sign of Catorze. 

    I then heard his pitter-pattering in the hallway, so I was able to grab him and shut him in the room with me.

    Later that day, Cat Daddy thanked me for my shift and said, “He’s always awful in Zoom calls. That’s why I shut him in another room before even starting.”

    Me: “Well, you did a shit job, because the room was empty when I went in.”

    Him: “What?”

    Me: “He wasn’t there.”

    [Silence, tumbleweed, crickets.]

    Oh. Mon. Dieu.

    Cat Daddy is 100% convinced that Catorze was in the room when he’d shut the door. I’m 100% convinced that he WASN’T in the room when I’d gone to carry out my observation detail. This can only mean one thing: THE LITTLE BASTARD TELEPORTED OUT. 

    I have a Zoom call scheduled for the end of the summer holidays, although the other attendees are all women so it probably won’t appeal to Catorze. Will he leave us in peace? If I succeed in shutting him out, will he teleport in? My mind is boggling with all the various possibilities. 

    Mid-scream.

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

  • Les chiens mangent, les chats dînent

    Remember when Louis Catorze liked wet food, then he didn’t, then he did, then he didn’t? Well, now he does again. 

    The little sod had been looking a bit haggard and brittle, so we decided to see if he would eat the wet food left over from his last sojourn. We were pretty sure he would reject it, just to spite us, but he tucked in with tremendous enthusiasm. And now he’s constantly tormenting us for more.  You cannot IMAGINE the feeling of being bullied by a tiny beast who weighs less than my lightest dumbbell. 

    Naturellement, there are some rule changes from the last Wet Food Odyssey: 

    Firstly, if the shreds of chicken are more than 1.47cm in length, they are to be cut in half. If we don’t cut them in half, we risk them either being left behind to go dry and attract flies, or being flung around the feeding station. 

    (Yes, that’s right, he can rip the heads off rodents the size of chihuahuas, but he can’t possibly eat a strip of chicken longer than 1.47cm.)

    Secondly, the previous wet food routine of set mealtimes is now obsolete, and Catorze expects a fresh serving of food every time he asks. This might be three or four times a day. Equally, it could be 783 times a day. It’s such fun finding out what kind of a day it will be. 

    Anyway, he’s eating well, and he even appears to be chubbing up a little. This calls for another rendition of the Chubbing Up Dance, non?

    Here is Catorze, informing us of his tragically empty bowl. Mind you, he sits like this even when it’s full: 

    “Feed moi.”

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

  • Qui Zoom qui? (Partie 2) 

    If you had to give one life-changing tip, what would it be?

    If you have a cat, don’t bother trying to have professional Zoom meetings in your house. Seriously, just go to someone else’s house to do them. Or hot-desk somewhere. Or sit in your car. Anywhere but your house.

    Remember when Louis Catorze used to be a complete and utter pest during Zoom calls? Yup, so do we. And, regretfully, so does he, because he’s still doing it. 

    Luckily I hardly ever have to teach online lessons and, when I do, I do so from school and not from home. However, Cat Daddy, being on the board of trustees for a local business, has had quite a few video calls. On one occasion, I even heard him say, “Sorry, that’s my cat. I thought I’d shut him out but he’s barged into the room.”

    In short, Catorze cannot be left unsupervised during Zoom calls. And, since Cat Daddy tends to be the one doing them, that means I am the one shut in a room with Catorze and responsible for making sure he doesn’t escape. 

    When the last call took place, the little sod was nowhere to be found so there was no way of imprisoning him. However, minutes later, as I sat in the front room, I heard him in the kitchen, emitting the horrible, scowly rasp, that he does when someone grabs him unexpectedly. (Don’t worry, he’s not upset or in pain or anything like that; he’s just being dramatic. He once did it when I was applying his thyroid meds, and Cat Daddy shouted, “You liar! Don’t you DARE pretend that it hurt!”)

    Cat Daddy then marched into the room, dumped Catorze onto my lap with one hand, then marched out again. It transpired that, despite being absent pre-call, Catorze had appeared as soon as it started, being his usual self and annoying the merde out of everyone listening. 

