The last few weeks have been something of an experimental period, to try to establish a feeding routine for Louis Catorze now that he’s on wet food.
This is what I’ve discovered:
There is one variant which he doesn’t love quite as much as the others. Guess which it is? Clue: it’s the fish that started this whole thing off. (That’s right: despite turning into an absolute hell-beast when we’re preparing or eating salmon, when it’s in cat food he likes it but doesn’t LOVE it. )
I have to mush the fish flakes into an indescribable paste before Catorze will eat them. (Yup: he, who happily munches the heads off mice and rats, won’t eat a salmon flake if it’s more than 0.01cm².)
Catorze’s preferred serving size is not a whole pack, like a normal cat, nor even half a pack, but three-quarters of a pack, three times a day. Or maybe four times, depending on his mood. (Obviously if it’s four then that works out at three packs a day, which is fine. However, two and a quarter packs a day is just nonsense and doesn’t sit well with me psychologically.)
It’s a hard life being a Catorzian slave. Yet, I’m sure if you asked Catorze, he would tell you that this is only right and proper, and that all cats should be treated like this.
Cat Daddy: “There’s a black cat in the garden! Come and look!”
Me: “Where is it?”
Him: “Up there, behind the forsythia.”
Me: “That’s Louis.”
Him: “No, it’s not.”
Me: “It is! Look!”
Him: “Oh my God, he’s supposed to be getting old. What’s he doing up there?”
Oui, Mesdames et Messieurs: Louis Catorze’s post-steroid oomph has kicked in.
When he went for the injection last week there was the usual customary screaming on the journey and in the waiting room, with Catorze only shutting up when a huge greyhound started kicking off in the Dog Area. The vet receptionist told Catorze that he had “a very unique meow”, although we don’t think this was supposed to be a compliment.
Catorze has a new “lowest weight ever” to tell people about, and he now tips the scales at a mere 2.83kg. I was quite upset about this, although the vet wasn’t concerned; apparently, not only do old cats lose weight anyway, but they lose muscle mass in the winter due to sitting around and not doing much. Our good friends at The Cool Cat Club, whose food Catorze is still enjoying, confirmed this. So, although this makes us a little uneasy, everything that’s happening is normal (or as normal as can be for Catorze).
Now that he’s home, his post-steroid munchies have been activated and he’s eating, drinking, screaming and misbehaving. Hopefully, when spring arrives, he will start to chub up.
I follow Doug Thomas’s wonderful blog about his gorgeous cat Andy. Andy is a Persian with supposedly black fur, but he seems to reflect light differently every time he’s photographed and, as a result, he treats our eyes to a whole spectrum of glorious monochrome. He can go from Black Hole of Anti-Matter to Silverback Gorilla to Fifty Shades of Grey in the space of weeks, days or even hours.
Louis Catorze, on the other hand, just looks black, although he can mix it up a bit by sometimes offering us, erm, black with a coating of unidentified garden crud. He’s not the glossy, velvety panther that most Chats Noirs are, but that’s just our lot in life and we have to accept it.
At the end of last month I commented on one of Doug’s posts, in which Andy’s fur looked painted in oil pastel and delicately, painstakingly smudged by hand. Doug replied that the portrait setting on his camera happens to bring out this feature of Andy’s beautiful fur.
Stunning boy.
I have a portrait setting on my iPhone, too, yet it does the opposite to Catorze: rather than accentuating his soft edges, it slices them off entirely and sharpens his soft little face. Here are two pictures of him in the same pose, with and without the portrait setting, taken seconds apart, and you can see that he looks like two entirely different cats:
“Normal” Catorze.Glow-up Catorze.
Whilst I think he certainly looks sleeker and tidier in the second picture, sleek and tidy don’t scream “Catorze” to me (and have probably never been used in a sentence alongside his name). And seeing these images together has made me question all the photos I’ve ever taken of him using the portrait setting. Have I been misrepresenting him to the world? Have you all been catfished by Catorze?
I’d love to hear your opinions. Which photo do you prefer?
Jigsaw puzzles for cats? No, not ones that cats actually put together. Ones where they just lie on the pieces. Now, please hear me out.
We all know about cats and cardboard boxes. And some of us know about cats and newspapers. But cats and jigsaw puzzles? Perhaps Louis Catorze’s frère-from-another-mère, Antoine, and Antoine’s usurper stepbrother, Boots, might care to explain this one?
