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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.

  • Hurler, c’est la vie

    Oh. Mon. Dieu. Please help us.

    Louis Catorze just won’t stop screaming. It’s absolutely awful and we don’t know what to do.

    Taking a brief break before starting again.

    Yesterday I came home to find that someone had taken away his new Versailles glass put his old, ugly, calcified water tumbler back. I thought the cleaning lady had done it, but it was Cat Daddy, who thought, perhaps, that the screaming was a protest against the new glasses. I told him that I had seen Catorze drink from the glasses many times, so it couldn’t possibly be that. However, that doesn’t help us in our quest to find out what on earth it could be.

    Two days ago, when Cat Daddy was on the phone to a family member, Catorze circled him, screaming and screaming. Luckily said family member knows what he’s like (Catorze, I mean, not Cat Daddy), so she just did her best to ignore it. But that didn’t make it any less embarrassing.

    He has food. He has water. He has warmth, love and comfortable places to sleep. Nothing has changed in his surroundings which could cause him to be unsettled. The only thing we can imagine is that he just likes the sound of his own voice. I guess someone has to.

    Catorze and I watched “Inside the Mind of a Cat” on Netflix the other day, in the hope that it might provide some answers.

    It didn’t.

    Yuki Hattori, the Japanese cat guru, stated that “Cats who live with humans meow a lot.” Excusez-moi? So it’s … OUR FAULT?

    It doesn’t bode well, does it, if the one person who is supposed to be working to help us understand our enemy, has clearly been gaslit and/or nobbled* by them?

    *Americans: “to nobble” means to bribe, blackmail or otherwise influence in some sort of nefarious manner.

    They also state in the programme that 79% of cats look to their owners for “emotional advice”. So their shit behaviour is our fault, too?

    Here is Catorze, watching the programme intently (and being quiet, for once). I focused on him towards the end of the recording to show his bald, piggy ears, the cause of which is another Roi mystery that nobody understands:

    Oui, Sa Maj, that’s how normal cats are supposed to look and behave.

  • Le cristal royal (Partie 2)

    Merde, merde and thrice merde: Louis Catorze’s fancy drinking glasses aren’t working.

    For reasons that I cannot fathom – and, having observed him drinking, I am none the wiser – he spills water everywhere when using them. He never did this from his previous straight-up-and-down glass.

    Cat Daddy was convinced that a funnel shape and a shallow depth made for “choppier waves” (?) when the little sod stuck his snout in to drink. However, Cat-Disliking Friend – a science teacher – had the opposite view, i.e. that a funnel-shaped glass ought to spill LESS water than a straight one, as the volume at the top is greater than the volume at the base.

    “Just put less water in” was his advice. “Also, why the **** does your cat have a wine glass? Is he a count?”

    Well, it’s funny he should say that …

    So Catorze has managed to achieve the following:

    ⁃ Misused something that we bought for him

    ⁃ Defied the very laws of science

    ⁃ Been called a name starting with C and ending in T

    So nothing new to report at Le Château, then.

    Anyway, I have promised CDF a video of Catorze drinking, so that he can see how much of the snout is shoved into the glass and use the information to provide a theory on the water displacement.

    He can’t wait.

    Explain THIS, science!

  • Tu peux rester sous mon parapluie

    Jot down the first thing that comes to your mind.

    Louis Catorze loves the rain. Usually, when it starts raining, he races out to sit in it.

    However, he is highly displeased right now because, although he loves the rain, he doesn’t happen to like THIS rain, TODAY. And he would very much like us to switch it off, merci s’il vous plaît, and to replace it with the good kind of rain.

    None of us understand this.

    Here he is, whining like a brat. And there is a bonus demo of his weird kicky-out back leg thing. (None of us understand that, either.)

    Bad cat gone worse.

    This was just a few seconds. Think of us, having to listen to this all day.

  • Quand les mouettes suivent un chalutier

    I have just been screamed at whilst making, and eating, a tuna mayonnaise sandwich.

    I don’t know where Louis Catorze was when I started making it but, as soon as I opened the can of tuna, it flushed him out of his mystery hiding place place and the noise started. And it went on. And on. AND ON.

    If you have ever had a cat, known a cat or even glimpsed one from a distance, you will know that they like tuna. But this is Catorze, and Catorze is not interested in food for humans. I have opened cans of tuna at least 8,063 times since he was crowned Roi du Château, and he has either shown mild interest, only to refuse any scraps offered, or not shown any interest at all.

    I tried to fob him off with some Orijen, but he wasn’t having any of it, clearly knowing that the tantalising aroma swirling through the air was something else. He wanted tuna. But, after The Great Salmon Grab and the highly stressful two-day hunger strike that ensued, I had learned my lesson; this time, I wouldn’t be offering him any scraps.

