Cat Daddy is complaining that he “can’t” put this cardboard box out for the bin men, and so we’re stuck with it forever more.
He CAN, of course. He just doesn’t want to, because Louis Catorze has claimed it as one of his numerous beds. The bit about us being stuck with it forever more is probably true, though.
Yikes.
This is the reaction that we get when we approach the box:
Oh dear God.
It’s like having a hornets’ nest in your house, or a demonic possession, or some such thing: messing with it, when you don’t really know what you’re doing, will just make it worse. So we’ll probably just leave him be, and tiptoe quietly if we want anything from this room.
Catorze is truly the king of his Château. And he knows it.
The clocks went forward on Sunday, so it’s now officially British Summer Time. Weirdly, nobody says “British Winter Time” before the clocks go forward. It’s either British Summer Time or, erm, it’s not.
Fun things to do when it’s British Summer Time: arse around on the clean towels drying outside.
Cat people often complain that their furry overlords, seemingly unaware of the change, continue to wake them up for food at the old time. Louis Catorze, however, rather than waking me an hour early, wakes me when he thinks I’ve had the sleep that I deserve.
A couple of nights ago I was feeling unwell, so I went to bed at 9pm, unusually early for me. My aim was to get a good ten or more hours but, at 4:50am, Catorze decided that enough was enough and said, “Non”.
Obviously I didn’t get up and feed him because that would have taught the little sod that he was correct to wake me, condemning me eternally to 4:50am wake-up calls until either he gave up or one of us died, whichever came first. But I know people who actually do get up to feed their cats at excruciating hours. Yes, you know who you are. You are in a hell of your own making, and I have no sympathy.
The next night I went to bed at 10pm and, this time, Catorze’s alarm call came at 5:50am. So clearly his internal clock has decreed that a just and reasonable portion of sleep for me equals seven hours and fifty minutes, no more and no less.
Anyway, ACTUAL summer is just around the corner. And I’m hoping that, with all the joys that it brings – bright mornings, long evenings, bugs, Rodent Duty, that kind of thing – Le Roi will soon be having far too much fun outdoors to care about how much sleep I’m having or not having.
Cat Daddy and I try to have a date night every so often. And last week it was, erm, an environmental meeting at a local church hall, to discuss climate change, green spaces and biodiversity.
When one of the speakers informed us of recent research indicating that noise pollution contributes to heart disease, Cat Daddy turned to me and whispered, “We’re going to have to get rid of HIM.”
He didn’t mean the speaker. He was talking about Louis Catorze.
On the walk back home from the meeting, Cat Daddy continued his rant:
“He’s noise pollution. He’s basically a heart attack waiting to happen. We’ve always known it, but now it’s been proven. I actually try to creep in really quietly when I get home, so that I won’t disturb him and set off that constant, bloody annoying “Mwah! Mwah! Mwah!” He’s RUINING our lives.”
Right.
I suppose the one silver lining in all this is that having Catorze live with us saves someone else the anguish. We’re improving our community, non? If this isn’t doing our civic duty, then I don’t know what is.
Louis Catorze hasn’t been eating much lately. In fact, after initially leaping onto his wet food and devouring it like a starving savage, he’s now only moderately keen when I dish up. He’s the same with his Orijen too: he’ll tuck in eventually, but there’s a definite reluctance.
One morning, he lapped up a couple of mouthfuls of the juice from his wet food, then left it. I offered him dry food, which he refused. Overcome by complete blind panic, I then dished up, erm, a plateful of prosciutto from the organic shop, and he chugged down the lot.
Cats aren’t supposed to have large quantities of prosciutto. I know this. But I would happily have let him eat however much he wanted, if it meant that the little sod were eating something. Something is better than nothing, non? However, the bigger problem is that I have now painted myself into a corner and the bastard cat wants organic prosciutto all the time.
I should have seen this coming, shouldn’t I?
Cat Daddy, without looking up from his phone: “You created this. You need to fix it.”
“Feed moi. No, not THAT. I want organic prosciutto.”
Cat Daddy has treated me to one of those Oura fitness tracker rings. As well as monitoring all sorts of things such as sleep and heart rate, it also looks unbelievably cool.
Setting up these electronic devices is always easy when it works, less easy when it doesn’t, and downright bloody impossible when you have a cat clambering all over you and being a massive shite.
Can you guess in which of the above categories I belong? Go on, take your time.
Because the Oura ring charger isn’t the standard USB-sized one that we all know, I had to go into the kitchen to hunt for Cat Daddy’s MacBook charger which fits. Louis Catorze followed me, screaming and screaming. Then, when it was time to pair my ring with the app via Bluetooth, the little sod lost his shit completely, climbing up my body and demanding to be held.
So I had to complete the set-up process standing up, using one hand only and holding Catorze with the other. Luckily he is small enough for me to be able to do so. And, equally luckily, the bit of the Oura ring that monitors stress levels hadn’t had a chance to kick in at that point, otherwise my baseline reading would have gone rocketing through the roof.
Yes, I did consider ticking both “I have small kids” (meaning him) and “I share my bed with someone” (also meaning him).
Have I made the right decision, deciding to embark upon weeks, months and years of being told exactly how many times something pisses me off or wakes me up in the night?
No need to wonder what this something might be, of course. We already know.
Cat Daddy and I really enjoy shopping at the plastic-free bulk foods shop in Chiswick. There’s not much there for Louis Catorze on account of, erm, most of their stock being vegan and him not, but it’s a great place for treats for ourselves.
But we love the shop even more after this little card came with our last order:
The fact that it’s a Chat Noir makes this even better.