Antoine and Boots can’t resist lying on an in-progress jigsaw puzzle and preventing their maman, Lizzi, from progressing. Lizzi has even been known to construct barriers to protect her work, but to no avail. Boots, in particular, is so bullish and ungainly in his movements that he has been known to dislodge pieces, and it’s only a matter of time before one, other or both cats sit on the puzzle and end up with a piece stuck on their arse.
Boots is actually a Chelsea fan.Up the Gunners? Are you sure about that, Boots?Just make yourself comfortable.Ok.Not you as well, Antoine?His toes are still on the pieces.
Antoine and Boots have little in common in terms of personality, yet they both do this; it’s quite peculiar that two such dissimilar cats would both have the same quirk. They don’t even like one another, yet they seem to unite in their one common goal of annoying the merde out of their maman.
Do any of your cats do this? And can you offer any suggestions as to why, or will it forever remain another Cat Mystery?
The Met Office promised us Londoners an Arctic blast this week, and I’m disappointed – although not at all surprised – that we didn’t get one. Oh well. It can’t all be fun and games, like it is in the US.
I love snow, and the way in which it transforms everything it touches into a magical new world. I also love what a great backdrop it is for Chat Noir photography. Oui, Mesdames et Messieurs: the little sods are notoriously difficult to photograph in the wrong light, yet snow makes them look great. Yes, even the weird, misshapen little freaks of nature such as Louis Catorze.
Regretfully, because we humans have royally stuffed up the planet and our winters will only grow warmer, not colder, I don’t think I will ever take another snow photo of Catorze in his lifetime. Here is the only one that I have (I think), from 2019:
Zoom in for a tiny glimpse of the famous fangs.
I would love to see your snow portraits of your furry overlords/ladies. Please post them below in the comments, if you can.
Most people in the UK took down their Christmas decorations at the start of this week. However, our tree is still up because it’s not being collected from the rental company until Sunday; somehow it seems silly to take off all the decorations and just leave a bare tree in the living room for a week.
Rodan helps with the putting-away.
Cat Daddy: “But it’s bad luck to keep decorations up. Look at what happened last year.”
Erm, except that, last year, we took them down on the correct day. If we can have such a shit circus of a year despite playing by the rules, I can’t imagine things getting much worse if we don’t. Plus we do fate-tempting things all the time in this house, such as spilling salt, breaking mirrors and having a black cat cross our path repeatedly, multiple times a day.
I guess only time will tell whether the bad luck catches up with us at some point.
Or maybe, just maybe, Louis Catorze is it?
Make yourself comfortable on MY special post-operative pillow. I’ll just contort my body around you like a broken pretzel.
I would ordinarily be back at school today, but I’ve had a setback which required more surgery to fix it. This second round of recovery has been much harder than the original one, but I’ve been trying to take it easy and not do too much.
Usually Louis Catorze has very little tolerance for sick people. However, this time around he has only been about 65% coolly indifferent, morphing into a sweet and loving kitty for the remaining 35% of the time. On one occasion, when he saw how upset I was, he ran towards me and almost knocked himself out with my phone in his haste to cuddle me.
(Yes, it was definitely him. No other fanged black cat had broken into our house at the time.)
However, before you conclude that Catorze has changed his ways and developed a sense of empathy, don’t be too quick to trust the little sod. This lucky photo, which only happens once in an eternity, when the stars are aligned in a very particular way, gives us a glimpse into his soulless self. You can even see the gap where his heart ought to be:
Come on. It’s hardly a massive shock.
His nurturing ways are all lies. I fear that he’s up to something.
After arriving home one day, Cat Daddy was greeted by this sight:
For crying out loud.
Yes, it’s annoying enough that Louis Catorze would have pulled the blanket off the radiator to sleep on it. However, what really irked me is that he was the reason why it the blanket needed washing and drying in the first place.
The little sod was slapping his tail around (which he does when he’s happy – yes, I know it’s weird) with such force that he knocked my mug right over, spilling matcha latte all over the blanket:
Ugh.
Anyway, the blanket has been washed and is now clean. However, it’s only a matter of time until the next stupid thing happens. And, because I’m not back at work just yet, no doubt I’ll have a ringside seat.
Do you play in your daily life? What says “playtime” to you?
Playtime for Louis Catorze is any moment that humans want him to sit down and shut up.
If you followed Le Blog through lockdown, you will know how much Catorze loves to disrupt video calls. Lessons with students, staff meetings, the recording of a podcast with the Ultimate Boss of the whole education group, all ruined. Not even Cat Daddy has escaped unscathed; being the favourite human doesn’t prevent him from also having his online meetings destroyed.
