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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.

  • Noël, que du bonheur

    I don’t have many memories of childhood Christmas celebrations, but the one thing that stands out is the time when cat shenanigans caused utter chaos.

    My aunt had just made the brandy butter to accompany our Christmas pudding, not imagining that it would have the slightest cat appeal. She left it unguarded for 0.3 seconds and, when she looked back again, our cat, Misha, was on the worktop with his head in the bowl, eyeball-deep in that heady mixture of everything that was bad for him: dairy, sugar and alcohol.

    Clearly time passes differently on Planet Chat because that fraction of a second, although short to us humans, gave Misha all the time he needed to get absolutely wasted. My aunt carried him back to the living room, his limbs all splayed and floppy, and dumped him into his cat bed to sleep it off.

    After his nap, Misha was fine. And I have an awful feeling that the cat-tainted brandy butter was not thrown away but simply, erm, “rearranged” (don’t ask).

    Back in the 1980s, we all thought this was funny. These days, of course, such an incident would constitute a vet emergency of epic proportions, since cat-freakishness has escalated over the years. Not only do we whisk our furry overlords off to the vet at the slightest sniff, but we monitor what makes it onto their plates in the same way that sports coaches monitor elite athletes in the weeks leading up to a big competition. This is especially the case if they have allergies; eating the wrong thing, at a time when every vet is closed, could be catastrophic.

    Louis Catorze’s festive treats have, therefore, been limited to the following:

    1. His usual Orijen Six Fish.

    2. A teeny fingernail-sized scoop of, erm, Fortnum and Mason salmon pâté. (Cat Daddy was, and still is, absolutely livid that I did this.)

    Not cat food. (Well, ok, today it was.)

    There would also have been some organic aged Comté and some jambon de Bayonne but, for the former, I missed the ordering deadline from the cheese deli. (There was Marks and Spencer Comté available but, as you know, Sa Maj won’t eat that.) As for the latter, there appears to be a general dearth on Ocado, but Catorze has been so busy attacking magpies and thrashing around in our box of presents that he doesn’t seem to have noticed yet.

    Christmas is ruined.

    I hope you and your furry overlords have a wonderful day. And, even if you think you can trust your cat, have a look here just to remind yourself of some of the ways that the little sods can ruin our festivities.

    Planning his next piece of bullshittery.

  • À l’aube d’une nouvelle année

    At the top of the tree, where he belongs.

    The winter solstice is here. A brand new journey around the sun starts today.

    Over the last twelve months or so, Louis Catorze has sadly lost some of his (younger) amis: his cat-cousin King Ghidorah left us last December, as did Shadow the black Labrador at the end of April, and Merlyn, the daddy of the Northern tuxedo cat gang, in September.

    King Ghidorah, who transitioned from stray cat to pampered house pet.
    Shadow, having fun in the snow.
    Merlyn, drawing our attention to his heartbreakingly empty bowl.

    It’s made us realise how lucky we are to still have Catorze around at all, let alone him being in such good form. He is miraculous and creepy in equal measure, an impish mix of Dorian Gray, Peter Pan and all the Twilight vampires, and I will probably spend the rest of my life, long after he is gone, trying to understand why he was put on this earth (apart from to annoy the merde out of us).

    Whatever you and your furry overlords are planning over the next few days, and however you choose to celebrate (or not), we hope you have a wonderful time. Thank you for supporting us and Catorze, and may everything good about the season come your way.

    Catorzian feet.

  • À genoux devant Le Roi (Partie 2)

    What skills or lessons have you learned recently?

    I have learned that my cat can control me with his mind, although that’s not really a recent discovery. And, although certainly skilful on his part, it’s probably the exact opposite for me.

    We already know that Louis Catorze is the master of creepy staring, eventually making the subject feel so uncomfortable that they stop what they’re doing and give him what he wants. He usually does this when he wants food, or when he wants us to join him his favourite place: the living room.

    We now have a new one to add to the list and I discovered this the hard way, i.e. by trying desperately to give him all the things that I thought he wanted, but having my efforts rejected and ultimately failing in my quest to make him stop the staring.

    It was torturous. The more I scrabbled around in desperation, the more intensely he stared.

    I eventually discovered what Catorze wanted: he wanted to sit on my lap, but he didn’t like my leg position. So he’d decided to stare and stare until I changed my leg position to something more comfortable for him.

    He doesn’t like it when I sit with legs folded under me. He will tolerate legs out and feet on the floor, although it’s not his favourite. What the little sod likes the most is for me to sit with my legs outstretched and feet on the coffee table, even though this is the least comfortable and most damaging for me. In fact, some time ago, this position was what resulted in my Laziness With Cat injury and weeks of physio.

