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Je crie, donc je suis

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Sa Majesté Louis Catorze, Le Roi Soleil, supreme ruler of Le Château, sworn enemy of canine foe and scourge of Ocado delivery drivers.

  • C’est amusant d’être vampire

    Louis Catorze’s body clock is completely up the spout.

    He is unhungry in the morning, remaining so all day, as if he has forgotten that food is even a thing. Then, as soon as the sun sets, that’s when he wants to eat. In fact, a few days ago, we knew that it was EXACTLY sunset because the footballers on television broke their fast at the same time.

    If you are new to Le Blog, you may be wondering whether something may be wrong with Catorze. However, if you know him as we do, you will recognise that we have simply entered CST, or Catorzian Summer Time.

    This is the time when Catorze turns into a teenager on his summer holidays. This includes the following behaviour:

    ⁃ Sleeping late

    ⁃ Rolling down for breakfast at sunset

    ⁃ Further after-dark feeds, taking advantage of the fact that Cat Daddy has usually had a few drinks at this point so his food-portioning skills are, erm, less precise

    ⁃ Late night Boys’ Club

    ⁃ Going out gallivanting all night

    It happens every year, although we hadn’t anticipated it starting so soon this time. The weather isn’t quite warm enough for him to be out all night, but he’s nailed most of the things on the list already, so it won’t be long until that last one follows.

    Oh, and we wouldn’t put it past him to never grow old and never die, either. (Horror film fans of a certain age: if you know, you know.)

    We are very lucky that our senior boy still has so much life in him. Long may it continue (apart from the nocturnal screaming bit).

    Whatever he’s chewing will be puked up on the carpet later.

  • Le chat sportif

    What’s the most fun way to exercise?

    Louis Catorze is a senior gentleman, so much of his time is spent not doing a great deal.

    However, he is able to commit himself to sport when he feels like it, and these are some of the ones that he likes:

    Gymnastics (beam).
    High jump.
    Wrestling.
    Mountaineering.
    Caving.
    Street dance.
    Rhythmic gymnastics (ribbon).

    However, Catorze’s favourite sport of them all is the modern French classic: parkour. This sport is best done at 3am, using furniture, window shutters and sleeping humans as obstacles, and the full moon seems to oomph up the athlete’s power and endurance, just like a celestial performance-enhancing drug. It certainly tests the little sod’s physical limits, not to mention our mental ones.

    It’s not all hardcore endeavour, though. Catorze would like to remind everyone that sufficient rest and relaxation is vital for the body to repair after exertion.

    Here he is, demonstrating how it’s done:

    Catorze recovers from the last parkour session, and dreams about the next one.

  • Qui rit le matin le soir pleure

    And there I was berating kittens for being massive shites when I, of all people, ought to know that they don’t get much better when they grow up.

    I wasn’t able to exercise much last week because of my cold, so I was looking forward to my first walk in ages with my walking friend, who had also been ill. I went to bed early the night before and, stupidly, I thought I’d have a decent sleep. I know. I don’t know why I haven’t learned by now that, if you live with a massive bastard of a cat, and you have to do something important early in the morning, it’s not going to go well.

    Louis Catorze woke me twice during the night/morning with the most gut-wrenching screaming. It wasn’t his usual nocturnal whine – which, don’t get me wrong, is annoying as hell because it still wakes me up. This was proper, house-is-on-fire screaming.

    I didn’t look at my watch so I don’t know what time the rude awakenings came, although each one happened in the dark, so it must have been pre-6am. I assumed he must have been hungry, but I did my best to ignore him because didn’t want him to start making a habit of this. I know people whose cats scream for food at all hours, and they do it because they know that the pathetic humans – YOU KNOW WHO YOU ARE – cave in and give them what they want.

    After the second wake-up call, I wasn’t able to get back to sleep again. Eventually I came downstairs at 6:30am … by which time Catorze had decided that he was actually thirsty, not hungry, so he had a long drink of water from his special glass. Yes, the same special glass which was full to the brim and which is accessible to him at all times.

    So there was absolutely no need to wake me up. Twice.

    Why do I put up with this – apart from abject fear, of course?

    Little sod.

  • Qui dirige le monde? Les chatons!

    What animals make the best/worst pets?

    I don’t know enough about all the different animals in the world to know which are the best pets. But kittens are the worst, without a doubt.

    I can’t deny that my sister’s new kittens, Mothra and Rodan, are cute. But then all psychopaths have an initial superficial charm, don’t they?

    Here is a list of things that my sister and her family can no longer do, on account of sharing a house with kittens:

    1. Eat food (because all food is kitten food).

    2. Drink drinks (because all drinks are kitten drinks).

    3. Work on the laptop (because tapping fingers are toys).

    4. Move their feet (because toes are toys).

    5. Move their heads (because hair is toys).

    6. Blink (because eyelashes are hair; see previous point).

    7. Clean the floor (because the Roomba is a toy).

    8. Have nice things (because nice things are both toys and claw-exercising apparatus).

    Kittens are not allowed on the table.
    Kittens are not allowed to drink tea. (And Mothra didn’t, on account of not being able to reach her head all the way in.)

    The humans of the household have also told me that Rodan, the Chat Noir, is naughtier than his sister, the tabby. I know. Who’d have thought it?

    Rodan has been banished to the Naughty Chair, after ignoring three (3) orders to leave the humans’ food alone.

    I’m convinced that this is all a big feline conspiracy: we tolerate kittens’ stupid shit in the hope that they might grow out of it, then, when they’re much older, the harder-to-prove psychological torture starts, by which time we’re too worn down to do anything about it.

    People often tell me that Louis Catorze as a kitten would have been adorable. Erm, the same size as he is now, but with more energy? No, thank you.

    I’m sending my sister thoughts and prayers. Although maybe vodka would be more useful.

    “You have done well, mes p’tits soldats.” Catorze approves of the carnage.

  • L’esprit de tolérance

    I have a cold, and it’s the awful kind that keeps you awake at night with the sweats and the dribbles (sorry if this is too much information). If you know anyone who has ever worked in a school, you will know that it’s practically the law for staff to fall ill during the school holidays. Nobody knows why this is. It just is.

    I was too ill to go to the football yesterday evening, but quite looking forward to the consolation prize of watching the game on television with Louis Catorze on my lap. My social media is often filled with pictures of cats snuggling up to their sick humans, and there’s even one super-cute TikTok cat who brings treats to his ailing mamma and gazes at her with wide-eyed concern.

    However, Catorze is a terrible nursemaid and couldn’t give a merde. He has mild-to-moderate contempt for sick people and absolutely zero tolerance for colds; if anyone sneezes, he gives an audible scowl of disapproval and runs away, muttering obscenities under his breath as he goes.

    I WhatsApped my sister that afternoon to complain about the lack of Catorzian compassion. She reminded me of the time in 2016 when she came to visit, and we were out when she arrived so we’d left her a key. At the time she had the most horrendous chest infection and wasn’t capable of much more than flopping on the sofa, coughing and coughing, as she waited for us.

    And look who kept her company:

    “Aww, tu es malade?”
    “Allow moi to snuggle toi better!”

    So either old age has rid of him of any empathy/patience, or he just hates me, or maybe a bit of each.

    Bastard cat.

  • Il est si vaniteux

    Any day that starts with being spat on HAS to get better, non?

    My alarm call this morning was Louis Catorze standing on my chest, screaming, followed by one of those shuddery full-body shakes that cats and dogs do. Because he can’t close his mouth fully on account of his protruding fangs, his shakes are like monsoon season in the tropics, and his spit landed on my mouth. MY MOUTH. Ugh.

    Catorze is wide-eyed and full of energy, and his fur feels silky-soft and beautiful. The synchronicity of this sudden change with the equinox was as if a switch were flipped the minute we transitioned from winter to spring. It’s quite spooky, yet still not the weirdest thing about him.

    Me: “What’s happened? Why is he looking so good?”

    Cat Daddy: “It’s spring, isn’t it?”

    Me: “It can’t be just that, surely?”

    Him: “And all that expensive food we give him. He’s such a good advert for Orijen. Look at how great he looks now …”

    Me: “I know.”

    Him: “… Compared to how ****ing shit he looked before.”

    Harsh. But fair.

    Here he is, basking in a sunbeam, loving life and loving himself:

    Shiny, shiny, shiny cat of black fur.

  • La reine des monstres et le démon de feu

    Black cats are psychopaths. Kittens are psychopaths. And multiple cats together bring out a gang psychopathy which wouldn’t have been present, or at least would have been significantly diluted, with just one cat.

    We all know this, right?

    Yet my sister (not the mamma of Otis and Roux, but the other sister) has just allowed these two reprobates to move in with her and her family:

    Yes, I did try to warn her. No, she didn’t listen.

    Mothra (tabby girl) and Rodan* (black boy), whose names follow a comic book supervillain theme just like that of their departed brother, King Ghidorah, are ten weeks old, and were adopted from The Stray Cat Club.

    *I don’t know whether Rodan is pronounced “ro-DAHN” rhyming with Sudan, “RO-dorn” like lowborn, “ro-DAN” rhyming with (Zinedine) Zidane or even “RO-dun” like (Phil) Foden. I don’t think my sister really knows, either. Luckily I’ve only had to deal with their names in written form so far, so it won’t matter until I meet them and have to address them in person/feline.

    Napping on their Cat Daddy’s legs.

    Mothra and Rodan are settling in well. Luckily there haven’t been any major dramas as yet, other than one of them trying to break out of their solitary confinement cell after just one (1) day. I imagine you can guess which cat it was.

    Oh, and this also happened:

    Whisky is NOT a kitten drink, Rodan!

    But I’m sure that, once The Mothership cranks up and the telepathic communication starts buzzing back and forth, there will be chaos aplenty. And, since I know better than anyone what it’s like to have a psychopathic cat, I will be here to point and laugh offer support throughout.

    Louis Catorze receives instructions from The Mothership.

  • La seule créature qui consomme sans produire

    It’s the Easter holidays. I would usually introduce a holiday post with “Merci à Dieu” but, in this case, it’s also a couple of days before the start of Mercury Retrograde and I’m stuck at home for two weeks with Louis Catorze. So it’s more of a “Merde, merde and thrice merde” than a “Merci à Dieu”.

    On the eve of my school holidays, we had a cat puke incident on the stairs. Can you guess whether it was all neatly confined to one step, or cascading down like Angel Falls? And was it on the wipeable wood or the textured, absorbent runner carpet? Go on, have a guess.

    Luckily I have been able to escape into Orwellian dystopia to cheer myself up. Cat Daddy bought me a copy of Animal Farm ages ago, but I’ve only just got around to picking it up. If you don’t know the story, it’s about animals who rebel against the oppressive ways of their human captors, so it probably isn’t the best book to read if you’re trapped with a psychotic cat during Mercury Retrograde, but tant pis.

    Interestingly, whilst all the animals in the story are hard grafters, the cat is utterly selfish and idle, ducking out when there’s work to be done, then reappearing when it’s time for dinner.

    Imagine that.

    “No animal shall sleep in a bed with sheets.” Not even eucalyptus silk sheets?

    Anyway, despite the too-close-to-home narrative, I’m finding the book utterly gripping. I was happily ensconced on the sofa, immersed in the story and undisturbed by evil Catorzian forces but, as soon as I reached the part about the Battle of the Cowshed – the first real confrontation between the animals and the humans – this happened:

    Erm …

    The photo doesn’t do this justice, but the little sod attacked the book with some vigour. Was he reenacting the Battle of the Cowshed? Or was this very, very enthusiastic support for his fellow animals as they battered the hell out of us pathetic humans?

    I searched for ages for a photo of George Orwell with a cat, and all I could find was this:

    Photo from Twitter or X or whatever the heck it’s called these days.

    I suspect that the animal behind him is a dog, mainly because I can’t imagine Orwell – or anyone, come to think of it – taking a cat to the beach. But I like to pretend it’s a time-travelling Catorze, sitting like a devil on his shoulder and whispering the inspiration for Animal Farm.

    Maybe The Uprising is closer than we thought …

  • Dis juste non

    How often do you say “no” to things that would interfere with your goals?

    My only goal in life is to sleep, and anyone who struggles to sleep will understand this. A good night’s sleep doesn’t simply make me feel better; it makes LIFE feel better. On those precious, rare days when I’ve slept well, I bounce through the day with the vitality of, erm, a small black cat on steroids. And, when I haven’t, I often wonder whether it’s even safe for me to be around people.

    I have done everything in the Sleep Text Book to make it work: an enormous bed, eucalyptus silk bedding, a soft colour scheme and a gentle alarm which wakes me to the sound of birdsong rather than a tinny, synth version of Eine Kleine Nachtmusik or some such thing. I’ve even booted Cat Daddy out because of his snoring, and he is now banished to the attic bedroom.

    So why, then, after all these efforts, do I allow Louis Catorze into the bedroom at night?

    You’d think there would be plenty of room on a super-king-sized bed for me and a 3kg cat. Well, yes. But also: no.

    The little sod is the most disagreeable bedfellow imaginable. More often than not he comes in soaking wet and screaming. And, after a few rounds of nocturnal parkour on the bed, instead of cuddling quietly beside me, his favourite thing is to sleep on top of me, either on my chest in Loaf Pose, or across my stomach like a furry, living belt.

    (He does the same to chat-sitteurs when they stay here. They tell me that they find it cute, which it probably is if you’re just visiting. Living with it is distinctly less cute.)

    Oh, and there are also incidents such as this one. And this one.

    Catorze is the one thing that interferes with my one goal. So why don’t I say no to him? Why do I persist in letting him into the bedroom?

    This isn’t rhetorical; I would genuinely like to know the answer.

    You make yourself comfortable, little sod.

  • Le printemps est inexorable

    It’s official: Cat Daddy has banned the Spring Zing from Le Château. I’m not sure how to keep it out, but I imagine we’ll be covering the windows in tin foil and nailing the doors shut. It’ll be like The Mist meets The Purge, only much less fun because we’ll be sealing the antagonist inside the house with us.

    Louis Catorze has lost the plot. On Friday morning he jumped onto Cat Daddy’s record deck and knocked one of our favourite ornaments onto the floor. It didn’t break (although it was already chipped from a previous fall – can you guess how that happened?), but now it’s rolled under the sofa and I can’t reach it.

    Immediately after dropping the ornament, he did this:

    What even is this? A victory dance? A goal celebration? Nobody knows.

    That evening, the shenanigans continued. Catorze jumped onto the side table by the window in the living room, to inform us that he wanted to go out at The Front. He has done this 8,642 times without mishap but, on this occasion, his fat arse knocked Cat Daddy’s favourite mug* off the table, sending tea and broken china in all directions. Unrepeatable Expletives of the Worst Kind were yelled at Catorze (including that really bad one), and I mean YELLED. If you live down our street, you probably heard this. Sorry.

    *I Googled it, to buy him another one, and it costs £24. Yes, for one mug. Gaah.

    Me, to Catorze: “Aww. Your daddy didn’t mean to call you that name.”

    Cat Daddy: “…”

    Me, to Cat Daddy: “You didn’t, did you?”

    Cat Daddy: “What do you mean? Of course I ****ing did.”

    It’s also been kicking off at Maison Blue, although this is Cat Daddy’s doing, not Blue’s. Cat Daddy locked Blue’s keys in the house during one feed, so we couldn’t get in to do the next one. We had to resort to shoving handfuls of Orijen through the letterbox – again – until Blue’s human sister rescued the key and handed it back to us. And, although I have previously icked at the thought of cats drinking water from gross places, this time I’m actually glad because at least his mamma’s bird bath water kept him going.

    All this, and it’s not even a full moon yet?

    I also checked to see whether Mercury Retrograde was imminent, and it is. Very. Will Le Château even still be standing by then?

    Not even Count Dracula, hanging behind Le Roi, can bear to watch the bullshittery unfold.

  • L’allégorie du printemps

    Louis Catorze has completely lost the gnarled, world-weary look that made us worry that he might be on his way out. He is bright-eyed, plushy-furred, full of energy and unbelievably annoying.

    This change seemed to take place very suddenly, in the few days leading up to the spring equinox, almost as if he knew it was coming. And it makes perfect sense: since he always knows when it’s a full moon (and informs us as such with his stupid behaviour, to the point where we don’t even bother checking the calendar), why wouldn’t he be aware of the changing of the seasons, too?

    This is how his Spring Zing has manifested itself thus far:

    ⁃ Pestering the hell out of Cat Daddy and a (male) colleague, when they were trying to have a meeting in the front room.

    ⁃ Playing energetically with his catnip toys.

    ⁃ Nocturnal parkour, using me as the terrain d’entraînement, and taking his rest breaks lying across my stomach, like a living, furry belt.

    – Nightly requests to go out at The Front (which are granted or denied, depending on whether it’s Cat Daddy or me on duty).

    ⁃ Screaming at birds in the garden.

    ⁃ Sticking his face into toxic plants in which he hasn’t shown the slightest interest until now.

    ‘Tis the season to be poisoned. Silly cat.

    It’s a full moon on Monday, so can we expect worse then?

    And, since I’m feeding Blue the Smoke Bengal for a few days, whilst his mamma is away, is he going to give me grief, too?

    A crescent moon Blue. Don’t be fooled by the teddy bear appearance.

  • Acueillir le printemps

    Some say that the Spring Equinox marks the first day of spring. For others, it’s 1st March (Meteorological Spring here in the UK) or even the last Sunday in March, the day that the clocks go forward. Cat people, however, know that spring is here when our furry overlords start spending more time outdoors and getting up to all sorts of mischievous capers.

    No, not this. This is not what I had in mind at all:

    Is this “mischievous”? Is this a “caper”? What even is this?

    Now, hear us out.

    Although Louis Catorze was out at The Front on the night that this took place (having heard me say “Don’t even THINK about running out!” as I was putting out the recycling and clearly seeing that as some sort of dare), this calling card really isn’t his style. However, we still had to think of something to say to Family Next Door, whose pavement space was the worst hit by the mess, before they saw it for themselves and made their own assumptions.

    These were our options:

    1. “Louis was not responsible for this; he rarely ever catches birds.” (Nope: this still implies that he catches them occasionally, and/or that he catches other animals more often.)

    2. “Louis was not responsible for this; leaving a trail of feathers really isn’t his thing.” (Nope: this suggests that he’s still a murderer, but one who tidies up after himself.)

    3. “Louis was not responsible for this; he wasn’t even out at The Front at the time.” (Nope: that last bit is a lie, because he WAS out at The Front at the time. Plus Family Next Door have a doorbell camera so they might even have seen him pitter-patter by, putting him at the scene of the crime irrespective of whether he did it.)

    In the end we went for the direct yet also deliberately minimalistic, “Louis was not responsible for this”.

    Daddy Next Door messaged us back with this:

    They saw this at an art fair. I have no idea why they chose to send us a photo.

    Obviously there’s been some mistake and they intended to send this some other cat-owning neighbour. I’m sure they will be mortified when they realise what they’ve done. Ahem.

    Anyway, the mystery remains: who is the murderer*? And, more importantly, where is the body**?

    *I would bet my house on it being Blue the Smoke Bengal. This is EXACTLY his MO.

    **In Blue’s belly.

    The Spring Zing is a thing.

  • Les deux côtés de la clôture

    Josh the fence-fixing man has been to fix our fence (obviously, since he’s a fence-fixing man), after it blew over in high winds.

    The reason why Family Next Door want a sturdy fence.

    As he walked through our kitchen towards the patio doors, Josh commented on our ouija chopping board (a gift from one of Louis Catorze’s chat-sitteurs). Cat Daddy told him that we were into all manner of spooky stuff although, worryingly, he didn’t mention that it was a chopping board and just let Josh think it was an actual ouija board.

    Naturellement, talk of spooky stuff comes hand in hand with talk of Catorze, so Cat Daddy mentioned that we had a black cat. Josh replied that he had a phobia of black cats, with a particular incident triggering this: a black cat once ran across the road when he was turning at a roundabout. Days later, at the same roundabout, the same thing happened again, only this time Josh crashed his car, resulting in severe, long-lasting and still-visible injuries.

    OH. MON. DIEU.

    It was then a race against time to find Catorze and shove him into a lead-lined underground vault, before he could enter stage left and make Josh either have a heart attack or do himself further physical damage whilst trying to run away. But the little sod was nowhere to be found.

    I looked in every room, even under the beds, and I couldn’t find him. It’s a bit difficult to contain a potential threat when you don’t know where it is.

    At a loss for what else to do, I went to the supermarket and left Cat Daddy to hold the Château. When I returned, expecting to see either the place in burning ruins or an ambulance parked outside for stricken Josh, the fence work had been completed, with no Catorzian interference whatsoever. In fact, nobody even knew where he was.

    I bet THAT’S a plot twist that none of you were expecting. Be honest: you thought it would be all Armageddon and ambulances too, right?

    Eventually I found Catorze under the guest room bed, in a cardboard box of Cat Daddy’s cycling clothes.

    What happened? Could it be that Catorze picked up on the difference between annoying the merde out of someone who found him a bit creepy, as opposed to traumatising a genuinely scared, injured man, and was charitable enough to give Josh a break? Or is it more likely that his nocturnal gallivanting had gone on until late the previous night, causing him to sleep through the whole morning?

    I’ll leave you to think about that one.

    See? Doesn’t this look say “charitable”?

  • Aussi fou qu’un chat enragé

    I have been a little worried about Louis Catorze these last few days and, when Cat Daddy asked me at what point we should take him to the vet, I knew that he was worried, too.

    As well as looking very thin, Catorze seemed to be moving around cautiously, as if his body were made of brittle glass about to snap. Cat Daddy commented that he looked like “a wizened old man”, and it was true. In fact, worse than that, his face looked like one of those shrunken heads that you get on display on fortune tellers’ shelves – not that I have actually been to any such fortune tellers, but you know the kind of thing I watch on TV.

    Anyway, I shouldn’t have worried because, the night before I had to go into school early to meet a student, the little sod snapped out of it. He was an utter pest all night, clambering all over me, headbutting me and screaming. Oh yes, full-on screaming; the gentle, closed-mouth whine which was his favoured communication during the night, is now a thing of the past.

    I even had a recurring dream that night about cats trapped atop a mountain and screaming to be rescued. In fact, there were no trapped cats: it was him. And the mountain was me.

    There is nothing wrong with him, and there never was. And, quite literally overnight, he lost that weird shrunken head look, started moving with more fluidity and became a normal* cat**.

    *By his standards.

    **Still subject to debate.

    What an absolute con artist he is, and how stupid I was to fall for his lies.

    The spring equinox is fast approaching. If he’s acting like he’s on amphetamines right now, what will he be like when his spring zing has fully kicked in?

    Bastard cat.