Louis Catorze had his steroid shot yesterday. There was the usual Benny Hill-style chase when putting him into his transportation pod and, as I was leaving, Cat Daddy – who was in the middle of a massive DIY session – asked me to pop into the hardware shop on the way back and buy a lightbulb and two little transponder-type things.
Catorze screamed all the way through his examination, but the vet confirmed that all was well and that he was “looking good”. He fell deathly silent as we went into the hardware shop then, as the shopkeeper spoke, the screaming resumed.
The shopkeeper was startled and looked outside, thinking there was some altercation taking place.
Me: “Oh, that’s just my cat.”
Shopkeeper: “Sorry?”
Me: “My cat is in this bag.”
Him: “There’s a cat?”
Me: “Yes.”
Him: “IN THE BAG?”
Me: “Erm, yes.”
Him: “…”
I should have explained that I’d come straight from the vet, instead of just saying “My cat is in this bag”, but I didn’t think of it at the time. So now the shopkeeper thinks I am the kind of weirdo who goes shopping with her screaming cat. And I can never go back to that shop again.
Although Catorze is in good health, his body is still spewing out fur. Clumps of it are drifting around Le Château like tumbleweed rolling through the American west.
A few days before the vet appointment, we had a Code Gris emergency on our hands. And by “on our hands”, I actually mean “on Catorze’s arse”. This (see below) started out as a few tiny strands of grey undercoat sticking out from his fur and I left it, imagining that, at some point, it would just come off by itself.
It didn’t. In fact, over the course of just a couple of days, it grew.
My sister: “It’s a mat. You can get special mat combs that get them out.”
Me: “Could I not just use scissors?”
Her: “Do you trust him to hold still and not injure you or himself?”
[Silence, tumbleweed, crickets]
Narrator: “And so she bought the special mat comb.”
Anyway, the comb arrived the next day, and it seems that someone in the marketing department felt that its appearance wasn’t quite scary enough, so they named it the Dematting Rake. RAKE.
Catorze sat on my lap and, astoundingly, was happy to let me hack away at his arse end with this device, only emitting the occasional squeak when I accidentally pulled too hard. Perhaps he felt uncomfortable and knew that whatever I was doing had to be better than living with the mats? It was quite the feat but, eventually, I managed to loosen and remove the TWO horrible knots:
So Le Roi is now a mat-free zone. And I have something fun and unique to tell my students when they ask me what I did during my holidays.
What a time to be alive.
louiscatorze.com 
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