    Just as he started to settle on my lap, a fly shot out of his fur. I picked up a nearby envelope, swatted it and watched it fall to the floor. 

    Catorze then jumped off my lap, sniffed the fly and ate it. 

    It’s just non-stop glamour and sophistication here at Le Château, isn’t it? The phrase “You couldn’t make this up” was INVENTED for us. 

    Hopefully the Zoom participants didn’t have this view.

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

  • Laissez-vous éternuer 

    Louis Catorze doesn’t like it when people sneeze. His reaction is more annoyance than fear: he emits an audible scowl, then runs away making bird-chatter sounds. Yes, we know that this is weird. 

    Cat Daddy’s sneezes are so ear-bleeding loud that they make his guitar sing (or maybe gently weep, I don’t know). This is no joke. Even when the guitar is hanging on the wall, in the immediate aftermath of one of his sonic boom sneezes we can briefly hear the metallic hum of the strings. 

    One night, as is typical of most nights, I went to bed early, and Catorze accompanied me and settled on the bed beside me. Downstairs, Cat Daddy sneezed. 

    Catorze: “Mwah.”

    Cat Daddy: [Another sneeze.]

    Catorze: “Mwah!”

    Cat Daddy: [Another sneeze.]

    Catorze: “Mwah-mwah-mwah-mwah-mwah!”

    The little sod then proceeded to take off, muttering obscenities under his breath as he went. YES, HE THOUGHT I WAS THE ONE TO OFFEND HIS EARDRUMS WITH THE SNEEZING.

    I don’t know what happened after that, nor do I want to, but I imagine he went running to his papa, and the two of them snuggled each other and debated how much better life would be without me. 

    An artist’s impression of scenes following The Sneeze.

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

  • L’amélioration domiciliaire

    What’s your home decoration style?

    Cat hairs and despair, mostly.

    Little sod.

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

  • Au revoir, Doug 

    Whilst holidaying in the Scottish Highlands, I learned of the passing of Doug Thomas, a fellow cat blogger. Although I knew that Doug hadn’t been well, with frequent trips to hospital, this news really knocked me off my feet and I’m still not sure how to process it. 

    Doug’s was one of the very first cat blogs – perhaps even THE first – that I followed on WordPress and, through his words and photos, I soon got to know him and his smoke-black Persian cats, Andy and Dougy. 

    (Yes, his name was Doug and one of his cats was called Dougy. I know.) 

    When a friend or a family member passes away, there is a well-trodden path to follow: a funeral service, mutual friends with whom to share memories, birthdays and anniversaries to commemorate, and so on. But, when you only know said person through their writing on your WordPress feed, and you haven’t met them face to face, what exactly is supposed to happen? It seems that you simply unsubscribe from their life, and they from yours, and that’s it. It’s a very strange feeling.

    That said, when I read Doug’s final farewell, posted by one of his family members, and scrolled below to comment, there we all were: a comment from Person A, whose cat blog I follow and who follows mine, then Person B, whose cat blog I follow and who follows mine, and so on. We all knew Doug. The threads of the Cat Internet that link us together may be gossamer-fine, like the nylon wires of those illusion necklaces with floating pendants that were popular in the early 2000s. But, despite being almost invisible to the naked eye, they are there nonetheless and, perhaps, are more enduring than they may seem. 

    Doug, may your paradise home be just like that of your earthly life: a peaceful place with a creepy SpongeBob soft toy lurking in the corner of your living room, good enough WiFi to allow you to write every day, and, of course, cats galore. Thank you for brightening the Cat Internet for all of us. We miss you. 

    Louis Catorze would have loved to be Doug’s cat.

    I don’t know for how much longer Doug’s blog will be available, but enjoy it here whilst you can. 

    Doug’s obituary is here.

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

  • Los ganadores

    What’s a promise you made that you’ve actually kept?

    Well, he hasn’t kept it yet – in fact, he keeps trying to wriggle out of it – but perhaps posting it here will shame him into being a man of his word. 

    Allow me to explain: 

    Despite Cat Daddy’s efforts to sabotage Louis Catorze’s World Cup sweepstake (by, erm, allocating him a team who weren’t even participating), Spain emerged as the victors. And Spain happened to be one of Catorze’s teams. 

    Cat Daddy, when I told him the happy news: “Oh. Didn’t we take Spain away from him and replace it with Italy?”

    Me: “What? No. Google Gemini was the one who allocated him both Spain and Italy. I suggested giving him France instead of Italy, to make it fair, but you vetoed it.”

    Cat Daddy: “So HE wins?”

    Me: “HE WINS.”

    Cat Daddy: “[Unrepeatable Expletives.]”

    Cat Daddy then tried to renege on his agreement to award Catorze his prize (sleeping in Cat Daddy’s bed for a whole night, something not usually allowed), but eventually he grudgingly relented. However, he simply left the bedroom door open in the expectation that the little sod would see it open and go in to claim his winnings. He didn’t. 

    Cat Daddy, the next morning: “Well, that was his once chance. If he didn’t take it, that’s his problem. I’m shutting the door from now on.”

    Me: “But he’s a vampire. Vampires don’t come in unless they’re invited.”

    [Silence, tumbleweed, crickets.]

    Perhaps, if we all collectively keep up the pressure, Cat Daddy will award Catorze his rightful prize, as agreed. He wouldn’t break a promise to an elderly cat who probably won’t even be around for the next World Cup … would he? 

    Who wouldn’t want to snuggle up to this? Ahem …

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

  • Une petite flamme de folie 

    Thanks a lot, Kate and Audrey, for wishing “antics” and “stirring-up” upon us. Because of you, that is exactly what’s happening. 

    Louis Catorze has been UNHINGED since we returned home, thundering around the house so loudly, and sounding so like an excitable adult human, that he woke Cat Daddy one morning. He also came in from his outdoor sleeping spot as soon as his Creepy Kitty Sixth Sense™ smelled a Zoom call and raised absolute hell, screaming and trying to jump onto the kitchen worktop where the laptop sat. 

    Poor Cat Daddy sent me an SOS via WhatsApp, and I had to bring in the offender and detain him until the call was over. 

    The only stunt Catorze HASN’T pulled is to sit outside the patio doors, gazing forlornly in, in the hope that some sucker might get up and open the door for him. He tried this on the chat-sitteur and it actually worked for a while, until she reported back to us. We were then able to tell her that he was just taking the piss and give her strict instructions not to comply … unless she wished to condemn herself, and possibly us, to a lifetime of having to get up to open a door for a cat WHO HAS A FUNCTIONING CAT FLAP AND KNOWS PERFECTLY WELL HOW TO USE IT. 

    The fact that he’s not tried it on us shows that he can, and does, alter his behaviour for his audience. What a manipulative little shit. And I am stuck at home with him for the rest of the summer holidays, so I have another month of this, without the blessèd respite that is teaching teenagers.

    Here he is, screaming at me because I was eating fruit. He doesn’t like fruit, but that’s not the point: 

    Saint Jésus et tous les apôtres.

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

  • On écrit pour goûter la vie deux fois, dans l’instant et rétrospectivement

    What app eats up most of your screen time, and do you even feel bad about it?

    I actually checked in my settings to be able to answer this question, and was surprised to discover that my most commonly-used app is actually, erm, the Notes app on my iPhone. 

    I know. Notes is so boring that I wasn’t really sure, at first, whether or not it was even a proper app. Being a frequent user of Notes is like saying you like to indulge in the Clock function for setting alarms, or the Calendar function to log appointments. 

    Even Catorze finds Notes as dull as dust.

    Sorry if you were expecting something a bit more exciting. That said, I can’t be bothered to feel bad about it. Notes is way too inoffensive and banal to elicit bad feelings. It’s not as if it’s TikTok, Roblox (no, it’s not Road Blocks – who knew?) or some such shite. 

