From 8th March onwards, I will be back at school.

This means that I will be able to teach lessons and attend meetings in peace, without Louis Catorze barging in and interrupting. The bad news is that his creepy kitty sixth sense appears to have informed him of the diminishing opportunities to ruin my life, and so he thought he’d put all his efforts into one final hurrah.

Yesterday I took part in a podcast chaired by my Ultimate Boss, the head of all the schools within our education group. I knew full well that our mutual friend would cause problems so I shut him out of the room. However, this failed to stem the flow of this tiny tsunami of feline psycho, and I should have taken additional measures such as having Cat Daddy supervise him, locking him in a lead-lined underground vault, that kind of thing. This was a huge oversight on my part.

I thought he might scream once or twice, but I didn’t think the little sod would have the energy/inclination to sit outside the door and keep screaming throughout the entire recording. I know. Believe me, I am wincing with shame at my own stupidity.

This will give some insight into how it went:

Ultimate Boss: “What made you all become languages teachers?”

“Mwaaaaah!”

Ultimate Boss: “How have you adapted your methods since we shifted to online learning?”

“Mwaaaaah!”

Ultimate Boss: “What impact does language learning have on cognition?”

“Mwaaaaah!”

And so on.

Anyway, my poor colleague who is responsible for our media communications will now have a job trying to edit the screaming from the final piece.

And the worst thing is that, throughout the recording, nobody acknowledged the interruption. With hindsight, it would have been less awkward had someone said “What’s that noise?” I would have replied, “Oh, just ignore it. It’s only my silly cat!” and we would have laughed and carried on. But, conversely, in the same way that fear makes demons and poltergeists grow more powerful, saying nothing made it worse; clearly everyone, including Ultimate Boss, thought, “I don’t want to be the one to blink first.”

After SIXTY MINUTES of this excruciating torment I finally opened the door, imagining a feeble Catorze weak and withered from thirst, but the little sod ignored his water and came straight to my lap. He could have sought cuddles at any point during my lunch break, my free period or even, at worst, a normal lesson with students (yes, even that same Year 11 class, AGAIN, would have been preferable). But, naturellement, he didn’t want them then.

Here is Catorze, pictured immediately after the harrowing event. And, if you feel like listening to my podcast about the importance of languages in a post-Brexit world, don’t bother. Just record the next cat fight that you hear and play it on a loop for 60 minutes, for the same overall effect.