    Finally, when I had finished, it dawned on him that he wasn’t going to get any tuna. So he settled on my lap, had a good wash and went to sleep. But it was a bitter wash, and a nap oozing with resentment.

    What is HAPPENING? And what kind of a state of affairs is it when I don’t even blink at the more sinister, occultist Catorzian capers, yet him wanting tuna makes me question life, the universe and everything?

    In his happy place with Cat Daddy.

  • Le cristal royal

    I have bought Louis Catorze two new water glasses for his birthday. I wanted a spare one for when the other was in the dishwasher, and I chose two different styles from the same range because I didn’t know which one Catorze would like better.

    The range is called Versailles, bien sûr.

    (You’d think all glasses would be created equal, right? But, over time, we have learned that Catorze will drink from a pint glass, a wine glass and a highball tumbler, but not a cocktail coupe and DEFINITELY not a bowl. He would rather shrivel up and die of thirst than drink from a substandard water vessel.)

    I avoided opening the box for ages because I knew that Cat Daddy would be furious, but eventually I couldn’t put it off for any longer.

    Needless to say, Cat Daddy hates them and doesn’t think we need them. It’s true, but we don’t, but then not much about Catorzian life is about “need”. He doesn’t “need” the most expensive food on the planet. He doesn’t “need” fancy Japanese raised, tilted bowls. He doesn’t “need” antique silver Louis XIV cutlery. But he has them. That’s just the way things are.

    Cat Daddy also says that the glasses are brash and ostentatious. But then that’s what la noblesse are all about; understated good taste is not their style.

    I don’t suppose having me lying there taking photographs was especially conducive to a peaceful drinking atmosphere, but the little sod was initially wary:

    “Quoi le merde is this?”

    He sniffed the glass, walked away, returned for another sniff and walked away again. Oh dear.

    Thankfully, he eventually relented. This was a huge relief to me as I couldn’t handle the inevitable grief from Cat Daddy had he not.

    Oh, and the volume of the Versailles wine glass is slightly less than that of his previous vessel (a Bodum storage jar, the kind used for tea or sugar or whatever). So I can tell Cat Daddy that we are doing our bit for the environment. Ahem.

    Incidentally, whilst I escaped the I Told You So Chorus, I didn’t manage to avoid the comments about giving the little sod his birthday present early. How is it possible to be against the idea of a cat receiving birthday presents, yet insistent that said cat should not receive said presents in advance of the day? Am I the only one who doesn’t understand that?

  • Le roi lion

    Taking a cat to the vet: always an adventure, but never the good kind.

    On the morning of our steroid shot appointment, Louis Catorze was nowhere to be found. Cat Daddy eventually found him in the guest bedroom, asleep on the autumn/winter duvet and, just as he tried to grab him, the little sod darted under the bed.

    Cat Daddy shut him in the bedroom whilst we finished our tea, so that at least we wouldn’t have to search for him when it was time to go.

    Then the screaming started.

    When we went back upstairs to put Catorze into his transportation pod, he decided that he no longer wanted to be released from the room and dived back under the bed.

    Eventually it was a two-man effort to flush him out, with one of us (Cat Daddy) scrabbling at one side of the bed to make him bolt, and the other (me) catching him on the other side. Catorze never scratches, but he did give me a hefty kicking with his back feet as I scooped him up and stuffed him into the pod.

    As usual, we walked across the park to the vet practice with Catorzian screams ringing out through the air, falling silent only when an alarmed brown Labrador in the park stopped to stare at him. And, because the translucent mesh side of the pod was facing that way – we always give him a scenic route, just like Marie Antoinette on her last ride to the guillotine – he was able to stare right back.

    The pod has eyes.

    The biggest surprise of the morning was that Catorze has gained weight, despite his Ibrahima Konaté-style fasting during the day and only eating after dark. We were all ready to have to deal with decisions about further testing, medication and dietary changes due to his weight loss, but it seems we don’t have to since he’s now a whopping 3.14kg.

    There has been some indecision as to whether or not Catorze has a heart murmur; first we were told that he did, then a different vet said that he didn’t, then another one said that maybe he did after all, etc. Apparently one of the danger signs is a cat doing forty breaths, or more, per minute. I have just conducted a little test on Catorze and he did twenty-three, so he’s not even close, nor does he have any of the other classic heart murmur signs such as breathlessness, low energy (!) and a distended belly.

    Don’t feel obliged to sit through this; it’s literally a minute and two seconds of my cat breathing. You will never get that time back.

    We came away from the appointment with our hearts full. Our wallets, on the other hand, were anything but.

    Cat Daddy, to Catorze later: “£120, Louis. That’s how much you cost us today.”

    Catorze: “Mwah!”

    (It was actually £130, but never mind.)

    As we approach Beltane and Le Roi’s birthday, it looks as if he will be in his finest form yet. This is wonderful and terrifying in equal measure.

    When you’re goth, but you still love pretty pink blossoms.

  • 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 …