This is the current status for each of us here at Le Château:
Me: boiling a kettle in order to serve 0.3ml of boiling water to a cat.
Cat Daddy: shouting at me for boiling a kettle for such a minuscule amount of water when there’s a global energy crisis.*
Louis Catorze: enjoying his life of hot meals and chubbing up nicely, merci for asking.
*It’s not great, but it’s better than running the hot tap for ages until it reaches the required temperature, non? And I make a cup of tea for myself from the same kettle of water, so as not to be wasteful. Yes, that’s right: even if I don’t really want a cup of tea at that moment, I have one anyway just to be able to tell myself that I haven’t put the kettle on just for my cat.
Feeding Catorze is now quite the Herculean labour. Sometimes he sits by his plate, waiting patiently. At other times, he circles me like a hungry saltwater crocodile, screaming and screaming. And, of course, sometimes the pellets soak up too much water for Sa Maj’s liking, so we have to throw them away. But the little sod is eating, so we have, at least, achieved our objective.
However, we can’t help wondering what on earth made him decide to stop eating normally in the first place.
Are his teeth giving him trouble again?**
Did he want hot food because it’s cold outside (and, if so, how did he know that going on hunger strike would do the trick)?
Is he losing his sense of smell in his old age and finding that cold food just doesn’t have much scent-appeal, whereas hot food smells like a fine dining tasting menu?
Is it an evolutionary thing, whereby hot food more closely resembles a freshly-killed mouse or rat (eurgh)?
Was he bored of his food?
Or did he just think, “I wonder what the pathetic humans will do if I starve myself?”?
I shall await your suggestions as to which option might be correct …
**UPDATE: a trip to the vet has confirmed that there is nothing wrong with his teeth.
louiscatorze.com 
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