    I use Notes mainly for drafting blog posts, because I find it a lot easier to write there than on WordPress or Jetpack. When I first started blogging, my brother-in-law – a cricket journalist – advised me to always have thirty or so ideas in my back pocket in case of a creativity dearth; however, it seems I needn’t have bothered because there is always something going on with Louis Catorze. 

    Sometimes there quite literally aren’t enough days in the week to post all the stupid shit that he’s done – unless, of course, I moved to daily or twice-daily blog posts about him. And, trust me, nobody wants that. 

    So, as long as Catorze pitter-patters this earth, the Notes app will continue to be battered by my fingertips, multiple times a day, recording his misadventures for the world to see. It ain’t glamorous. But then life as a Catorzian housekeeper slave prisoner was never about me. 

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

  • La vie normale reprend son cours

    Cat Daddy and I are home from holiday. The screaming started as soon as we walked through the door, with Louis Catorze both demanding attention and eyeing us with suspicion. Yes, he did both.

    Then he went out to the Zone Libre and had an altercation with a crow.

    Mind you, it doesn’t sound as if the screaming ever really stopped. The chat-sitteur referred to Catorze’s screaming in about 80% 90% of her messages to us, including ones about disrupted Zoom calls. Yes, AGAIN.

    Every now and again, when people go away, we hear stories of them encountering random holiday animals and forming deep connections with them. Of the two of us, Cat Daddy is usually the one to do this, since my holiday is the time when I decompress after all the stress of dealing with the one animal that we already have. So I barely have the mental capacity to think about others.

    This time, Cat Daddy’s adopted pet was Wayne: 

    Easy pet.

    Wayne was a daily visitor to our holiday home. I initially thought he was coming for the pieces of fruit and oatcake crumb left by Cat Daddy but, in fact, he came because bugs would fly against our windows. As they butted against the glass, not realising that it was an impenetrable, invisible force field, Wayne would pounce. What a clever bird.

    Apart from that one time when he dared one of his friends to enter the property, and said friend couldn’t find his way back out again, Wayne was a delightfully easy pet. We would have been very tempted to adopt him, were it not for wrenching him from a beautiful highland paradise and taking him into a polluted city. Oh, and the fact that his new feline stepbrother might have killed him and eaten his head. 

    If we will make it back to the Scottish Highlands next year, perhaps Wayne will still be there. Meanwhile, normal service has very much resumed here – not that any of Catorze’s behaviour could really be described as “normal”, not by any reasonable interpretation of the word. 

    Not an easy pet.

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

  • Les résultats de la prise de sang 2,0

    Merde: in all the holiday rush and drama, I completely forgot to post about Louis Catorze’s blood test results. 

    Why, yes, that is a blob of thyroid medication on his left ear (our right).

    The little sod’s kidney readings are inexplicably normal, although I’m fully expecting all that to turn to shite at a later stage. But his thyroid readings, although lowered, are still not within the healthy range. So the vet has asked us to increase his dosage from 0.05ml to 0.06ml, twice a day. 

    I’m pretty sure that I could easily draw up 0.06ml of liquid into an empty syringe. However, releasing that much, twice a day, from an already-full syringe is another matter entirely, because it requires me to do Maths. I can’t do Maths. And Maths that involves subtracting rather than adding makes it even worse. 

    1ml minus 0.06ml … multiplied by … to the power of … OH FOR GOODNESS’ SAKE I DON’T BLOODY KNOW. 

    Furthermore, the increment from 0.05 to 0.06 is so teeny-tiny that I’m not sure I could dose it that accurately anyway. I’ve probably already given Catorze that much – or more – by accident, maybe multiple times, just by being clumsy. 

    Because we came away on holiday immediately after receiving the blood test results, it’s been the chat-sitteur, and not us, who has had to deal with the accursèd Maths. We will be arriving home on Sunday so, hopefully, something miraculous will happen on that day to make me suddenly develop the ability to work BACKWARDS in increments of six and not five. 

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

  • Fly high like an eagle

    If you had to be an animal for a week, which one would you be and why?

