We had a wonderful Christmas Day, and we hope that you did, too. The only real incident was caused not by Louis Catorze but by Cat Daddy, when he told me to put the bread bin on the floor “to see if Catorze would be stupid enough to climb into it”, then got drunk and fell over it.

Et merci à Dieu: I am feeling better than I was last week, thanks to the magic of home-made chicken soup using a whole head of garlic. Vampires should be steering well clear of me, although there is one who seems immune to garlic. Yes, THAT one.

When my flu was at its peak/nadir (depending on how you look at it), Catorze did a runner. There is never a good moment for this but, when you’re not in a fit state to even scrape a sentence together, let alone go searching for the little bastard, it’s especially bad timing.

I’d had an awful night, exhausted yet unable to sleep because of my painful throat. At 7am, when I finally accepted that proper sleep wasn’t going to happen, I decided to come downstairs and have some tea. This is a morning ritual that I usually enjoy with a book in my hand and Catorze on my lap but, on this occasion, he was nowhere to be seen.

I finished my tea. Still no sign.

I put on my coat and, somehow, managed to drag my diseased carcass out to The Front to see if he was there. Still no sign.

I came back indoors and looked under all the beds. Still no sign.

Cat Daddy came downstairs, agreed that it was unusual not to see Catorze, then wondered if he’d been picked off by some bird of prey. Still no sign.

Cat Daddy had one more look upstairs. He didn’t find him, although he did find a mouse (charcoal-grey this time, rather than jet-black) in the bedroom. So clearly Catorze had had a busy night and was sleeping it off in some unknown location.

Before the last resort of making Cat Daddy scour the Zone Libre for a red kite tucking into a screaming, writhing amuse-bouche, I conducted one final sweep under the beds. And yes, gentle reader, that is where I found the little sod, inside a dusty old sports bag. He had clearly been there the whole time, but I hadn’t seen him previously because he’d kept his head down. This time, because he stirred (as opposed to just ignoring me and letting me waste my time calling and scrabbling like an idiot), I saw the giveaway sign of his stupid little ears sticking up.

Cat Daddy pointed out that this sleeping spot happened to be perfectly positioned for viewing the dead mouse. So it seems that Catorze had decided to sit in the bag, gazing proudly at his handiwork until he fell asleep. He may even have silently watched Cat Daddy dispose of it. Yes, I know that this kind of behaviour is more appropriate for a Rob Zombie film than for a supposedly civilised Château. No, I am not surprised.

Cat Daddy: “It’s the fault of the people who have given him catnip toys. They’ve triggered a taste for murder.”

Catorze then demanded play for the whole morning and, because Cat Daddy was out, I was the one who had to attend to this. By the time Cat Daddy came home, I was TUC. And, naturellement, Cat Daddy didn’t believe me when I complained about Catorze’s lack of regard for my frailty.

Somewhere out there, in a parallel universe, is a psychotic serial killer who has a sweet, well-behaved cat. And I know this because the cat who was supposed to be his, has somehow made its way to me.