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I really miss cats. We haven’t been short of wildlife during our stay here, but the best part of my whole day is sitting on the sofa, drinking green tea with Louis Catorze on my lap. So it’s been very strange not being able to do that.

We have been lucky enough to spend time with a sweet black Labrador called Sula. I’m not usually quite so keen on dogs but Sula was very well-behaved, friendly but without jumping or slobbering. And, since part of her home is a sculpture showroom, full of intricate, fragile works of art, jumping and slobbering wouldn’t be desirable characteristics at all. (Sula’s Dog Mamma is artist Lotte Glob: look here for more information about her magical work.)

Whenever I meet black animals, I always look for features that make them stand out from the rest of their … breed? kin? peers?, mainly to silence the “All Black Animals Look The Same” brigade (of which Cat Daddy is an active member). Sula has a distinctive broad stripe of fur down her back which lies in a completely different direction from the rest of her fur. It’s still black but a DIFFERENT black, if that makes any sense.

I asked whether Sula had any Rhodesian Ridgeback in her ancestry, surprising myself with my dog knowledge, which doesn’t usually extend far beyond “big ones”, “small ones”, “Police dogs” and “Andrex puppies”. She doesn’t. The spinal stripe is just a charming little quirk which makes her unique.

We black cat owners always know our own cats, even from a distance. Catorze’s brother, Luther, had just one unique feature – a comically thin tail, like a pencil – but, even without this, I would still have known. I remember walking home from the shops one Sunday morning, and hearing that awful, guttural cat fight sound ringing through the street. Then, when I rounded a corner, I saw a ginger cat and a black cat firmly clamped together, screaming bloody murder and rolling over and over as one unit, in the middle of the road. (Not the pavement. THE ACTUAL ROAD, the bit where cars drive.)

For a fleeting second I thought, “How embarrassing for those owners to have their cats make a spectacle of themselves so publicly, on a quiet Sunday morning.”

Then I looked more closely at the black cat and glimpsed a flash of a pencil-thin tail. Oh dear. (Although I knew anyway, even before seeing the tail.)

Catorze has a number of noteworthy features which I was going to list here, but I ought to keep a bit of my powder dry in case he causes trouble and I’m forced to haul out the old “It must have been some other black cat” argument. And the good thing is that, in our neighbourhood, there is at least one other black cat whom we could blame consider in the event of any Chat Noir misbehaviour. (Sorry if it ends up being yours.)

Would you recognise your pet from a distance or among a crowd of other similar animals? And, if so, how?

For more Catorzian capers, please visit http://louiscatorze.com