louiscatorze.com

Je crie, donc je suis

recent posts

about

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

  • L’araignée ne connaît que le monde de sa toile

    If you could live anywhere in the world, where would it be?

    Anywhere but these green bits:

    Surely the Damger Zone should be red, not green?

    One of my blog followers, who lives in Oklahoma, told me that their cats would bring in tarantulas, dead and undead. They told me this a long time ago – some years, in fact – but it’s not the sort of thing that you easily forget.

    For whatever reason I decided, last week, to check which US states had native tarantulas, expecting it to be just Oklahoma, Florida and perhaps a couple of the desert ones. I had no idea it would be as many as this, including Colorado (where we have friends and family members who have invited us to visit – it’s now a firm NOPE to that) and Louisiana (where we’d hoped to go on holiday next year – it’s a firm NOPE to that, too).

    The only thing worse than visiting a tarantulary place would be living in one, with a cat who hunts. I could see Louis Catorze bringing in a tarantula, believing he could take it on, then realising that he’d quite literally bitten off more than he could chew and releasing the monster under my bed.

    Actual footage of what might happen. (I know you can’t have “actual footage” of a hypothetical scenario, but please allow me this one.)

    Do you live in the Danger Zone? Have you ever had to deal with any of the offending beasts (tarantulas, I mean, not bastard cats)? Part of me doesn’t want to know, yet the other part really, really does.

    An old photo of my efforts to encourage Catorze to eat spiders, using reverse psychology.

  • Ce n’est pas sorcier

    My last blog post received quite the rapturous reception from my followers. As a tribute to the vigilante cats, I asked Bing’s AI bot to create a picture of them, along with their comrade Hunter, Scourge of Rottweilers (centre). I hope that they are strutting around kitty heaven looking just like this:

    Yes, these were their actual fur colours.

    In other news, if you followed Le Blog through lockdown, you will know that Louis Catorze was an absolute menace during my online lessons. He had a fondness for my Year 11 class in particular and, as soon as the clock hit 3:10 on Thursday afternoon, he would appear from wherever he was and wreak absolute havoc.

    On Saturday I attended a Zoom talk about witchcraft and, naturellement, given his past form, I expected utter carnage. Luckily, on this occasion, it was one of those live streaming events in which the viewers remained invisible, so I didn’t really care what he did. We could have had a full-on heavy metal concert in the living room and neither the speaker nor the other viewers would have had the slightest idea.

    However, to my absolute astonishment, Catorze was quiet. He listened intently for a while, then dozed off, with his ears occasionally flicking. Either he recognised these as his people and wanted to hear what they had to say, or he couldn’t be bothered to make trouble as there was zero embarrassment in it for me. Où est le fun in that?

    Here he is, deeply engrossed in every single witchy word. Should I expect (more) trouble later?

    I bet I’ll find an eye of newt and a toe of frog on my bed tomorrow.

  • Je me suis battu contre les chats et les chats ont gagné

    Every so often, I read a cat story that utterly lights up my life. Last week I had one of those moments.

    I follow a brilliant blog written by a gentleman called Louis Carreras – no, not because his name is Louis, but because he’s a great writer and I always learn new words from his work. My favourite posts from his blog are always the cat ones, in particular the anecdotes about his most memorable miscreant cat, Clancy (aka The Grey Menace).

    Louis recently linked back to an absolute corker of a story from some years ago, and I loved it so much that I’ve been sharing it with anyone who’ll listen to me. If you only ever read one thing this week, PLEASE LET IT BE THIS.

    There are many things to love about this story, but the main ones for me are, in no particular order:

    1. The coffin factory. This sounds like the sort of place invented by the storyteller to protect the identity of the guilty, so to find out that this really was the setting for the story made me spit my tea all over my phone.

    2. The police greeting Mr Carreras in the same way that one would greet an expert professional arriving at a crime scene. “Ahhh. We’re glad you’re here …” (I can’t help hearing the words “Mr Bond” or “young Skywalker” at the end, when I replay that part in my head.)

    3. The blood. THE BLOOD.

    4. The fact that Clancy and his (French) friend traumatised the burglar to such an extent that he ended up snitching on himself.

