Le couvre-feu (Partie 1)

~ iamthesunking

Before we open the living room window in the evening, we always go through the following ritual with Catorze:

Me: “You know you have to be back by 10pm, don’t you?”

Catorze: “Mwah!”

Me: “10pm. Is that clear? Meow once for yes, twice for no.”

Catorze: “Mwah!”

Cat Daddy, without looking up from the television: “He can’t understand you. He’s French.”

Unbelievably, the little sod has made it indoors almost every night at 9:57pm.

The only exceptions were yesterday, when he rolled in at 10pm on the dot, and last weekend, when Cat Daddy allowed him a half hour weekend extension and he came in at 10:24pm on Saturday and 10:28pm on Sunday.

(And, yes, I know that a weekend extension is nonsensical since Catorze doesn’t have a working week from which he needs to wind down, nor does he even know what a weekend is.)

Other than being creeped out by the fact that notre cher ami can apparently tell the time with some precision, we are trying not to read too much into this. Anyone who was ever grounded by their parents as a teenager knows that a run of good behaviour is highly suspicious. At best, it’s a trick to get the curfewer(s) off their case and to convince them to bring forward the lifting of the curfew. And, at worst, it’s a cover for a stunt even more outrageous than the one that caused the curfew to be imposed in the first place.

And it’s a full moon next week. Merde.

Dare we wonder what horrors lurk ahead?

He’s not always there when we call. But he’s always on time.

42 thoughts on “Le couvre-feu (Partie 1)”

  1. One of mine has begun to go AWOL the last 3 Sundays. The first week she returned on Thursday. The next week on Wednesday. This week on Tuesday – but then was gone again today. To a human, there appears to be a pattern. To a cat ? Or else there’s a new neighbor I’m not aware of and she is living a double life…

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      1. You might be surprised how far they get around! I saw a documentary (The Lion in Your Living Room, I think?) that found evidence domestic cats can roam up to 20 miles. (I can’t remember if it was a 20mi radius, or 20mi altogether, but it’s far enough either way.)

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          1. I don’t think it was? Maybe New England, lol. The narrator was very definitely American and I think the locations they talked about were in America, too. I could very well be mixing up documentaries, though.

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            1. In that case there was an English equivalent to the documentary! The investigators discovered, shock horror, that cats would go through other people’s cat flaps if they thought there might be food. This was a surprise to absolutely nobody.

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            2. LMAO. I haven’t seen that one, but yes, no surprise there at all. Isn’t that why the microchipped cat flap was invented in the first place? To stop strange kitties from invading homes? (And also to prevent individual kitties from escaping their house-arrest sentencing.)

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            4. Oh, that’s a shame. I don’t have TV anymore, just Netflix and Amazon Prime, else I’d likely have seen that when it came on. I wonder if it’s available on YouTube or something..

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            10. So I’m watching this now on youtube and there’s a bit where like four cats come down the stairs and all but one disappear downward off-camera (having gone down the stairs properly) while the four pauses, then chooses to go through the bloody railing off the side instead. 😂

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  2. We know exactly what you are talking about Xenia and Sam get fed promptly at 5 pm or else. We’ve caught Xenia watching the clock above the fridge, Can see read it? don’t know, but she seems to have memorized that clock position.

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  4. They really do have a biological clock! We always fed our boys at fixed times, as for 7.00 in the morning. They would wake you up at (or preferably before … ) 7.00 in the weekend as well!
    And I remember very well, that cat daddy wasn’t at home for a couple of days, and I woke up one morning with one cat screaming on the bed side and another one standing on top of me, screaming in my ear and touching my face gently with his paw (which woke me up by the way ;-)). When I looked at the alarm, it was … 7.00 o’clock!

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  5. KitKat can tell time for sure, and I’ve read something along the lines of a life tip that if you need to remember something daily (like taking meds or getting something to eat) you should treat your cat at that exact time for a few days because then they’ll never ever let you forget that it’s that time of day ever again.

    I think it’s true, too. When I first started treating KitKat with freeze-dried chicken and Dreamies, I lost track of how much I was giving her and she started to gain weight. I set alarms on my phone at 9am and 10am, and that’s the only times I was “allowed” to give her treats. After a while I didn’t need the alarms anymore; KitKat would come and yell at me, and I’d be like “not yet, sweetie, it’s not– beep beep beep. Oh, I guess it IS time for your treats.” (Fortunately, I can trust my cat not to overeat so I let her tell me when she’s hungry now that the freeze-dried chicken is part of her main diet. No more alarms. But it was a very interesting experiment…)

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      1. I have no idea. I can’t judge what time of day it is at all without a clock telling me. I have no sense of the passage of time (it’s either “wow that went fast” or “wow it’s still morning?”) It seems kind of bizarre that cats have such an amazing internal clock, but I’ve seen enough anecdotes to think they are VERY good time-tellers. 😀

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        1. In some ways it makes sense that they would get to know feeding time, as they stand to gain something from it (and missing the time could mean missing dinner). But Catorze’s curfew is meant to be a semi-punishment! 🤣

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          1. Maybe he likes having a curfew. They reckon kids and teens benefit from a routine, right? And I’ve read that cats also benefit hugely from having a routine, so maybe he’s NOT up to something. ;D

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            1. That’s optimistic but unlikely, hence why I have called this post “Partie 1”. I just have a feeling in my bones that there will be a Partie 2, Partie 3 and so on. It could be an ongoing drama, like a soap opera, with no end.

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            2. I’m trying not to chuckle because I feel for you, having read your blog for a while and followed you on a certain Facebook group before you left, but I can’t help imagining you sitting there looking over your shoulder with narrowed eyes every few seconds while His Maj watches you from on top of a wardrobe or something, thought bubbles popping in and out of existence over his not-quite-bald ears and a manic gleam in his eyes.

              Rather you than me, honestly. xD

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            3. Haha, my friend actually DOES have a cat (a black one, of course) whose favourite place is on top of the wardrobe! Catorze does have the manic gleam in his eyes, although I reckon his thought bubbles are pretty empty.

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