A couple of days before Christmas, I attended an NHS webinar with some GPs and patients from our local area. In the nicest possible way, this was never going to be the most exciting social event of the year. Perhaps that was why Louis Catorze decided to do what he did – after all, nothing livens up a dreary call quite like repeated torrents of ear-bleeding feline screaming, non?
I found out the hard way that this meant turn the robot to face 5 o’clock (where the fingers are pointing) not 9 o’clock (to face the hand). For God’s sake, Microsoft Teams.
The meeting started at 19:00 and, upon hearing the irresistible, come-hither sound of male doctors talking about patient waiting lists, Catorze appeared at 19:01. He screamed himself senseless for a few minutes, headbutting my phone, bug-eyed and manic, but he seemed to give up when he failed to detect me being mortally embarrassed, trying to shush him, and so on.
The gods must have been on my side on that fateful night, because the organisers of the meeting had disabled all our microphones and cameras. So the only way of communicating would have been to type a message onto the chat; Catorzian evil may be powerful, but it’s not THAT powerful.
When he realised that the potential to humiliate me was zero, the little sod tired of being a shite and settled down on my lap, listening happily to the talk of online booking systems and pharmaceutical services. Then he went to sleep.
My life must be pretty pathetic for me to feel such joy at getting one over on a cat. Yet here we are.
Cat Daddy left some recycling in the hall, to be put outside as soon as we figure out what day it’s being collected. If your British friends aren’t replying to your messages, trust me, it’s because they’re trying to work this out, too. We’re all over the place when public holidays end up displacing Bin Day.
Et alors?
Nothing to see here, you may think. Except that, when Cat Daddy left the recycling, the white box in the middle was the right way up, and the plastic bag was inside it.
We all know who is responsible for messing it up, partly because neither Cat Daddy nor I would have had the inclination to do it, but also because the guilty party has a record of climbing into boxes and thrashing around, just for fun. Yet it takes some effort to completely remove something from a box, and to leave said box upended.
This is Louis Catorze’s handiwork. We can’t prove it, but we know it.
Cat Daddy: “[A string of Unrepeatable Expletives, utterly inappropriate for the season of goodwill.]”
Is this an indication of what 2025 is going to be like? Do we even want to find out?
Enjoy your festivities, whatever you do, and I hope your furry overlords stay safe and behave.
I recently bought myself a lamp with a zillion different colour settings. However, I always have it on red, because red is said to counteract the negative effects of blue light from our phones, and to promote healing and relaxation. Yes, I know: since I live with Louis Catorze, I probably should have got a lamp for each room, and strapped an extra one to his head for good measure.
Cat Daddy always tells me that a red light makes Le Château look “like a brothel”. I just ignore this, although I am curious to about how he knows what a brothel looks like.
Anyway, it turns out that Catorze likes red light almost as much as I do. After a long period of not sleeping in my bed with me and choosing, instead, to go gadding about outside all night, since I introduced wind-down period of red light before going to sleep, he’s been a constant companion. I can’t help but hope that it will have a calming effect on him, too; his screaming and galloping around have been absolutely awful recently.
Naturellement I couldn’t resist a photo session in the red light, to add to the 12,967 photos that I already have of Catorze. I think a ruby backdrop rather suits him, non?
We have all eaten well at Le Château over the last few days.
Cat Daddy and I enjoyed our Christmas dinner, albeit a day late because I was sick on the 25th. The squirrels of TW8 have been feasting on some very old hazelnuts from the year before last, still in their shells, which Cat Daddy hid around the garden “to make them work for it” (?). And Louis Catorze is gorging his way through his Cool Cat Club wet food, faster than we can dish it out. In fact, we had to bring forward the delivery date of his next shipment and, although we did so well in advance, the last few days were quite anxious, with an eye on the ever-dwindling supply and an ear at the door listening out for the delivery driver.
Having Catorze back on wet food again has transformed my life. And not in a good way.
Breakfast time is now a massive screamathon, with the little sod hollering his guts out if I’m too slow* at dishing up his Cool Cat Club wet food. He then guzzles down a whole serving, plus a scoop of Orijen, licks his plate clean, then stares mournfully when a second serving doesn’t materialise.
We have always found it odd that Catorze screamed when he wanted cuddles, yet stayed chillingly silent and just creepy-stared when he wanted food. However, we needn’t worry about that anymore.