    Here is the silly beast (below), enjoying his favourite sleeping position. And, every now and again, if I shuffle around to make myself more comfortable, he lifts his head and scowls at me.

    I know: I’m pathetic. But I also know that you would stoop just as low, if not lower, to make your furry overlords happy, so please don’t judge me.

    You make yourself comfortable. Don’t mind me.

  • Il est ici pour gâcher la fête

    BASTARD CAT.

    Just as I had finished drafting a blog post about how well-behaved he is with Yule trees, Louis Catorze decided to prove to me that KramPuss the Yuletide demon is no myth.

    The little sod had been poking around among his presents under the tree, and he somehow managed to wedge this one – sent by one of his pilgrims – into the tray of muddy, sappy tree water. Because he shoved it towards the back of the tray and not the front, it’s taken me some time to notice … and, in the meantime, the present has sucked up water like a thirsty sponge.

    Ugh.

    We have never had to deal with him breaking decorations, drinking the sappy water (highly toxic, just so you know) or using the pot as his own personal toilettes royales. So why this, and why now?

    UGH.

    I have just squeezed out as much water as possible and left the toy drying on the radiator. So, pretty soon, the whole house will be smelling of catnip. It’ll be just like that time when one of the students at my school had a cheeky puff of something naughty in the toilets and, somehow, the heating system blasted out the, erm, herbal fumes throughout the whole ground floor. Luckily we didn’t have inspectors in at the time, although maybe it would have put them in a good mood.

    At the time of writing this I’m home alone with Catorze, too, with Cat Daddy not returning until late tonight.

    I don’t know why I ever thought my holidays would be peaceful and relaxing. They’ve only just begun, and already I’ve had enough.

    What a shite.

  • La panthère rode la nuit

    Do you ever see wild animals?

    Just when I thought that Louis Catorze had exhausted every possible way to scare the merde out of me, the little sod manages to find more.

    My phone charger, which sits on my bedside table at night, is one of those ones that looks like a flat disc, with a little light on one side. When there’s nothing on it, it glows red. But, when you place a phone on it and it magically starts to charge, the light turns blue. During the night it projects a faint blue glow across the room, but this doesn’t bother me and I’m able to ignore it.

    A couple of nights ago, Louis Catorze was especially restless. For reasons that I will never understand, he decided, at some excruciating hour of the night/morning, to sit on my bedside table, knocking over my bottle of water and various other bits. And the stars happened to be aligned in such a way that the silly sod chose to sit right in the beam of the blue light, projecting a giant version of his form on the wardrobe across the room.

    I woke up to the sound of my stuff crashing to the floor, looked over to see what was happening, and was greeted by the sight of a giant shadow panther on the other side of the room. I thought it was just my brain taking a little time to catch up with my body … and then the shadow panther moved.

    Oh. Mon. Dieu.

    I’m pretty sure that Catorze took ten years off my life, in that one moment. And it wouldn’t surprise me at all if he added them to his own life, just to spite me.

    Bastard cat.

    What he looks like in normal shadow.
    What I saw that night.

  • Nosferatooth: a symphony of horror

    The first thing that I did upon finding out that Louis Catorze had chipped one of his fangs, was spend ages looking through photos to try to ascertain when it could have happened. However, his fangs can look absolutely massive, utterly invisible and everything in between, depending on the light and the angle, so it’s been impossible to tell.

    It could have happened as far back as April, when one particular photo showed the offending fang looking suspiciously square. It may even have been before then. But I just don’t know. And I can’t help feeling that I’ve let him down, somehow, by not knowing this, especially as I used to pride myself on knowing the Catorzian visage better than I know my own name.

    The second thing I did upon finding out that Louis Catorze had chipped one of his fangs was research one-fanged vampires. (I know. I really ought to get out more.)

    According to the hotbed of intellectual discussion that is, erm, Quora, there is a monofanged elfin cryptozoological beast called an Alp. And, worryingly, it shares many qualities with Catorze. Here are just a few of them:

    1. Is typically male : OUI

    2. Attacks during the night and causes nightmares: OUI (in fact, the German word for “nightmare” – “Alptraum” – originates from this)

    3. Sits on people’s chests whilst their sleep, crushing the breath out of their bodies: OUI

    4. Has shapeshifting abilities and can transform into a cat : OUI (although the jury is still out regarding whether Catorze is actually a cat)

    5. Can turn invisible: OUI

    6. Has a tendency for mischief: OUAAAAIS

    I have learned, by now, to be shocked but not surprised.

