I have caught Louis Catorze nuzzling the spout of the teapot.

(Yes, although Dry February is officially over, I’m not in any hurry to hit the booze yet and am happy to stick to tea. In fact, I might even try for Dry March, too, just to see whether I continue to feel healthy and alert or whether my body eventually starts to reject the unfamiliar non-alcoholic beverages and my organs slowly pack up and die.)

I haven’t been so disgusted since I caught Catorze’s big brother Luther doing the same thing to my electric toothbrush when I’d left it to charge up on the floor (because the plug points in our old house were all at ground level). Just as I had left the toothbrush in that same spot about 768 times previously and then used it afterwards, I have left many a half-pot of tea unguarded and then unsuspectingly drunk the tepid remains.

As nuzzlers go, Catorze doesn’t simply brush his cheeks against things; he really, gets stuck in, meaning contact with nostrils, lips, teeth and all sorts. And, because of his tooth impediment and the fact that his lower lip dips downwards to accommodate les fangs, his mouth can never close fully and therefore he would have spread saliva and snot all over the teapot spout.

Now, we all know that bacteria are wiped out by high temperatures. But Cat Daddy, who is a tea expert, has taught me well: green tea, my drink of choice, is brewed at 80 degrees, whereas a temperature of 100 degrees is what’s needed to destroy bugs. And, even if I had brewed the tea at 100 degrees, leaving it to go tepid would have undone any possibility of destroying germs. In fact: tepid temperatures are like a come-hither party invitation for all things gross and germy.

Anyway, I am now scarred for life and will never, ever recover from this. As for Catorze … well, this picture suggests that he might not be too bothered: