I don’t have many memories of childhood Christmas celebrations, but the one thing that stands out is the time when cat shenanigans caused utter chaos.
My aunt had just made the brandy butter to accompany our Christmas pudding, not imagining that it would have the slightest cat appeal. She left it unguarded for 0.3 seconds and, when she looked back again, our cat, Misha, was on the worktop with his head in the bowl, eyeball-deep in that heady mixture of everything that was bad for him: dairy, sugar and alcohol.
Clearly time passes differently on Planet Chat because that fraction of a second, although short to us humans, gave Misha all the time he needed to get absolutely wasted. My aunt carried him back to the living room, his limbs all splayed and floppy, and dumped him into his cat bed to sleep it off.
After his nap, Misha was fine. And I have an awful feeling that the cat-tainted brandy butter was not thrown away but simply, erm, “rearranged” (don’t ask).
Back in the 1980s, we all thought this was funny. These days, of course, such an incident would constitute a vet emergency of epic proportions, since cat-freakishness has escalated over the years. Not only do we whisk our furry overlords off to the vet at the slightest sniff, but we monitor what makes it onto their plates in the same way that sports coaches monitor elite athletes in the weeks leading up to a big competition. This is especially the case if they have allergies; eating the wrong thing, at a time when every vet is closed, could be catastrophic.
Louis Catorze’s festive treats have, therefore, been limited to the following:
1. His usual Orijen Six Fish.
2. A teeny fingernail-sized scoop of, erm, Fortnum and Mason salmon pâté. (Cat Daddy was, and still is, absolutely livid that I did this.)
There would also have been some organic aged Comté and some jambon de Bayonne but, for the former, I missed the ordering deadline from the cheese deli. (There was Marks and Spencer Comté available but, as you know, Sa Maj won’t eat that.) As for the latter, there appears to be a general dearth on Ocado, but Catorze has been so busy attacking magpies and thrashing around in our box of presents that he doesn’t seem to have noticed yet.
I hope you and your furry overlords have a wonderful day. And, even if you think you can trust your cat, have a look here just to remind yourself of some of the ways that the little sods can ruin our festivities.
louiscatorze.com 
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