The following is a line from Anne Rice’s Interview With The Vampire:

“All I need to find you, Louis, is follow the corpses of rats.”

(Yes, I have quoted word for word and, yes, it really does have “Louis” in it. I didn’t just add that for effect.)

Well, here at Le Château it’s the reverse, because all we need to do to find the corpses of rats is follow Louis Catorze. It’s not very pleasant when we find them, as Cat Daddy did at the weekend*. But it’s even worse when we DON’T find them, and that’s what’s happening at the moment. Some sort of entity is living in our kitchen, and have no idea where it is.

When I come downstairs every morning, before even going to his bowl, Catorze prowls ominously on the floor under our kitchen units, occasionally pouncing at what turns out to be thin air. Sometimes, when I am in the front room drinking my tea, I can hear him – at least I hope it’s him – scrabbling and scratching. Yet, when Cat Daddy is in the vicinity, Catorze is either perfectly silent, sitting prettily with his tail curled around his neat little paws, or screaming for his papa’s attention in the way that people do when they want to deflect attention from the REAL matter at hand.

Since we still see Catorze on Rodent Duty in his new favourite spot under the bird feeder, we fear that there is only one way of our mysterious new housemate becoming known to us, and that will be when the apex predator kills him. It’s only a matter of time before this happens, and before his buddies, eventually, suffer the same fate.

Remember when I was wondering which count Catorze might be? Well, now I know: he’s Body Count.

*Oui, Mesdames et Messieurs: Cat Daddy woke up on the Sunday morning of their lads’ weekend to find a bloodied, headless mouse on the hallway mat. We imagine it was Catorze, rather than the postman, who was responsible. And, no, we still haven’t found the head.