    Picture from the-demonic-paradise.fandom.com.

    Meanwhile, with the help of Cat Daddy, I have managed to take a photo of the fang snappage. It’s not the best picture because the stupid arse wouldn’t keep still (Catorze, I mean, not Cat Daddy), but you can just about make out that one fang is pointy and the other is squared off:

    Not a massive difference, but a difference nonetheless.

    Luckily it’s not affecting Catorze in the slightest. But, by the time April comes around, when he’s back to his usual springtime habit of ripping rodents to shreds, will he do something silly to make it worse?

  • Une température hivernale

    What are your two favourite things to wear?

    A thick jumper and a fluffy blanket. I’m not joking.

    This is something of a middle-class problem, but the under-floor heating in our kitchen has broken and the place is freezing. Cat Daddy and I prepare meals at lightning speed and then race into the living room – which is deliciously toasty-warm – to eat them.

    So, naturellement, Louis Catorze has decided that now is the time to barge into the living room whilst we’re defrosting our frozen extremities, leaving the door wide open and letting the heat escape. And he doesn’t just do this once or twice. Over the course of an evening he does this maybe ten times? Possibly more? Who knows? The thought of counting the incidents is the only thing more annoying the the incidents themselves.

    Sometimes Catorze will even open the living room door to let himself out, CHANGE HIS MIND ABOUT GOING OUT, then come and sit back down with us, leaving the door open. So one of us – usually me – has to close it again. I have had to make sure one of Catorze’s stick toys is always at hand, so that I can lean over and use it to close the door without leaving the sofa. The little sod HAS to be doing this on purpose. Since cats know how to open doors, it can’t be THAT hard for them to close them afterwards?

    Chris the heating engineer will be coming to fix things today. Will Catorze leave him alone and let him get on with it … or will it be another one of those times when his interference causes a two-hour job to last several days?

    Off you go into your nice, warm igloo. Don’t mind us.

  • Un mauvais œuf

    Oh. Mon. Dieu. Louis Catorze has just eaten two tiny fragments of crisps. And they weren’t just normal crisps. They were fried egg-flavoured crisps.

    I know. I know exactly what you’re thinking:

    1. Yes, fried egg-flavoured crisps are a thing (and, unbelievably, they are delicious).

    2. Catorze doesn’t eat human food (or so we thought).

    3. Fried egg-flavoured crisps are as far along the human food spectrum as can possibly be, on the extreme right (or the extreme left, depending on which end you think is good and which is bad).

    Naturellement my efforts to capture this on camera yielded nothing but the rather disturbing photo below, snapped just before he headbutted the phone out of my hand. So I have no actual proof. But we can file this under “Too absurd to have been made up”, non?

    Red circle = piece of crisp shrapnel.
    Red arrow = Catorzian eye.

  • Le froid est un état d’esprit

    What’s your favourite month of the year? Why?

    October, October, October, morning, noon and night. But, since Le Blog is already quite October-centric, I thought I’d make a change and write about December, which is my second favourite.

    I love the frost, the dark mornings, the Yuletide decorations, the snow-set horror films, the seasonal ghost stories and the two glorious weeks off work. And I love the food. Oh God, I love the food. December is the one month of the year when I can buy a whole salmon terrine which serves six to eight people, and eat it all by myself.

    If you know any Brits and plan to meet us this month, we will probably greet you by saying, “Oof! Bit chilly out!” and then doing a theatrical little shiver. It’s practically the law for us to say that to people as soon as December hits.

    My workplace conversations often start (and end) like this:

    Colleague: “Oof! Bit chilly out!” [Theatrical little shiver.]

    Me: “I like it when it’s like this.”

    Them: “…”

    Me: “I know. I’m weird.”

    Them: “Anyway, have a good day.”

    In December, Louis Catorze is permanently attached to my lap in the daytime but leaves me the hell alone at night, preferring either his igloo or the fluffy brown blanket. If he chooses the latter, by the time I wrap myself in the blanket for my morning tea ritual, he has warmed it for me. And, once I do so, he hops onto my lap and we warm each other. So everyone’s warm and happy.

    TUC is the best way to be.

    Maybe Catorze has finally started to act his age (and his species)? Erm … if that’s what you’re thinking, let me stop you there. And, whilst most normal, older cats are shifting into hibernation mode, Catorze still finds the time and the energy to do this:

    Right. I see.

    I hope that the beauty of my second favourite month is bringing you as much joy as it is to Catorze. Are your furry overlords members of Team Sleeping-On-Fluffy-Blankets, Team Jumping-On-Shutters or, like our little sod, do they flit between both?

