What was your favourite subject in school?
It won’t be a surprise to know that I loved French. In my very first vocabulary test (memorising and correctly spelling twenty or so classroom items, such as, erm, the blackboard and the chalk), I scored 100%. Because most students at my school weren’t really the full-marks type, news of this spread like wildfire. For that whole week, I had kids approaching me to ask if it were really true. (It would have been a strange sort of thing to spread as a fake rumour, but whatever.)
These days, I am lucky enough to be able to teach French. Better yet, my A level students are huge animal lovers, and we always start our lessons with animal stories. One of them grew up in Canada, and she talks quite casually about the bears and coyotes encountered on her walks to school, in the same way that we in the UK might talk about seeing squirrels or pigeons.
The class have got to know Louis Catorze quite well and, although this familiarity hasn’t quite extended to the realms of sharing Le Blog with them, they love hearing about his shitty behaviour because it reminds them that their own pets (two dogs and two cats between them) are wonderful.
We are currently studying a novel called No et Moi, whose major themes include marginalised people and systems that should look after them. We recently did a task about which systems that offer support in a person’s life, and it was very interesting to see how different minds work: one student chose official systems such as judiciary, healthcare and welfare, and the other went down the route of family, friends and pets.
We then had the following conversation, which I have translated into English:
Student 2: “I thought you’d like that one, Miss, because you have a cat! And pets comfort us when we’re feeling sad. Well, maybe not yours, but yeah.”
Student 1: “And it’s been proven that pet owners have reduced stress levels. Maybe not yours, but yeah.”
Student 2: “And just stroking a cat calms you down. Maybe not yours, but yeah.”
Student 1: “And they just generally make your life better. Well, maybe not yours, but yeah.”
Ok, I get the idea. My students are pretty nifty in their knowledge of No et Moi, but their understanding of all things Catorzian is utterly flawless. If there were an A level exam on Catorze, they’d be scoring full marks, for sure.
For more Catorzian capers, please visit http://louiscatorze.com
louiscatorze.com 
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