Are there any activities or hobbies you’ve outgrown or lost interest in over time?
No. None whatsoever.
Every time I start to think Louis Catorze is too old for one of his usual pastimes – catching mice, ambushing Ocado delivery drivers, picking fights with the local wildlife, that kind of thing – he proves me wrong. In fact, bragging about the fact that he’s finally calming down and giving me some peace virtually guarantees that he will pull some stupid stunt immediately afterwards, just to spite me.
Racing around trashing the house is another thing that I thought would be a thing of the past. Yet here he is, soon to be fifteen years old, still at it. Whatever “it”’ might be:
My 6:45am alarm didn’t go off on Wednesday. Luckily I was realised that something was amiss when I heard my phone buzzing with text notifications, which are only set to come after 7am.
When I checked through my schedule to find out what had gone wrong, I saw that my alarm was set for three of my four working days, and Wednesday morning simply said, “No alarm”. I have no idea how I managed to do that. Nor do I know how I was able to get up on previous Wednesdays if there was no alarm.
When I realised I was late and rushed downstairs, I found Louis Catorze on the top step, in loaf pose, just sitting there, getting in my way and making me even later (only by a couple of seconds but it’s the principle).
The little sod always wakes me, without fail, between 6am and 6:45am, whether or not there is an alarm. On days when I really need my sleep because I have something important planned, he wakes me from 3am onwards, at fifteen-minute intervals. However, on that fateful Wednesday, he didn’t.
WHY? It’s as if he were deliberately trying to sabotage me.
And in today’s episode of Unidentified Crud Found On My Cat, we have … well, what exactly DO we have? Nobody knows. Nor does anyone really want to get close enough to find out.
Louis Catorze came in from outside looking like this:
Good grief.
We think the offending substance could be any one of the following:
Slug/snail juice.
Bird shit.
“Maybe someone finally had enough and spat on him” (Cat Daddy’s suggestion).
All are contenders but, somehow, the idea of Catorze annoying someone so much that they resorted to spitting on him, although both repulsive and weird, is also understandable. We’ve never done it, of course. Mainly because we didn’t think of it.
I ought to be used to Unidentified Crud Found On My Cat, since Catorze’s big brother Luther would come indoors covered in all sorts, including bright green powder (below) and a film of translucent jelly that pulsed and moved.
We never found out what this was.
However, I still couldn’t quite bring myself to clean the Catorzian mess, especially as Catorze would have fought me every step of the way. So Cat Daddy was the hero on this occasion and spared me the headache. (And, of course, the little sod didn’t fight his papa. He didn’t so much as squeak.)
Mesdames et Messieurs, IT IS STILL WINTER. What is Catorze going to be like in the warmer months, when he’s spending more time outdoors and there is more Unidentified Crud to be discovered?
If there had to be one cat to take the concept even further, of course it would be Louis Catorze’s cat-cousin Rodan. Imagine a naughtier version of Catorze, with youth on his side and the benefit of a sidekick (his sister Mothra) to egg him on.
Yes, exactly.
Here is Rodan, relaxing on his human siblings’ Lego:
?????????????
No, we can’t understand why anyone would want to do this. Yet never, in the history of catdom, has that ever stopped them from doing silly things.
Can anyone explain this? [Silence, tumbleweed, crickets.]
Louis Catorze has the whiniest, most irritating voice on this earth. The problem with this is that, when he uses his voice – and he uses it A LOT – we have no idea whether he’s complaining or not.
Our visitors, upon hearing his screams, often take pity on him immediately, saying, “Aww, poor Louis! What’s the matter?” Erm, nothing. That’s just his normal voice.
I could post multiple examples of his work, but this video from some years ago was probably the most embarrassing (being out in public) and the loudest. And, no, nothing was wrong:
Louis Catorze gave us a massive scare a few nights ago.
I walked into the living room, where he was sound asleep, and he didn’t stir in the way that cats do when someone makes a noise during their nap. I called his name, even poked him in the body, all to no avail. I could see that the little sod was breathing, but he was utterly motionless.
I lifted his head up in my hand, and it lay in my palm like a weight. When I let him go, he flopped down, as if he were unconscious.
Oh. Mon. Dieu.
I called Cat Daddy, who was also quite alarmed when I demonstrated the heavy head thing again. Then, when Catorze heard his papa’s voice, somehow he snapped back from whatever parallel universe he was in, stirred gently and let out a breathy, fairylike squeak.
What just happened? And why on earth didn’t I video it, so that I would have something to show the vet if things turned to merde later? Perhaps it’s possible for cats to sleep so deeply that they’re unaware of any shouting and prodding going on, but this is nothing that I’ve ever seen before.
After the incident, Catorze was absolutely fine and acted as if nothing had happened. And, a day later, he was galloping around the house as if the devil were at his tail*, screaming absolute bloody murder. Nothing was wrong, and he didn’t want anything. This was just for fun.
*Not a wholly accurate comparison since the devil would probably run away from him, not vice versa, mais tant pis.
