Nine Easters ago, distant enough not to be an everyday thought but still memorable enough for us to be furious when we think about it, Louis Catorze disappeared. He wasn’t gone for long and, these days, we know to leave it a good three days before worrying. But we understand that sinking feeling when you realise you’ve not seen your pet for a while, and that this isn’t typical behaviour.
On Good Friday morning, Catorze’s cat-cousin Roux vanished. Because their cat flap is digitally monitored, the frantic family were able to pinpoint exactly when Roux left the house, and they knew with 100% certainty that she had not been back since. They deployed the usual measures of looking in both logical and illogical places, placing cat litter outside for the smell to guide Roux home, making social media announcements, asking neighbours to check their sheds, and so on, to no avail.
The little sod finally reappeared on Easter Monday morning. It transpired that she had popped next door to visit her friend Idris, aka The Cat With The Human Face, and never left his house.
Maison Idris was my sister’s first port of call when they went searching, and she asked Idris’s humans to check their shed, which they did. She didn’t mention checking their house, nor did it even occur to her/them to do so, as everyone assumed that Roux would draw attention to herself if trapped there. It is also somewhat surprising that neither Idris NOR HIS TWO CANINE SIBLINGS bothered to sound the “Intruder Alert” klaxon in any way, despite the whole lot of them supposedly being so psychic that, in horror films, their reaction tells us if someone is possessed.
That said, Catorze would probably be just as inefficient in the same situation. A fly in the house: alarms and strobe lighting, day and night. Another cat in the house: whatever.
Just like a stealthy phrogger, Roux lived silently and invisibly in Maison Idris, alongside the humans and the animals, for three days. She finally made herself known at 1am on the day of her release, scaring the shit out of Idris’s family, who went to investigate the noise in the attic because thought they were being robbed. When they discovered that it was Roux, they provided her with food, water and litter and kept her under room arrest until her family were able to collect her later that morning.
Anyway, Roux is now safely home, although Idris seems to be missing the company because he’s followed her:
If your cat is capable of this level of bastardliness – and they all have it in them, even if they don’t show it – in the event of them going missing, please ask neighbours to check their HOMES as well as sheds and garages. Yes, even if they have other pets. Clearly we can’t rely on the resident pets to do their job and speak up, because they are all either in cahoots together or just plain useless.
For more Catorzian capers, please visit http://louiscatorze.com
louiscatorze.com 
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