Louis Catorze has decided that one nemesis isn’t enough and so, now, he has a second.

In addition to his well-documented war on Oscar the dog next door, relations with Kiki the bichon frisé* have somehow gone from non-existent to merde totale.

Kiki lives several doors down the street from us and Louis Catorze wouldn’t ordinarily have any contact whatsoever with her, were it not for the fact that he has started to bolt out of the front door whenever we open it. Last night he did this after dark, which meant that supervising him was impossible and therefore we had no option but to leave him and wait until he decided to come in. And, whilst he was out there, Kiki happened to be walking by and they had a huge altercation.

I opened the front door just in time to hear a voice say, “Come on, Kiki!” and to catch sight of this tiny white cloud of rage being dragged undignifiedly away. I had to hand it to her, though: she put up a darned good fight. And I don’t know what made her so mad with Catorze, but I suspect he asked for it.

Le Roi was startled enough to come pitter-pattering straight in after that. But the stubborn little sod refused to budge from the front door and sat firmly on the doormat, waiting to be released for Round 2.

Oh my.

I reported the incident to Cat Daddy and, when I told him the dog’s name, his eyes widened. “Ah, the Elton John dog!”

Excuse-moi?

“I’ve met that dog before, in the park,” he continued. “Her owners told me her name but I knew I’d forget, so I thought of Elton John to help me remember. But then, when I got home, I couldn’t remember why I’d picked Elton John to help me remember a small white dog, so I’ve just been calling her the Elton John dog.”

Right.

(If you were born in the 80s or later, ask your parents.)

So it seems we are now twice as unpopular as we were before, when Louis Catorze only had one nemesis.

The other problem arising from having two canine nemeses is that it doesn’t sound right to say “Oscar the dog” and “Kiki the bichon frisé”; one is generic and the other is more breed-specific. So now we’re going to have to call Oscar “Oscar the Yorkshire terrier”, which is double the number of syllables.

Le Roi is hard work. I shall say it again: it’s a good thing we love him.

*Picture posed by Max, and not actually by Kiki; somehow I didn’t quite feel up to knocking at Kiki’s door and saying, “Hello. Your dog hates my cat. Please may I have a photo?” Thank you to Max’s mamma Jill for letting me use this picture.