Some people believe that the vernal equinox denotes the true start of spring. Others think spring starts on 1st March, the first day of meteorological spring. We at Le Château, however, know that it’s when Louis Catorze starts requesting to go out at The Front, and he does this by creepy-staring, pawing at the shutters and generally being a nuisance.

He isn’t allowed out at The Front, unless we are sitting in the living room and can easily intervene if he ends up accosting some poor passer-by. However, this doesn’t stop him from going out there, and we have no idea how he does it.

In the past, some of Catorze’s followers have suggested that we buy a tracker for him. For those who aren’t familiar with this item, it’s essentially an electronic tag for valuable and/or attractive cats who are likely to be stolen, or for miscreants who can’t be trusted. I imagine you can guess to which group Sa Maj belongs.

Regretfully, I think a tracker will make our life harder, not easier, as I shall endeavour to explain.

Although trackers can tell you if your cat is in an undesirable location, once they’re on their way you can’t stop them from going, unless you follow them and haul their sorry arse back. Do we really want to be trawling through gutters, park bins and neighbours’ gardens trying to recapture an errant Catorze? Plus we know from bitter experience that trying to retrieve him when he doesn’t want to be retrieved is a pointless exercise, and that we’re far better off just waiting for him to return of his own accord.

As well as telling you where your cat is, another function of the tracker is to be able to “share your cat’s location with your family and friends”. Now, I am the sort of weirdo who is interested in the whereabouts of other people’s cats, but most normal people only really care about their own. So I can’t imagine that any of our friends or family would be particularly bothered. And what gets the little sod off the hook every time he causes trouble in our local area is the lack of solid evidence; the last thing we want is neighbours being able to pinpoint his exact location, invalidating our “It must have been some other black cat” defence.

In short, it doesn’t look as if a tracker would work for us. Furthermore, Catorze doesn’t, erm, meet the minimum weight requirement (3.5kg) to qualify for the models I’ve looked at.

Do you know what your furry overlords get up to when you let them out? And would you WANT to know?