What is the greatest gift someone could give you?
A world without spiders would be utter bliss. Yeah, yeah, I know that they eat flies, and so they’re doing us a favour. Whatever.
I used to think I was very lucky to live in a relatively spider-free house; in the eight years that we’ve lived here, I have only seen about four, of which just one was of the Category A variety (don’t ask). However, I have since found out that Cat Daddy has been quietly removing them whenever he finds them. Sometimes he has even disposed of them from the very room that I’ve been in and, because he has done this so discreetly, I have never noticed.
Louis Catorze is spectacularly poor with spiders: he will bound across the room to eat a spider minding its own business on a faraway wall, yet he just stares right past hand-sized ones coming at me wearing a hockey masks and carrying chain saws. So I was deeply envious when my sister told me that Otis and Roux had met their first spider (of which we are aware, at least) and were desperate to attack it.
This is great, right?
Well. Ahem. Unfortunately such was their Urge To Kill that they fought over which of them should be the one to deliver the killer blow and send the beast to the great web in the sky. And, in the meantime, the spider did a runner. This is exactly the opposite of what is wanted; I’d far rather not know that there was a spider, than know that there was one but my arachno-useless cats had let it get away.
Here are Otis and Roux, mid-dispute:
And here is Catorze, photographed during a spider-training session in which I used reverse psychology as a tool:
UPDATE: Otis eventually won the stand-off and was able to successfully retrieve and terminate the spider. And, to celebrate his kill, he slept right in the middle of Niece 1’s bed, forcing her to set up camp on the floor and sleep there ALL NIGHT. Clearly he has her well-trained already.
louiscatorze.com 
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