Please let me know if you have ever experienced this in a cat. (The deep sleep, I mean, not the racing around, screaming.)
“I love to lounge upon cushions, and think with raptures of my adorers.” (Balzac)
Remember when Louis Catorze wouldn’t eat a piece of fish unless it was mushed up into an insipid paste? Curiously, this seems to be a selective affliction only affecting cat food. If said piece of fish happens to be hot-smoked salmon skin, for instance, he’s fine.
I know. Imagine that!
We caught him out the other day when we were slicing up some hot-smoked salmon, and Catorze decided to bully us into sharing. Cat Daddy couldn’t be bothered to cut up the skin into tiny pieces, so he just dumped a couple of large strips into Catorze’s bowl.
The little sod dragged one out, sort of flipped it in the air and swallowed it whole, just like the T-Rex in the first Jurassic Park who snapped up the horrible lawyer who was sitting on the toilet. (Younger followers: ask your parents.)
So, to summarise:
Cat food: must be mushed up. No, that’s still too chunky. Maybe pass it through a sieve as the final stage, the way Marcus Wareing does for a chicken liver parfait?
Hot-smoked salmon skin: gulped down in one, irrespective of the size.
In fact, were it not for the cost, not to mention our fear of the little sod choking to death, we might be quite tempted to give him progressively larger pieces of hot-smoked salmon skin just to see how far he would take it. Would be swallow a piece the size of a hand? An A4 sheet of paper? His own body from ear to tail?
Fun fact: the biggest salmon ever caught was 97lbs. Catorze is around 6.2lbs.
Rodan and Mothra thoroughly enjoyed the festive season, when they were surrounded by people, and they have been feeling rather needy since everyone returned to their respective workplaces and schools.
Here they are, happily snuggled up in their human sister’s bed. But just look at Rodan, on her pillow:
Cheeky sod(s).
Now, did he see an opportunity when she rolled off the pillow, sneaking silently into position as soon as it was vacated? Or is it possible that he could have … SHOVED HER OFF? (I know, I know, a Chat Noir doing something so dastardly just to benefit themselves is utterly unthinkable, but we have to consider all options here.)
What do you think, Mesdames et Messieurs? Did Human Sister fall or was she pushed?
If you could make your pet understand one thing, what would it be?
Despite playing dumb, our cat understands plenty. WE are the ones who need help in understanding HIS stupid shit.
Cat Daddy and I don’t often have baths, because we much prefer showers. Yet, when I do have a bath, I have to wash it down prior to using it because it’s all bitty and hairy. A bathtub which is only ever used once every three weeks at the most, and which is cleaned weekly whether it’s used or not, shouldn’t be bitty and hairy, right?
I then realised that the hairs weren’t human hairs. Louis Catorze had been gadding about IN THE BATHTUB.
Why? It’s such a strange thing to do, especially as he has a zillion more comfortable places to be.
What does he do in there? Does he just go to sleep, or does he slide around like a teenager in a skate park?
When? He is always either with us or outside … unless he only goes into the bathtub when we’re not home, and jumps out again when we return (which is REALLY strange, yet probably still wouldn’t be the strangest thing about him)?
Catorze is the only one who could make this make sense, if he wanted to. However, he doesn’t.
An old photo of more bathroom misadventures. Here, he was getting high on the bleach after the bathroom had been cleaned.
After learning about some of the gross things that are in tap water – if you don’t know, trust me, you’re better off not knowing – I decided to treat myself to an eco water filter. It’s eco because, instead of throwing away a plastic filter cartridge every few weeks, you open the cartridge, empty out the coconut fibre charcoal innards and replace those. Not perfect, but not bad either.
I decided to buy this just for me, but I have to admit that I briefly dallied with the idea of giving Catorze filtered water, too. Now, please hear me out. It was only a thought and I’m not going to go through with it, for the following reasons:
1. If Catorze’s guts can handle rotting rat carcasses oozing with maggots, he is probably managing fine with tap water.
2. I would die of embarrassment telling a chat-sitteur to serve our cat filtered water in our absence, yet letting them help themselves from the minging tap for their own drinks.
3. If there were some sort of crisis in the future and we were forced to give Catorze tap water as an emergency measure, he would probably go on thirst strike and let himself shrivel up into a brittle, anhydrous husk, just to spite us.
So there will be no fancy water for Sa Maj. But don’t feel bad for him, because he still has a choice of delightful drinking spots available to him: his water glass, the rainwater that pools on the outdoor table and the indescribable stagnant muck lurking within the garden bucket.
Here he is, enjoying each one at various moments over the years:
Le royal wine glass, during the glorious days before Cat Daddy kicked it over and broke it.The outdoor bar.The cess pool of horrors.Bonus photo of Catorze’s cat-auntie, Zelva, drinking from the water that my mum leaves out for the foxes in an upcycled washing machine door. (She has her own cool, boiled water indoors.)
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?
louiscatorze.com 