After the council spent the whole summer on their project of rewilding the pavements of TW8, with autumn approaching they have finally decided to dewild them again. Clearly they realised that letting our streets overgrow until they turned into the I Am Legend film set wasn’t a great look.
At around 8am, they came to dig up the various plants and shrubs that had started to flourish in the cracks between the paving slabs. This was Louis Catorze’s reaction to their presence:
Were it not for the fact that there is sound, one would be forgiven for thinking that these were photos, non? Having seen cats react strongly to passers-by and unexplained noises from the street, my brain cannot deal with one who just. Does. Nothing.
I even wondered if the little sod might be turning deaf in his old age; it would certainly explain the increasingly louder and more frequent screaming. However, as soon as I stopped filming, I accidentally clattered a teaspoon against my cup and that sent him fleeing for the hills. So it’s not that.
This response very much reflects the general Catorzian outlook on external forces:
Things that could kill him (other cats, foxes, dogs, implement-wielding strangers outside) = either no reaction whatsoever or extreme aggression, despite being a fraction of their size.
Utterly harmless things that nobody notices or cares about (teaspoons clattering, ice cubes placed into his water on a hot day) = abject fear.
In my last post I had wondered whether, as he grew older, Catorze would finally become more like a normal cat. I guess it’s an emphatic “No” to that.

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