However, we didn’t gift the cardboard box to Catorze; he already claims any box that he’s not allowed to have, ignoring the ones that we give to him, so there’s no point. We gave him this one, and he didn’t set paw inside it until we told him he wasn’t allowed to do so.
And these ones below were all stacked up in one vertical column, ready to be put out for the bin men, until the little sod managed to upend the uppermost ones (we still don’t understand how). He then crawled inside to investigate the cause of the fall, even though he knew it was him:
Bastard cat.
Do you have a Cat In Box story? Even if it’s just “Cat saw box and climbed inside, The End”, I’d still like to hear it.
Another one earmarked for the bin men. (The box, I mean. Not Catorze.)Comfortable?
*WARNING: IF YOU ARE IN ANY WAY WEAK-STOMACHED, DO NOT READ ANY FURTHER.*
The day after the Spring Equinox, Cat Daddy, Louis Catorze and I went outside to survey the grounds of Le Château. Our garden can be something of a cabinet of curiosities, with random things growing that we can’t identify and that we almost certainly didn’t plant, but we rather like this about it.
Or at least we did, until today.
One of that day’s discoveries was a mossy-looking crop of something, with hairy, almost-black leaves. Cat Daddy was about to touch it, but then I screamed at him not to in case it was some freakish alien pathogen, so he poked it with a bamboo cane instead.
It wasn’t a plant. It was a dead mouse that a certain little sod had caught and saved for later. And the hairy growth around its midsection was mould.
Imagine, if you will, a mouse wearing a bearskin fur gilet, and you will have some idea of the horror that we encountered on that fateful day.
My sister: “I can’t picture what you’re describing at all.”
Erm, will this help?
A Pinterest impression of what we found. (The real photo is far too grim to post.)
The only good thing about this story is that Catorze had the grace to leave it outside. We don’t know why – after all, his usual M.O. is to bring mice up to the bedroom – but we’ll take it.
And the worst thing about this, other than having to dispose of a rotting mouse sprouting hairy black tendrils, is that fact that I’d just – as in, LITERALLY THAT MORNING – bragged to my family over WhatsApp about the fact that my cat no longer hunts.
Oh, and whilst we were stood there, staring at the fur-gileted mouse and not knowing whether to believe our eyes, Catorze then sounded the dreaded hork-hork klaxon and puked all over the grape hyacinths at our feet. So much for the beauty and the romance of the Spring Equinox.
With the summer and Rodent Duty still ahead of us, it’s only going to get worse, isn’t it?
Absolute bastard cat.
You know when they say, “The killer showed no remorse”? Yeah, that.
It’s not a wish anymore because I actually do it, although not quite every day. Stop wishing, if that’s what you’re doing, and actually do it. Life’s too short.
Cat Daddy and I have started treating ourselves to fresh flowers once a month. It feels like a naughty indulgence, but it really lifts our spirits to have flowers in the house, and we’re supporting a lovely, ethical company, so it’s worth it. If you’ve never bought yourself flowers before – proper ones, not petrol station ones wrapped in cruddy plastic – then please do it, just once, and see how good it makes you feel.
We haven’t been able to buy flowers regularly on account of Louis Catorze’s allergies, plus the list of non-cat-compliant plants is so long that we didn’t even think there were many options available to us. However, the amazing Arena Flowers offer a pet-friendly collection, although we’re alarmed that they would need to issue the warning in the second paragraph:
Who are these freaks who actually FEED flowers to their pets? Come on, we want names.
Cat Daddy and I love our flowers. Catorze, however, couldn’t give a stuff and refused point-blank to pose properly next to them. No surprise there.
Nooo, not like that.Not brilliant but it’ll have to do.
If you live in the UK, we highly recommend Arena Flowers.
Louis Catorze’s summer mode has been officially activated.
It’s not summer yet. In fact, it’s not even spring. But the fact that it’s the wrong time has never stopped him from doing what he wants. A few rays of sunshine and he’s out … which makes it all the more insulting that he should run indoors to puke, then run back out again.
Oui, Mesdames et Messieurs: the little sod was OUTSIDE when he deployed the telltale hork-hork klaxon, but ran INSIDE to finish the job. The only possible reason for this is pure spite.
Here he is, on the lookout for mischief. Let’s hope he reins it in a bit because he’s getting too old for nonsense (and so are we).
He still has the energy to jump up here and do whatever it is that he’s doing.
(Sorry, I couldn’t bear to end the sentence on a preposition, so I had to change the prompt.)
Screaming. It’s by far Louis Catorze’s favourite thing in the world to do. And, sometimes, he screams himself into such a frenzy that there’s no air left in him.
I filmed the video (below) right after I’d let Catorze into the attic bedroom, after initially shutting him out to get some peace. In between his bursts of affronted complaining, you can hear little gasps which sound as if he’s trying to squeeze out another scream which won’t come out.
I had hoped to give you the exact number of seconds elapsed, in case you wanted to cut to the gasps without having to sit through the main screaming, but the latest iOS update on my phone somehow no longer shows the seconds ticking by on videos. However, I can tell you that there’s one gasp about 20% of the way in, another close to 40%, and a third right at the end.
Calm down and take deep breaths.
What’s happening? Is the little sod over-screaming to the point of losing his voice? Or running out of air? Should I be grateful that I am merely living in a house with him, as opposed to being trapped in a confined space, with his screams chipping away at the air supply and slowly suffocating us to death?
Apologies for my maniacal laughter in the video. The breathy wheezes are genuinely hilarious – although I will feel bad if they turn out to be some sort of undiagnosed, terminal lung condition.