    5. The fact that it was someone else’s cats and not mine. In fact, these two make Catorze look like a churchgoing Boy Scout.

    Clancy the Grey Menace, Hunter the Scourge of Rottweilers and Seigneur Jean Le Foot, I salute you for your magnificence. What absolutely brilliant cats!

    Louis Catorze would have given the burglar a big cuddle.

  • Il n’y a pas de plus beau poème que de vivre pleinement

    What is good about having a pet?

    It might not be the best time for me to answer this prompt, since we have just returned home from taking Louis Catorze for his booster vaccination. If you have ever had to take an animal to a vet, you will know just how dire it can be: a fight to the death to shove a screaming hell-beast into a transportation vessel, more gladiatorial combat during the appointment itself, receiving news ranging from a bit shit to utterly heartbreaking, and having to hand over a ruinous sum of money at the end. It’s pretty grim.

    Fortunately for us, our news today was only at the “a bit shit” end of the spectrum. After cooing and squeeing at how small Catorze is, and talking to him in her cat lady voice, the vet (who hadn’t met him before) checked his heart and told us that he had a heart murmur. “A very obvious one”, apparently.

    The symptoms of a heart murmur could be any of the following*:

    • Chronic weight loss or muscle wasting 

    • Decreased appetite 

    • Hiding behaviour

    • Weakness 

    • Coughing or wheezing 

    • Exercise intolerance: panting with mild exertion 

    • Increased respiratory rate at rest 

    • Increased effort to breathe, open mouth breathing, abdominal push to exhale, dyssynchronous breathing (I had to Google “dyssynchronous” because that spelling didn’t, and still doesn’t, look right), or outstretched neck

    • Fluid from mouth or nostrils 

    • Change in the colour of the gums to blue, grey or white

    • Lethargy 

    • Collapse 

    • Paralysis of the hind limbs 

    • Painful vocalisation 

    Catorze has never shown any of these. (Well, his vocalisation is often painful for those who are forced to listen to it, but I don’t suppose that’s what they mean here.)

    The appointment cost us £72, which comes hot on the heels of the £63.92 that we paid a few days ago for his 8-weekly subscription of the most expensive cat food on the planet. At the end of the month, his £80 steroid shot is due. And, if we want to find out exactly how bad the heart murmur is, we have the option of a £500 scan.

    People have been asking us how Catorze is, and our answer is the same as ever: full of beans and loving life. He doesn’t know that he has a heart murmur and, even if he did, he wouldn’t give even the faintest hint of a shite.

    “Not very well” yet well enough to stare at me with utter contempt.

    *I am not a medical practitioner. If you think your cat might have a heart murmur, or even if you’re not sure and think they may just be milking it for attention, don’t be guided by what I’ve said here. Please consult an actual vet.

  • Les yeux sans visage

    Hallowe’en may be over, but Louis Catorze is still creeping the hell out of us.

    When you’re a black cat, you are able to blend seamlessly into darkness. We know this; we have kicked Catorze about 9,742 times in the dark because we didn’t realise he was there. You would be forgiven, therefore, for thinking we might be unaffected by Catorze creepy-staring at us in the dark. After all, what we can’t see shouldn’t bother us, right?

    Erm, not quite.

    It’s quite strange that he chooses to do this when he’s less visible., although perhaps he doesn’t know that he’s less visible, since he has Creepy Kitty Night Vision? Anyway, he ought to be easy – or at least EASIER – to ignore in the dark, but this is the sight that blighted our television viewing the other night:

    Dead, soulless eyes.

    Catorze’s favourite lap (not mine) was free, his bowl was full, his water was topped up, he’d been out at The Front and we were already in his favourite room. We still don’t know what he wanted, and I can’t say we are looking forward to finding out.

  • Devant un écran

    How do you manage screen time for yourself?

    Quite simply, I can’t and I don’t. And, of every one of the 836 hours per day that I spend on my phone, 736 are spent on WordPress documenting Louis Catorze’s stupid shit. (The other 100 are spent messaging people to complain about his stupid shit, and editing photos of him to try to make him look even passably presentable.)

    When I first started Le Blog back in 2014, Catorze wasn’t in the best of health so my posts tended to be about medical issues rather than about his misdeeds. And, of course, being unwell meant that he didn’t have the energy or the inclination to be especially naughty. In fact, there were weeks when I would only post once. ONCE.

    Now that he’s much better, of course, it’s non-stop.

    We are rolling steadily towards winter, a time when most normal cats – especially ones of, erm, advanced years – start to calm down. However, Catorze is still up to mischief, still taking awful photos, and I still need my daily therapy of messaging friends to vent, which means that my screen time doesn’t look set to change anytime soon. In fact, if anything, it will get worse.

    Here he is, utterly unrepentant, having just upended the bin bag (pictured behind him) and covered himself in bin juice, AGAIN:

    Bastard cat.

  • El alebrije

    I’m a little late to this particular party as I’ve only just found this out, but it’s too good not to post. Just when we thought cats were the biggest sods on the planet, a dog makes us question ourselves by invading the pitch during a League Two football match in Mexico and stealing the ball. STEALING THE BALL.

    (Click on the link above and SCROLL DOWN for the video. Don’t click on the first video you see as it’s some weird thing that you have to pay for.)

    Louis Catorze is vert de jalousie for not thinking of this himself.

    Cue a hilarious, comedic chase around the pitch accompanied by the Benny Hill theme music* (well, ok, there wasn’t really any music; I just played the song to myself in my head because it seemed appropriate to do so). Alebrijes Oaxaca, the home team and whose name actually refers to animal spirit guides, were in no huge rush to retrieve the ball; they were 4-0 up at the time and were happy to have the minutes run down without having to make any effort to waste time.

    *Younger followers: ask your grandparents. Non-Brits: ask your British friends of a certain age.

    The dog, Max, has since become the club’s mascot (despite the cheeky sod actually having a home) and has even been seen in training. The following photos are from the club’s official Instagram page:

    Excellent possession.
    With his new teammates.
    No fouling on the pitch, please.

    As for Dorados, the visiting team, if they weren’t cat people before, they probably are now. And I know a cat who would be the perfect mascot. Global fame, causing absolute chaos and being chased around by lots of men? Merci, s’il vous plaît, to all of the above.

    Wondering if the transfer window is open.

  • He keeps his jambon de Bayonne in his pretty cabinet

    What’s something you believe everyone should know?

    Remember when Louis Catorze hated the guitar? Yeah, well, he still does. In fact, there are times when he actually seems scared of it, and he scarpers as soon as he sees Cat Daddy reaching for it. Yes, that’s right: the little sod will happily take on larger animals and trick-or-treating youths in Scream masks, but Cat Daddy’s rendition of That’s Entertainment is Catorzian kryptonite.

    The whole situation has been made considerably worse by the fact that Cat Daddy has been practising at length, every single day. Luckily for Catorze, his autumn-winter igloo has been deployed, and he’s been seeking refuge within its soft, pillowy depths:

    He doesn’t want to break free. He’s quite happy where he is.

    Cat Daddy has also been using his hours of daily practice to compose a song for Catorze. This was really to cheer me up because I’ve been feeling a bit down about being ill, but I like to pretend that Catorze is such an inspirational creative muse that his papa just couldn’t help immortalising this in music.

    THE WORLD NEEDS TO HEAR THIS SONG. However, Cat Daddy won’t let me record it for your listening pleasure.

    In fact, he doesn’t even trust me to have my phone in my hand when he performs, in case I secretly record it and post it online without his permission (which, in fairness, is exactly the kind of thing I would do).

    So how am I going to share this masterpiece with the world? All I can give you, for now, are the lyrics, pictured below. Freddie Mercury’s handwritten lyrics to Bohemian Rhapsody sold for nearly £1.4 million, so I’m hanging onto this sheet of paper, because you just never know.

    Is Cat Daddy yet to have his finest hour?

  • Mamma, they’re sure hard to handle

    These few days post-Hallowe’en have been pretty awful. I have been ill with a monstrous cold (not Covid but easily as bad), and Le Château seems bare and bereft with the decorations all put away for another year.

    Luckily there are cats to cheer us up. Not my cat, obviously. Mine is highly affronted that I’m ill and runs out of the room when I sneeze, muttering obscenities under his breath as he goes. I meant other cats who are much nicer than mine.

    If you are someone who has one cat after another after another*, you may share my belief that the new one is somehow brought into your life by its predecessor. I am certain that our first Chat Noir, Luther, was the one who sent Louis Catorze to us, knowing that we would be the only people stupid enough to put up with his shit.

    *This probably describes most of us, since cats are just like alcohol or drugs: they bleed us dry financially and leave us a mere shell of our former selves, yet we can’t help ourselves and we have to keep feeding our addiction.

    Obviously, at the beginning of this chain of cats, there has to be a Starter Cat to get the process going. But sometimes, if the universe believes that the humans can handle it, there is more than one Starter Cat. A Starter Cat TEAM, if you will.

    Meet siblings Otis (upright) and Roux (lying down), who have come to live with my sister and her family:

    One is named after a soul music icon. And the other is named after, erm, the base for béchamel sauce.

    Curiously, it was my sister’s cat-disliking husband who suggested adopting them, after learning that they were available due to a human in the former household developing severe allergies. Not much makes me laugh more than a former cat-disliker becoming a Cat Daddy … except for the fact that he now has to share a birthday with them. Oh yes: the cats were born on his birthday. And, when the time comes, I fully intend to send one card with all three names in it.

    Otis and Roux have just been released from solitary confinement and are being introduced to the general population. And the house happens to be full of their Cat Daddy’s grandfather’s fragile handmade sculptures …

    It’s going to be carnage, isn’t it?

    Sitting on the sill of the window, biding his time.

  • Un chat domestiqué?

    Hallowe’en came and went, and Louis Catorze delivered us the biggest scare imaginable: he behaved. I know. Take all the time you need to absorb that information.

    Our first trick-or-treaters came knocking not long after 5pm. Many of them commented on our “Beware of the black cat” pumpkin, at which point Cat Daddy would approach the doorway and unveil Catorze, holding him aloft. The kids were absolutely delighted to learn that there was a real black cat, all chorusing “Awww!” whilst their parents took photos. And Catorze just hung there in mid-air, letting it all happen.

    Not once did he show any interest in trying to escape out at The Front. His only act of naughtiness was to come in from The Back, soaking wet and muddy, and tread gross paw prints all over Cat Daddy’s white shirt. Other than that he was impeccably behaved.

    Could it be that his years have finally caught up with him, and that he simply doesn’t have the energy to be naughty anymore? Or is it a sign of the End of Days?

    Little sod.

  • L’âme d’une image

    The wait is over and the big night is here. No, not Botanical Week on the Great British Bake-Off (although I am curious, since nobody understands what it means). I mean Hallowe’en, of course.

    We warned them. We have done our civic duty.

    We are a little nervous as we don’t know how we will contain Louis Catorze, given that we will be opening the portal to The Front multiple times tonight. But, just like everyone before us who has ever had to deal with vampires, we have until sundown to come up with a solution.

    The good news is that we actually managed to achieve a few passable contenders for the 2023 Official Hallowe’en Portrait. However, none of them quite match with my creative vision. I wanted a regal, velvety panther with a glint in his eye that said, “I am the elder statesman of vampire Chats Noirs”, rather like this:

    What he sees in the mirror. (Picture from Bing AI bot.)

    Instead, I ended up with this fetching collection:

    What we see every day.
    What we see on a full moon.

    I know. We don’t know what to say, either.

    They did improve somewhat. But then the bar was pretty low.

    Prowling panther.
    Glossy panther.

    But, given the choice between a prize-winning Official Hallowe’en Portrait and a happy, healthy, lively Catorze, we would always pick the latter. We never thought he would be in such good form in October (when his skin problems usually resurface) and at the ripe old age of thirteen and, yet, here we are. He’s lively, noisy and alert, he’s chubbing up, and his fur is the softest it’s ever been. Either we are tremendously fortunate, or the Dark Lord is regenerating and will be at maximum strength in time for the apocalypse.