  • Les neuf vies du chat

    Nothing says “The joys of the Yuletide season” quite like a trip to the vet.

    On Friday I had to take Louis Catorze for his steroid shot and, astonishingly, there was bone-chilling silence on the walk there. It was quite the departure from his usual gut-wrenching screaming, especially that one time when he screamed so badly that some random passer-by didn’t believe I was taking my cat to the vet, and thought I’d just grabbed Catorze off the street. The man actually stood and watched me as I walked off, to see if I even knew which way the vet was.

    As soon as we arrived and Catorze realised that we were in his least favourite place in the world, he broke his silence. Luckily nobody else was in the waiting room at the time, so at least we were spared whining, upset dogs and other cats being goaded into joining in the screaming.

    Anyway, we have two pieces of news:

    Firstly, Catorze doesn’t have a heart murmur; the little shit was faking it. Thank God I didn’t find this out via the £500 scan.

    Secondly, he has snapped the end off one of his fangs. It’s a minuscule chip, on the same side where one of his jowls hangs lower than the other, hence why we didn’t notice it despite knowing every millimetre of his silly little face. And there’s no exposed dental pulp (ugh – I wish I had never learned that this is a thing) so he isn’t experiencing any pain or sensitivity. But if it gets worse – and let’s face it, it’s hardly going to get better, is it? – the fang will have to come out.

    We then talked about alternatives to steroids, such as hypoallergenic food (nope) and daily medication (nope), and a blood test (HELL to the NOPE) to determine the exact state of Catorze’s drug-ravaged innards. The vet also suggested that we monitor his drinking, but I have no idea how to do that; Catorze not only drinks from his glass but also from the surface of the outdoor table, the manky old watering can by the barbecue and probably a whole host of other vile places that don’t bear thinking about.

    Oh, and the pleasure of all of the above cost me £80.

    Within minutes of getting home and being released from his transportation pod, Catorze was on my lap. I don’t know whether he forgave me or whether he just forgot what had just happened, but I suspect the latter.

    I’m glad, at least, that one of us is over it.

    Bastard cat.

  • Des amis pour faire la fête, on en trouve des milliers

    It’s 1st December or, as I like to call it, the first day of Psychological Winter.

    Although we are very much a nature-minded household – well, it’s hard not to be when we live with a black vampire cat who informs us via his naughty behaviour when there’s a Bad Moon Rising – the date switching from November to December means it’s no longer autumn. My heart wants to believe that winter starts on the winter solstice, but my brain won’t let it; if I’m opening windows on my advent calendar and scraping ice off my car, then it’s not autumn.

    Autumn, winter, whatever. Couldn’t give a merde.

    Cat Daddy and I are having a competition to see which of us can attend more festive lunches than the other. So far, I’m winning with four versus Cat Daddy’s two, and he’s not happy about it. And he still maintains the idea that I cheated by starting mine in late November, whereas I just call that being organised.

    So Cat Daddy threatened to have a Boys’ Club Christmas party, just him and Louis Catorze, to enable him to add one more to his tally. However, when I held him to his threat and even offered to make them some jambon de Bayonne and Comté canapés for the party, he started to backtrack.

    Him: “I can’t have a Christmas party with just my cat. That’s the kind of thing some weird loner would do.”

    Me: “I’d totally do it, if I could.”

    Him: “So why don’t you?”

    Erm, because the cat would decline my invitation, that’s why.

    I am hoping that if I continue to bully encourage Cat Daddy, he will change his mind. Catorze would love nothing more than some festive fun with his papa but, in the meantime, he has other friends with whom to hang out.

    Here he is, pictured at a previous Yuletide soirée, most likely laughing at one of his own jokes:

    Krampus and Krampuss.

  • Le chat voyant

    If you could meet a historical figure, who would it be and why?

    It would be the person who invented tarot cards. Mainly so that I could apologise to them for this.

    One of my friends gave me a set of black cat tarot cards for my birthday, and each one looks like Louis Catorze, with the alien eyes and the creepy stare. When I unwrapped the gift, my friend went through every card to see if any cats had fangs, and wouldn’t you just know it:

    Oui, Mesdames et Messieurs, this was the ONLY FANGED CAT OF THE WHOLE SET.

    I don’t need a tarot reading to predict Catorze’s behaviour – I always know that he will do the last thing I expect or want – so I decided to make this his own personal set, for him to do with as he pleases. What could possibly go wrong?

    (Well, there’s opening a portal to hell and being damned for all eternity but, other than that, all good, non?)

