louiscatorze.com

Oh. Mon. Dieu. We have a Code Roux situation at Le Château, and here is the evidence:

These are NOT Louis Catorze’s paw prints, nor are they even feline, as you can tell by their size (pound coin for scale). Mesdames et Messieurs: Monsieur Renard has been on the premises.

We have known for a long time that he frequents our streets and gardens, accompanied by his buddies, but gadding about on our outdoor furniture is a bit too close for comfort, not to mention bloody rude. Other London foxes have much nicer manners than the ones in TW8. Whereas ours left us mucky paw prints, this week the ones in CR0 delivered my mum some prawn crackers. I’m not joking. She quite literally went out in her garden and found a full bag of Chinese takeaway prawn crackers, knotted at the top (although I don’t suppose the foxes tied the knot).

Now, we don’t know whether our fox was the one Louis Catorze screamed at, the one whom he chased down the garden, the one whose dinner he stole for fun, or another fox entirely whom he hasn’t yet met/pissed off but who is next on the list. But this isn’t great. And, worse yet, the little sod is utterly unperturbed and was happy to roll around on the cushions/prints immediately afterwards. Most cats would be able to pick up the scent of another animal and would be upset or concerned by this (wouldn’t they?) but it seems that Catorze either can’t smell it or doesn’t care.

It also doesn’t help that Catorze is on some sort of permanent adrenaline spike at the moment, screaming, thundering around the house at 5am waking me up, wanting to play constantly and so on. None of this suggests that, in the event of an encounter with Monsieur Renard and his colleagues, he would keep his head down and mind his own business. A calm, timid cat is likely to steer clear of foxes. A noisy, psycho cat who asks for trouble, not so much.

I don’t want to keep him in overnight, mainly because the screaming to be let out would send us over the edge. But, if there are too many near miss incidents like this, we might not have much choice …