The boiler repair man came on Friday. Cat Daddy had to leave the house to collect me from work right after he arrived, and when we came home we were a little concerned to see him sitting outside in his van. Luckily he had just popped out to grab his laptop and hadn’t been forced out by a certain someone’s incessant screaming. In fact, Louis Catorze slept through most of his visit, I suspect because the poor little sod is not feeling well. He is now on the higher dose of two pills per day, but clearly it will take a couple of days to kick in.

In other news, a few days ago I managed to make Catorze gag, which is some achievement (not to mention quite the role reversal).

Now, I can explain:

My necklace had become stuck in my hair. Even after hacking away with scissors and finally freeing the darned thing, there were strands of hair wound so tightly around the chain that no amount of picking would remove them. So I had the genius idea of, erm, holding the chain over a flame and burning the hairs off.

Burning hair, as we know, isn’t the most pleasant smell. But Cat Daddy was outside and therefore wouldn’t have noticed, plus the stench would be relatively short-lived as there wasn’t THAT much hair stuck, so I did it.

Sadly I forgot about poor little Catorze asleep on the sofa in the same room. As the smell wafted in his direction, the little sod woke up, stretched … and gagged. It is probably the single most hilarious sound I have ever heard.

Catorze is happy to wrap his chops around birds, mice, dried rats that foxes have killed and saved for later, and fresh rats that he killed and carried up to our bedroom. Yet burning hair, it seems, is just beyond the pale.

Cat Daddy fell about laughing when I told him, and he is desperate for me to burn more hair just to get the gag on video. I won’t, because it seems a bit mean. However, there’s no telling what he’ll do when I’m at work, and I’m not sure I can trust him …

(Picture actually features a yawn, not the gag, but it did look remarkably like this.)