Since my school friends and I are all turning A Certain Age these days, I’ve been in a busy routine of meeting them for dinner or going to their birthday parties. My meet-up with my best friend from sixth form, with whom I have had a couple of joint parties as our birthdays are close together, was especially funny and quite the departure from our past celebrations:
⁃ Our 18th party: dressed inappropriately, got drunk, don’t really remember much else.
⁃ Our 25th party: dressed inappropriately, got drunk, don’t really remember much else.
⁃ Our “A Certain Age” dinner: dressed sensibly, drank water, one of us read the menu to the other who had forgotten their glasses, home by 9:45pm.
No such nonsense with Louis Catorze; the little sod is turns thirteen at the end of the month, yet he’s just as full of life as ever. We can’t believe he will soon be a teenager, which means he will be rolling in at sunrise after partying all night, treating Le Château like a hotel and generally taking the piss … OH WAIT …
And good grief: his thirteenth birthday is on 30th April and, from 21st April to 14th May, our good friend Mercury will be up to his old tricks again. I know. A creepy black cat with vampire teeth turning thirteen on Beltane Eve, during Mercury Retrograde … what could possibly go wrong?
I know that I say this every time he has a birthday, but we are astounded not only that he has made it to this age, but also that he is thriving and loving life. People who meet him can barely believe how old he is, because he looks and acts like a kitten. One of my friends, when meeting him, said, “Is he always going to be that size? Awww. It’s like having a KITTEN FOREVER!”
We are so lucky that our Forever Kitten is in such good shape at the moment. Here he is, captured in a very fortuitous photo opportunity, on a blanket of skulls and with a real rainbow shining down on him:
louiscatorze.com 
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