    I wanted to do this properly, so I had Catorze sleep with the cards under his autumn-winter igloo for a few for a few days. Don’t worry, I made sure they were all even and flat so that la personne royale wouldn’t feel any bumps, à la Princess and the Pea. I would have had some explaining to do when the cleaner lifted up the igloo to clean underneath, so I made sure I hid the cards during her visit and put them back after she’d gone. That said, had she found them, tarot cards under a cat bed wouldn’t have been the weirdest thing she’s seen in this house.

    Naturellement the little sod can’t shuffle or cut the deck, so I did this for him and went for a straightforward three-card spread. Part of me was expecting everything to go all American Horror Story with a triple whammy of Death cards (even though there is only one Death card in each pack), but it didn’t go quite that way. Don’t get me wrong; it was still bad. Just bad in a different way.

    After sleeping on my lap all day, when it was time to do the reading he disappeared outside. When he came back and I was finally able to begin, this was what ensued:

    Nope.
    Still a nope.

    Furthermore, the three that I drew contained two consecutive cards of the same arcana (arcana are a bit like suits), demonstrating that even through shuffling, spreading the cards under Catorze’s igloo and then gathering them and shuffling again, I hadn’t been thorough enough. So I shuffled once more … and got two consecutive ones of the same arcana AGAIN, demonstrating that my third shuffle had been just as shit as the first two.

    At that point Catorze’s screaming and bouncing around were such that I gave up. But I haven’t given up forever. Meanwhile, here are my favourite cards from the Catorzian Arcana. Tarot-loving friends, what does my future hold?

    The Fool.
    The Magician.
    The Hermit.
    The Emperor.
    The Tower.
    Judgement.

  • La seule chose qui peut rendre la vie moderne mystérieuse ou merveilleuse

    It’s been two months since Louis Catorze’s last steroid shot. He’s only allowed a maximum of one per month, and there have been times when I’ve anxiously checked my calendar, desperate to take him for the next one, to find that it’s only been three weeks and we somehow have to hang on for a little longer. So to reach the two-month milestone, at a time of year which usually sees the return of his problems, is quite something.

    That said, I might book him in soon, to keep him nicely ticking over through December and to avoid the festive rush for the vet.

    Cat Daddy: “Is there a festive rush for the vet?”

    Well, not in the same way that there’s a rush for sliced white bread every December* but, knowing our luck, Catorze will hit us with some dire emergency five minutes after the vet closes for the holidays.

    *It’s true: in the few days leading up to Christmas, there’s no shortage of turkeys or puddings; however, sliced white bread disappears from the shelves of every supermarket in West London, and nobody knows why. I don’t believe for a second that everyone suddenly has a burning need to make bread sauce from scratch. So who’s buying it? And what are they doing with it?

    Catorze is wide-eyed, swishy-tailed, and his screaming is beyond belief. Even Puppy Mamma – who was a cat person until she betrayed the cause and defected to the other side – told me how curious and otherworldly he was, with his alien eyes and the body which remains kitten-like and petite despite his advancing years and lifelong drug use.

    I have often said that he is the Dorian Gray of cats, and that has never been more true than now.

    Nothing to declare except his creepiness.

  • L’âge ne compte pas sauf si on est un fromage

    Every time I look at Louis Catorze, I think, “Aww. Our little boy has a heart murmur.” And he looks back at me, most likely thinking, “Oh, it’s you. Why are you still here?”

    People have been asking after him and feeling quite sorry for him, but his symptoms so far have been screaming, demanding play and generally being a shite. During one especially energetic play session, he dug his claws into my foot and was utterly unrepentant even when I squealed in pain. But what completely floored me was catching the little sod lick my plate, from which I had just eaten tuna (10/10 for cat appeal) with soy sauce, chilli and lime (0/10 for cat appeal). And, later that same evening, he lunged for Cat Daddy’s plate of cheese.

    Catorze has always been implicitly trustworthy around human food, to the point where we could even leave him to guard the cheese board if we had to pop out of the room. We knew not only that he would leave the cheese well alone, but that he would very kindly warn us about any approaching bugs, by doing the bird-chatter sound. (Yes, he makes this sound at any flying creature, including bugs.)

    Now, it seems, we are going to have to watch him around food. Which is quite the opposite of what we expected to be doing for an older cat who has never shown any sign of giving the slightest shite about our food.

    All those years of laughing at my cat freak friends who have to eat their dinner standing up on a chair, whilst their cats circle below like hungry saltwater crocodiles, have well and truly blown up in my face.

    “Feed moi. Non, not with my food. YOUR food.”