Adieu to the peaceful mornings that I posted about here. It’s screaming all the way from now on.
Enjoying the Boxing Day football on his papa’s lap.
So the idea is that, if you’re good, Santa brings you gifts. And, if you’re naughty, Krampus wallops you with a stick, shoves you into a sack and carts you off to be eaten later. I’ve got that right, non?
Except, sometimes, it doesn’t work out that way. Sometimes you can be naughty and not only escape punishment, but end up being rewarded.
This large sod is Boots, usurper stepbrother of Antoine, Louis Catorze’s frère-from-another-mère:
Yes, that is a Chelsea FC collar.
You may have seen him on Le Blog in the past, most likely for the wrong reasons.
Boots’ behaviour all year saw him headed for Santa’s Naughty List. However, the incident that truly sealed the deal was at the start of Mercury Retrograde, when he aggravated an existing fight wound whilst scrapping with one of his many Neighbourhood Nemeses (Nemesisses?) and ended up requiring not only expensive vet treatment, but a stint in Le Cône.
Boots had never had to wear Le Cône before. However, rather than glumly accepting his fate and moping around, as most Côned cats do, he fought like an absolute demon trying to shake it off. In doing so he managed to rub Le Cône against his wound and aggravate it AGAIN, so back to the vet he went.
His long-suffering mamma and the veterinary staff agreed that he would be better off staying there whilst the wound healed, since he clearly couldn’t be trusted to behave at home.
Boots ended up living at the veterinary surgery for three and a half weeks and, during this time, he underwent a complete personality transformation: once in Le Beignet (the inflatable doughnut below), he stopped trying to fight his way out of it (although he did succeed in puncturing it). He was polite and cordial to the staff, and he even tried to make friends with the other cats that he met, quite the opposite of what he does at home.
Chilling in Le Beignet.De-Beigneted and exploring his holiday home.“Make yourself at home”, they said. So he did.
Just when life couldn’t get any better for Boots, he became the supermodel cat for the vet’s Christmas charity campaign. Here he is, enjoying being top cat on their social media marketing material:
Poster boy.
It doesn’t seem right, does it? But then such is the nature of Mercury Retrograde which, even when passed, still leaves a trail of bullshittery in its wake. It’s also typical of this time of year in general; during Yuletide festivities of years gone by, a Lord of Misrule would be appointed to incite debauched behaviour and ensure that everything was as chaotic and disordered as possible. And a massive shite of a cat strutting around in his staffed AirBnB, all the while being treated like a king, is about as chaotic and disordered as it gets.
I hope that your Christmas is as merry as Boots’ last few weeks have been. Even though Catorze is very much Team Antoine, he nonetheless approves of the principle of reaping undeserved riches and being an arrogant arse about it.
It’s the winter solstice and, as ever, I tend to spend this time of year reflecting on the past twelve months. 2024 hasn’t really been the best, what with ill health, bereavement and suchlike, but at least next year has to be better, non?
Louis Catorze sadly lost a couple of his (younger) comrades this year: Lucky, one of the Northern tuxedo cat gang, and Samba, the sparring partner of Catorze’s departed cousin, King Ghidorah.
Have a look here if you’d like to read about the time we met Lucky and his siblings, all dressed for the black tie gala. And look here for one of the many times that Samba and King Ghidorah tired of alfresco scrapping and continued in my sister’s house. (You know when people want to ramp it up a notch and they say, “I think we ought to step outside”? Well, they stepped INSIDE.)
Lucky relaxes in a sunbeam.Lost something, Samba? Maybe try looking in, I dunno … YOUR OWN HOUSE?
We send lots of love to Lucky’s and Samba’s humans.
At the risk of sounding repetitive – I’m aware that I say something like this every winter solstice – it’s nothing short of miraculous that Catorze, despite old age creeping up behind him and placing an icy hand firmly on his shoulder, is continuing to thrive.
(Cat Daddy: “It’s not miraculous. It’s all the bloody expensive food we give him.”)
And not only do our own ears and eyes tell us that he’s doing well, but we have quantitative evidence to confirm this, too: his steroid injection requirement is reducing, with only seven needed this year versus eight last year and ten in 2022.
We are so fortunate to still have Catorze with us, and we can’t wait to see what he will unleash upon world next year, when he turns fifteen. And, despite being the most ungrateful and arrogant little sod ever to exist, we are pretty sure that he likes living with us, too.
Happy winter solstice to you all. Thank you for another year of supporting Catorze.
louiscatorze.com 