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Louis Catorze is positively ebullient with springtime joy.

Usually, when I have my morning tea and he lies on my lap, he sleeps. But, on the morning of the equinox, it was as if a switch had flipped and he knew something was in the air; he was upright and alert as he lay, ears twitching, eyes darting back and forth and tail swishing. And he’s been like that ever since.

Catorze’s favourite outdoor place to be is next door’s shed roof. He likes it much better than our shed roof because theirs is just plain wood, whereas ours has plants on it that must be less comfortable for the derrière royale. They have a second mini-shed next to their main one, which he has also claimed as his.

When Disco the dog’s folks still lived there, and they came over one December for our annual “Mince Pies and Apology for Catorze’s Behaviour” evening, we learned that they often observed Catorze up on his viewing platform. However, they pointed out that Catorze wasn’t going there just to relax. Mais non. He was going there to catch birds.

Dog Mamma and Dog Sister recounted how they had seen Catorze swiping at birds. On one occasion it seems he actually managed to catch one, although we never found a body (so we imagine Blue the Smoke Bengal took the rap for that one).

We didn’t give it too much thought back then, since it was the middle of winter. But, now that we are into CST and almost starting BST, and therefore Catorze is likely to spend more time on the shed roof, we are hoping that, in his advancing years, he will tend more towards watching the world go by, like an old man sitting on his veranda. However, the fact that the little sod brought Cat Daddy a headless rat the other day, doesn’t bode well.

Here he is, photographed by Cat Daddy earlier this week … and, worryingly, the body language suggests that he’d spotted something of interest: