1. Trespassing: wandering onto other people’s land without permission.
2. Breaking and entering: wandering into other people’s property without permission.
3. Affray: loud disputes with at least one bird, squirrel, dog or other cat.
4. Violent disorder: as above, but with numerous third parties at once.
5. Threatening behaviour: causing alarm and/or distress with any or all of the above.
I am talking about Louis Catorze, of course, not me. Although it would be funny as hell to see a human having a loud, public spat with a cat.
The word “unintentionally” bothers me somewhat, as Catorze wouldn’t do these things by mistake. That said, “intentionally” suggests that he actually cares.
He doesn’t.
It would be more accurate to say that he commits the above offences with neither intent nor lack of intent but, rather, with a cold indifference and a blatant disregard for whether he breaks the law or not.
It’s not often that I catch him in the act – which is good, as it lends more weight to my “It must have been some other black cat” argument, should anyone else witness anything – but here is one occasion when I did. Yes, it really was loud enough for me to actually get out of bed and come downstairs to investigate.
Shadow the black Labrador’s folks have given me a cat modelling kit. It is designed to be for human use (obviously), not for cats, but Louis Catorze has decided that the plasticine effigy of him is his new favourite toy.
His face says “Je l’adore”.
He has knocked it to the floor at least 5,317 times since I made it in November. As a result it’s no longer the pristine work of art that it was when first created, but I don’t suppose Catorze cares. In fact, Cat Daddy thinks that, the more the little sod batters it, the more Catorzian it becomes.
Michelangelo would be jealous – and, yes, one fang is squared off for added authenticity.
My thoughts then turned to Catorze and how he came to be created. Clearly he wasn’t born of any species known to zoological science, so then how?
(And, more importantly, why?)
I have narrowed down the infinite possibilities for The Creation of Catorze to the scenarios below … and I even had to reword the instructions for one of them, as they contravened Bing’s decency standards. (Yes, this is really true. I wish I’d kept a screen shot of the warning issued, just for the comedy value.)
Which do you feel is the most likely of these three scenarios? Incidentally, at no point did I state that the fanged black cat had to be screaming; it seems that the BingBot knows Catorze well and gave me what he does best.
Aliens: “Let’s just dump it here and get the hell away.”Monster: “Make a pet for me.” Frankenstein: “It’ll all go horribly wrong.” Monster: [Does it himself.] Frankenstein: “I TOLD YOU.”No, he’s not being barbecued: he’s being forged in the fires of hell. Not even Satan will touch him with his bare hands.
Although The Great Salmon Grab was ages ago, its effects have been hard-hitting and far-reaching.
Louis Catorze is eating, but there is something strange about the way he’s doing it. I once described it as “reluctant”, but that implies a certain – albeit very low – level of cooperation, and this isn’t really what’s happening. It’s more “resentful” than “reluctant”. Maybe even “bitter”. Can one eat a meal “bitterly”? Well, Catorze can and does, presumably to protest about the fact that no further Michelin-starred hot-smoked salmon has been forthcoming.
“Feed moi. With saumon fumé.”
Whilst he can take or leave his own food, he’s obsessed with ours. Since The Great Salmon Grab, he has lunged for the following:
⁃ Avocado
⁃ Peanuts
⁃ Salmon pâté (ok, I guess I was asking for trouble with this one)
⁃ Blueberries and kefir
⁃ Home-made salted caramel sauce
⁃ A cup of silver tip white tea
It’s over, isn’t it? The joyous, golden époque when we were able to eat whatever we wanted without incident, and even leave food unattended, is no more. We are now forced to deal with bullying and intimidation at the hands of this tiny, toothy despot.
Coincidentally, Catorze’s cat-cousin Otis seems to have received the same food memo: my sister caught him on the kitchen worktop the other day, tucking into the leftover apple pie. The bastards are all at it.
Every time I prepare a meal, I look for Catorze to try to determine whether I’ll be eating in peace or batting him away like an annoying wasp who’s after my orange juice. And my mind drifts to how those few careless seconds have permanently altered our existence. Oh, and Cat Daddy still blames me. In fact, if I appear annoyed with him about anything, he retorts, “Just because YOUR dinner got stolen by a cat, don’t have a go at me.”
Catorze has ruined everything and, furthermore, he’s made it all look like my fault. What a horrid beast he is.
Louis Catorze’s new spot-on treatment, which covers fleas, ticks and two types of arse-worm, is a life-changer. However, as is the Catorzian way, this doesn’t stop the little sod from making it as difficult as is felinely possible when it happens.
There is a rather handy gap in our coffee table, between the flat wooden bit and the metal frame bit. The tube fits upright in this gap, so I was able to take off the lid, stand it up within reach and wait for the little sod to appear.
What a piece of luck.
Except … he didn’t appear. I have no idea what he was doing – clearly not Rodent Duty, because his friend came back to do that on his behalf (see below) – but Catorze was absent for ages. When he did finally show his silly face, he sat upright on my lap, sniffing suspiciously around him and refusing to sleep.
“It’s all under control here. As you were.”
After a few minutes of feigning sleep, Catorze started washing. Then he went for a drink and pitter-pattered over to a corner of the room to look at nothing in particular. Then he went outside again. He did everything but the one thing I wanted him to do: fall asleep on my lap. And, all the while, the liquid in the teeny-tiny tube was probably evaporating fast.
I got him in the end. Incredibly, I was even able to burrow right down to the skin, which is what you’re supposed to do with spot-on but I’ve probably only managed it twice in my life. There was much less liquid than in the previous Broadline tube, so there was less neck ick afterwards and Catorze didn’t seem inclined to roll off the residue onto every absorbent surface in the house. And, astonishingly, I was forgiven immediately afterwards. He ran at first, but then came back and settled on my lap again.
A bit less gross than usual.
It wasn’t the most fun that Catorze or I have ever had in an afternoon. But the fact that I don’t have to do it every month certainly dulls some of the pain, even if it does come at the price of £44 per treatment.
If you fancy going through the torment of spot-on four times a year instead of twelve, this is the magic elixir.
We have a school inspection going on at the moment. If you have ever worked in a school you will know what utter purgatory an inspection is, not just because of having people watch you teach (although that’s quite awkward and embarrassing) but because of the unbelievable amount of paperwork required. Most of it is either utter shite, or a duplication of other paperwork, or both.
Also, the kids can’t be trusted not to show you up. One inspector came to my Spooky Club; when he asked a usually impeccably-behaved kid to explain what the club was all about, she replied, “It’s basically like a cult.” Saint Jésus.
Anyway, when it’s inspection time at school, you want all other aspects of your life to be going normally and peacefully. It’s really not the best time for the following:
1. Being clawed and stamped by a screaming cat when you’re trying to get your work done. It was so bad that I had to beg Cat Daddy to remove him and keep him contained elsewhere.
2. Waking up to a dead mouse in the bedroom when you’re rushing off to work early.
3. Nocturnal scampering which wakes me at 2:30am then, when I turn the lights on, Catorze is just sitting in the middle of the floor, with his tail neatly wrapped around his paws. Incidentally, this was not on the same night as the mouse, so we are yet to discover what he was chasing (and, more importantly, where it is).
Cat Daddy asks me how each day went and looks after me when I come home, but all his efforts are cancelled out by a manic Catorze. I bet he’s been waiting since the last inspection to do all this.
Bastard cat.
Le Roi and his shadow self are ready to do their worst.
Mainly to share useless dross. Nothing constructive or admirable.
Dog people, however, get to do THIS kind of thing (below). Social media has informed me that there is a Sausage Dog Meet-Up scheduled for Saturday 11th February.
Before you tut at me for not anonymising names and faces, THIS IS A PUBLIC EVENT.
It will be taking place in a park close by (not the one over the road, although that would have allowed me to observe from a window, giggling to myself, without even leaving the house), in honour of Daisy’s first birthday. And it has been created by a group called the London Lowriders; I have no idea who they are, but they sound like some sort of south supremacist gang.
Daisy is, apparently, is a therapy dog. It sounds as if she has done a great deal in just one year, whereas Louis Catorze has been on the planet for almost FOURTEEN TIMES THAT LONG and has achieved the square root of bugger all.
The last time I checked, there were eleven guests confirmed and one hundred and two interested. No doubt by the time the event takes place, more will have signed up. However, posting the event on a public setting has the potential to go a bit Project X*, non? What if two hundred sausage dogs turn up? Or two thousand?
*Older followers: ask your kids/nieces/nephews who are in their early twenties.
You’d be forgiven for thinking that there couldn’t possibly be that many sausage dogs living in the area, this is Richmond, sweetie. Sausage dogs are quite the upper-middle class accessory, just like Breton tops and jauntily-coloured wool blazers.
If you have a dog, and you happen to be passing through TW10 on Saturday 11th February, I’m pretty sure you wouldn’t be turned away if you dropped into the event even if your dog isn’t a sausage dog. Dog people are like The Mob: they stick together.
And if you have a Chat Noir, meet me and Catorze in the cemetery on Hallowe’en night. Which cemetery? Just follow the sound of the screaming.
Catorze will probably leave early on account of the lack of men.
I am lucky enough to run a paranormal club – nicknamed Spooky Club – at school. This is something that would terrify most headteachers and parents but, luckily, ours are progressive and trusting and let me get on with it. Our most recent session was about thermal cameras and the creepy things that show up on them.
Kid 1: “What colour is your cat, Miss? And what colour is the floor?”
Me: “Black cat, grey floor. Why?”
Kid 1: “Oh, right. I was gonna say that if the cat and the floor were the same colour, maybe they’d absorb or reflect infra-red waves in the same way. But they’re not.”
Kid 2: “Had the cat been outside, Miss?”
Me: “Yes, but he’d been indoors for ten minutes at that point. So he should have warmed up.”
Kid 2: “Maybe he was still cold from being outside?”
Kid 3: “That still shouldn’t mean he was the same blue as the cold floor, though. If you’re showing up as blue on the camera, you’re basically dead.”
Kid 4: “How long have you had your cat, Miss?”
Me: “Nearly ten years.”
Kid 4: “And is this the first time he’s done weird stuff?”
[Silence, tumbleweed, crickets.]
Anyway, after spending the rest of the session Googling pictures of cats on infra-red cameras to see if there were any that resembled what I saw on that fateful day (nope) and begging the headteacher to spend £2,000 on an infra-red camera so that they could mess about with it and attempt to recreate The Curious Incident (also nope), the kids concluded that, perhaps, Catorze was possessed and needed an exorcism. I already knew this anyway.
Oh, and my colleague who teaches Physics confirmed that what I’d witnessed makes no scientific sense. I already knew this, too.
A normal cat, as seen on an infra-red camera. (Picture from gst.ir.net.)My weird cat, with no effects or filters whatsoever.
What do you enjoy doing most in your leisure time?
Louis Catorze is a huge fan of harassing the local wildlife. Squirrels, birds, foxes, whoever … they’re all fair game.
These days, when I hear the cacophonous din of angry magpies or parakeets outside, I don’t even bother checking to see what’s happening. This is for the following reasons:
1. I already know that it’s Catorze.
2. He probably started it, so he’s getting exactly what he deserves.
3. If it all turns to merde, he can handle himself.
For whatever reason, when I heard said cacophonous din the other day, something compelled me to go and look. And, when I glimpsed that telltale black form on next door’s shed roof, I wasn’t surprised.
Then I realised that it wasn’t Catorze.
Now, I know that I may not have been wholly truthful in the past regarding his behaviour, when neighbours have reported disturbances. And I know that a previous record of lying withholding the truth may not make me a very reliable witness. But, Mesdames et Messieurs, this is not my cat. I can’t prove it, but THIS IS NOT MY CAT:
“Hey! You!”“HEY! YOU!”“Don’t look away when I’m talking to you!”
La chaussure is well and truly on the other pied now, because I am worried that this fine gentleman will be going around the neighbourhood causing havoc and people will think it’s Catorze. Or what if he DOESN’T go around the neighbourhood causing havoc and people think it’s Catorze? Maybe the magpie saw him on the bitter enemy’s territory* and thought, “There’s that annoying black cat again”? Magpies are supposedly able to pick out individual humans from the rest of the crowd, so they should be able to do the same with cats, non? Or am I thinking of crows, not magpies?
Gaah. It’s all too much.
*Technically this is Family Next Door’s territory but, as they don’t have any pets, Catorze has claimed it as his.
For a short while the two Chats Noirs were in the garden together and, surprisingly, despite Catorze’s tolerance for impingers diminishing rapidly with age, he didn’t seem to mind him. But, as soon as I opened the back door to take a picture, the visitor ran off. Which is a shame as capturing the two together would have been indisputable proof that, honestly, this time it really WAS some other black cat.
Will he (and it’s definitely a “he”, isn’t it?) be back? And will this be a beautiful friendship, or a war to end all wars?
Him: “That’s a shame. It would’ve made a good blog post if you’d had the photo to back it up.”
Me: “People will believe me, with or without the photo. They know that it’s too ridiculous to be made up.”
Him: “I suppose we could ask Chris to put the infra-red on again when he comes back?”
How bold of him to assume that Chris will come back. And, in the unlikely event that he does, and Catorze allows himself to be infra-redded again, what do you suppose will happen?
1. The little sod will appear exactly as I described, with an ice-cold body and eyes of fire? (Nope.)
2. The little sod will be utterly invisible, like a vampire in front of a mirror? (Possible.)
3. The little sod will light himself up like the Eiffel Tower on Saint-Sylvestre, looking, for all the world, like a normal cat, just to spite me? (BINGO.)
Louis Catorze’s three main bêtes noires are as follows:
1. The guitar.
2. The vacuum cleaner (although he’s more offended than scared by this, and he screams at whoever is using it to shut up).
3. The pestle and mortar (again, insulting rather than frightening).
The little sod was subjected to the third one at length last weekend, when I made red curry paste from scratch. But it was well worth it because I was making lunch for some very special pilgrims: one of them was the lady who managed Catorze’s, and his big brother Luther’s, adoptions to us.
Cat Daddy, prior to the visit: “She’s got some explaining to do.”
Me: “…”
Him: “I mean, WHY US?”
Me: “…”
Him: “His online picture was very misleading. Just like those websites where the girls look amazing in their photos, and then you’re taken by surprise when you see them in the flesh.”
Right. I’m not even going to ask.
I gave Catorze a thorough brushing before his guests’ arrival so that he looked a bit less shit glossy and smart. And he seemed to know that something was afoot because he was extra unhinged that morning, screaming and staring creepily at us as we busied ourselves with food preparation and tidying up.
Anyway, our friend was quite emotional seeing her toothy little ex-charge again, almost ten years after she found him his forever home. Catorze was very happy to see her, too, although, naturellement, he preferred her husband and his was the lap of choice.
We swapped tales of rodents, birds and slugs – well, I say “swapped” but it was just us telling them our horror stories, whilst they thought, “Rather you than us!” And we barely even scraped the surface of the vast back catalogue of Catorzian misadventures. Their cats, Clementine and Puffin, are good girls who don’t do such things (well, give or take the odd worm and frog).
Catorze pitter-pattered in and out throughout, chirping and trilling, and even jumped onto the dining table during lunch, to demand extra attention – right after we’d told our guests that he never did this. It’s a good thing that he is eating again, albeit reluctantly, because otherwise we would have made them take him back.
Our hearts were fuller after a delightful afternoon talking cats. Le Royal Guest Book was, too, after one more message in it. And, whilst we don’t want to wish time away, our minds are already flashing forward to the summer, when we hope to visit Clementine and Puffin in their idyllic countryside retreat.
Here is Sa Maj, having the time of his life with the (very well-chosen) catnip rainbow given to him by our guests. He is a very lucky boy indeed.
“Pour moi?”Our friend was thrilled when she managed to capture The Fangs on camera.
Here are three of the worst Catorzian stories – or, rather, three of the worst Catorzian stories SO FAR – which we shared with our guests on this day:
If you could un-invent something, what would it be?
Hot-smoked salmon. I’m not joking.
We have had a trying few days here at Le Château. Since The Great Salmon Grab, every time I headed for the kitchen, Louis Catorze would pitter-patter after me and sit expectantly by his bowl, hoping beyond hope that some hot-smoked salmon would appear in it, or that Marcus Wareing would knock at the door and serve something fit for a Sun King.
Neither of these things happened.
The abject disappointment that ensued triggered the most mournful and gut-wrenching whining I had ever heard. When I filled his bowl with food, and he saw that it was disgusting Orijen slop and not Michelin-starred hot-smoked salmon, he would walk away.
On one occasion, when I filled his bowl, I said, “You’d better not just walk away.”
He didn’t; he RAN away. And I mean raced off at top speed, as if I had served him live scorpions.
Cat Daddy: “He’s a ****. He won’t ****ing eat any of it. He wants salmon. And, God, that noise. That stupid ****ing whining noise.”
Catorze, very quietly and sadly, and with the pitch starting high and finishing low: “Maooooou!”
Cat Daddy, animatedly, pointing at Catorze: “Yes, THAT noise! I’m ****ing sick of it.”
Friends even suggested just giving him the salmon, but I didn’t dare; Cat Daddy was already blaming me for this whole thing, firstly for “giving him the salmon in the first place” (this wasn’t quite how it happened, but tant pis) and then for not grabbing the plate away quickly enough and therefore “letting him think that the salmon was for him”, so it was probably best not to make things worse. However, he later added that, gram for gram, the salmon was probably still cheaper than the Orijen.
After two days of hunger strike I was almost ready to take Catorze to the vet and beg for help, even though we had only recently been and the vet had confirmed that there was nothing wrong and he was just taking the piss*.
*Not the actual words used by the vet.
Then, suddenly and inexplicably, either the gods relented and decided to stop torturing us, or the planets shifted into a more auspicious alignment, or Catorze simply couldn’t be bothered to keep up the drama anymore, and SOMETHING happened. He just ate. Merci à Dieu: he ate. He didn’t eat much but, at this point, we didn’t care about quantity and were grateful for anything at all.
So now we no longer have an anorexic cat, and Cat Daddy is about 0.1% less cross with me and Catorze. All is not quite fully well with the world, but this is better than the torment of the last few days.
Communing with Satan to say, “How did I do, mon pote?”
Bastard cat. I’m going to put him in an Uber and send him to someone’s house. I don’t know whose house. I don’t care whose house. It could be yours, so watch out.
I came home on Wednesday night absolutely exhausted from work, and I was about to sit down and eat my dinner when I saw that Louis Catorze’s water was running low. So I put my plate on the coffee table, picked up his water glass and went to the kitchen to refill … and, when I returned, I was met with this absolute horror show:
Saint Jésus.
Now, before you berate me for leaving my food unattended, I have done so around 8,632 times in the past and Catorze has never behaved like this, not once. I used to joke to fellow cat freaks that I would put my dinner on the floor and leave the room, just because I could. However, those glorious days have clearly melted away like frost in the morning sun, and now we are never going to be able to trust the little sod around food again.
This is a life-changing event at Le Château.
“You stopped to take a picture?” Well, what would have been the purpose of whipping away the plate at this point? I certainly wasn’t going to eat the food after this (although Cat Daddy, who is cross with me for “wasting food”, says that he would).
After he’d gorged himself on my dinner – hot-smoked salmon sourced from a fancy place which supplies high-end hotels and restaurants – Catorze was no longer interested in the boring Orijen that I’d just served him. He sniffed it, walked away, then sat on the stairs, looking pleased with himself, thinking about what he’d done and, no doubt, knowing that he’d do it again in an instant:
The devil himself.
My friend, when I told her about the incident: “What’s the moon doing right now?”
Louis Catorze’s cat-cousins, Otis and Roux, have been having the time of their lives in the great outdoors.
Otis recently caught his first mouse – or, rather, the first mouse of which we are aware. He brought it upstairs, chased it around whilst his parents slept, then took it back downstairs again. There, he waited patiently, holding the still-alive mouse in his mouth, until someone followed him, rescued the poor mouse from the jaws of death and set it free in the garden.
My sister: “I don’t understand. The previous owners said that the cats didn’t hunt.”
Me: “I feel your pain. I was also sold a non-hunter with Catorze, and what a joke that’s turned out to be.”
Her: “Do you think this will get worse?”
Me: “Well, if they’re managing to find mice in the depths of winter, spring and summer will be a veritable gold rush.”
Her: “…”
Me: “Not to mention the fact that Otis and Roux are barely even three …”
Her: “…”
Me: “So you have many, many years of mouse mayhem ahead of you.”
Her: “…”
Having successfully ensured that my sister would never sleep again, I breathed a sigh of relief that my own ageing cat will soon be hanging up his hunting gear and settling for a nice, easy life doing nothing.
Oh, wait …
Rodent Duty for Catorze, in the frost and ice.
Whilst at work last week, I received the following message from Cat Daddy:
“A present from him. He walked right past me with it. Dumped it on the floor in its death throes. Then licked the blood.”
The message was accompanied by a highly disturbing video of Catorze, with rodent, utterly unrepentant. Don’t worry, I won’t be posting the full video here, but here’s a still taken from it, showing the little sod, smoking gun in hand:
The mouse is out of sight, behind his head, but you can just about see its shadow.
Why is he doing this? HOW is he doing this?
Is he being so weird with his food because boring, dry biscuits just don’t compare to warm, pulsing rodent flesh?
louiscatorze.com 