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My Oura fitness tracker gives me a calorie burn target every day, based on the quality of sleep that it thinks I’ve had. And, a few days ago, I returned from a walk around the park, believing I had met my target but in fact I was twenty calories short. 

I decided to walk up and down the garden to try to meet my target. And, naturellement, Louis Catorze decided to crawl out from wherever in the undergrowth he was hiding, and started screaming. I walked up and down a couple of times, only to have him follow me, screaming all the way. 

In my sheer desperation to shut him up, I picked him up. But, since I still hadn’t reached my target, I had no option but to continue walking up and down the garden, holding him. 

Words cannot describe how much I did not want my neighbours to see me, pacing up and down the garden, holding a cat as if calming a fractious baby (which, in a way, I was). But I did it. And at least it stopped the screaming, which would have compelled them to look out of the window and see that it WASN’T “some other black cat” (which is what I always say when anything untoward happens). 

After logging those extra few minutes of walking, I finally received the glorious, long-awaited words from Oura congratulating me for attaining my goal. I suppose it should have been “weighted walking”, rather than just plain “walking”, but then Catorze’s gossamer-light 2.87kg form would have had no more impact on my walk than, say, adding a light scarf or a hat. 

Here he is, saying, “That’s enough exercise; it’s time for a lie-down.” For once he’s making sense:

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