    I think most of us would choose to be a cat. But, of all the cats, I would want to be this one. And, after reading this post, I think you probably would, too.

    A few weeks ago, sadly, we lost Boots, usurper stepbrother of Antoine, Louis Catorze’s frère-from-another-mère, and wearer of the Chelsea cat collars. 

    (He actually turned out to be a Crystal Palace fan, as you will see below. However, the fact that he went through enough collars to exhaust the Chelsea Megastore of all supplies – and, to this day, they remain out of stock – means that I will always remember him for his Chelsea collars.)

    Boots was a massive arse. All cats are massive arses, of course – and, if you don’t believe this, clearly you have never met a cat – but Boots really was up there among the arsiest of them all. 

    Arse.

    That said, perhaps we ought to be pointing our fingers at the human enablers, not at Boots. He turned up randomly one day, at the house of those who later became his humans. He made his presence known by being mean to the incumbent furry overlords, scrapping with all neighbourhood wildlife and generally being obnoxious. Yet, instead of telling him to sod off, the humans went “Aww!”, took him in and gave him the best of everything. So who is really at fault here for his entitled, shitty behaviour?

    Here are my favourite Boots stories over the years, in no particular order: 

    1. Chelsea collar introduction.
    2. Collars lost.
    3. Collar famine.
    4. Christmas supermodel. 
    5. Jigsaw puzzle carnage.
    6. Crystal Palace fan.

    Wherever he may be, we are pretty sure he’s not resting in peace, and neither is anyone who happens to encounter him on the Other Side. Much love to the big sod (who, despite everything, will be sorely missed), and to his humans. 

    Cute but still an arse.

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

  • Les gangsters du monde animal

    Which book have you read more than any other?

    *SPOILER ALERT: THIS POST REVEALS THE MAIN PREMISE OF STEPHEN KING’S PET SEMATARY.*

    Horror fiction doesn’t usually lend itself well to repeated reading – not for me, anyway. However, I may well end up reading Pet Sematary again because I binge-read it (?) in two days, and we’re out in the wilderness with no bookshops around.

    Good, but now I need more.

    I brought this book to Scotland with me, and I am surprised at just how much it reminds me of Louis Catorze. Obviously Catorze was the first thought in my mind when I saw the evil-looking black cat on the front cover. However, the main character is called Louis, and his neighbour Jud once lived in a place in New Jersey called Bayonne. 

    On a non-Catorzian note, the biggest surprise of all was discovering that “sematary” is, in fact, NOT the way that Americans spell “cemetery”. The book title is deliberately misspelled to replicate a sign hand-painted by a child. I’m very glad to know this, because I have seen more online debates than you would believe about American versus British spelling, and I have been very tempted to wade in with, “Well, at least we don’t spell “cemetery” as “sematary”! Who DOES that?” 

    (Nobody, it seems. Well, apart from Stephen King and the fictional kid who painted that sign.)

    Anyway, the story is about a patch of unholy ground in the town of Ludlow, where family pets are buried and miraculously come to life again. However, they don’t come back exactly as they were during life. There’s always something weird, a little off, whether that be a different way of walking or something decidedly worse.

    Winston Churchill, aka Church, the main character’s cat, comes back from the dead having lost the ability to purr, but with a new-found love of hunting. Despite Louis and his neighbour being the only ones to know that the cat died and was reanimated, everyone can still feel that something is wrong with Church.

    Suddenly it all makes sense. Someone buried their sweet little black cat and is waiting for them to come back. Meanwhile, somehow, the slightly-off zombie changeling found its way to us and, eleven years later, he’s still here.

    At least we’re not having to deal with him at the moment. Our poor chat-sitteur, however, has reported that, in the mornings, he stands on her chest and screams. Oh dear.

    Yup, looks like a perfectly normal cat.

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

  • Les années coup de cœur

    Which chapter of your life would you entitle “The Hard Years” — and what got you through it?

    2014 to present day. Vodka and prayers, mostly.

    No reason.

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