    Joyeuse Hallowe’en à vous tous, and merci to the cats below for their Hallowe’en contributions:

    The adorable Chutney, whose Chat Noir buddy poses better than Catorze.
    Chutney again, in his pumpkin costume.
    Cocoa the babysit cat and his sister, Chanel.
    Chanel again, showing the pumpkin who’s boss.
    Good boy, Neville.
    Ollivander does the right thing, but still looks aghast at the indignity of it all.
    Jasper takes a brief break from ouija boards.
    Dobby, erm …?
    Pipistrello aka Pipi the Bat Cat.
    Pipi again, powering up to drain the hapless hand of blood.

  • Le paradis canin

    What is your favourite form of physical exercise?

    I love walking. However, TW8 is a very doggy neighbourhood, and dog people love walking, too.

    It’s not the dogs that are the problem but, rather, what I might step into whilst walking. I remain traumatised by that time I saw Cat Daddy step on one dog turd with one foot, then put his other foot straight into another. Had that happened to me, I would have had to amputate both feet, no question. So, when I walk, I keep my eyes firmly down. And, if anyone is walking with me, I tell them not to speak to me and to concentrate on keeping their eyes down, too.

    Walking through through the park opposite Le Château, I often notice that all the dogs are the same type. This happens a startling number of times. Last month there was some sort of detention or boot camp, led by an instructor, and all the dogs were sausage dogs. Are those sessions breed-specific? Or were sausage dogs going through a rebellious phase at that time, and their humans happened to decide simultaneously that they weren’t going to put up with their stupid shit any longer?

    The following week, the dogs were bulldog types, somewhere in between those small French ones with the sad faces and the massive, scary ones which have just been banned. When I walked past with Louis Catorze in his transportation pod, on my way to see the vet, all the dogs looked my way and started barking at once. (This also happens a startling number of times.)

    Yesterday, however, I knew that I would be met by every single dog breed in creation, because Puppy Mamma took me to a dogs’ Hallowe’en fancy dress parade in the park. Now, usually, if I knew that hundreds of dogs were going to be in one place, I would make every effort to be in a different place. However, because of the dress code, just this once, I decided to risk a walk through the valley of the shadow of death.

    The rain affected the turnout quite drastically, which probably worked in my favour, since more dogs means more shit. But I loved the Basset hound dressed as Georgie from IT with a yellow mac and red balloon (which he lost), and the pug in the silver astronaut suit. And I was able to capture Nala the dog and Gizzy the [insert name of species] in their seasonal finery:

    Bats out of hell.

    Despite being scarred by hearing Puppy Mamma utter the words, “Is that Nala’s shit down there? Oh wait … yes, it is, it’s warm”, I survived. And I learned that trying to persuade dogs to pose for a photo is as infuriating as trying to persuade cats:

    Oh dear.

    Is it too much to dream of cat-walking becoming a thing? Catorze is ready and is already dressed for the Hallowe’en cat parade.

    Velvet mini-panther.

  • Voyage au bout de la nuit

    Cat Daddy and I were out walking one day when he said, “Look! There’s a cat! A ginger one!”

    Me: “Where?”

    Him, pointing: “It just went into that hedge.”

    I looked, but was just too late. I peered at the other side of the hedge to see if the cat would come out but, a couple of seconds later, a black cat exited, shook himself down, then crossed the road.

    Me: “That’s not a ginger cat.”

    Cat Daddy: “Weird. A ginger cat went into that hedge, but a black one has come out!”

    Oh. Mon. Dieu. Either we have found the feline equivalent of Mr Benn’s costume shop* or – and I think this is far more likely – we have stumbled upon one of the many vortexes (vortices? vorticii?) which transport the little sods between worlds.

    *Younger followers: ask your grandparents.

    Sorry, wrong dimension.

    What secrets are held by these hedges? Do the anodyne evergreen leaves conceal some sort of fancy control room, all shiny panels and flashing lights, like Doctor Who’s TARDIS? Or is the interior more like an empty void through which the cats fall before landing in their destination, rather like the weird dimension to which Homer Simpson travelled in the Homer³ Hallowe’en episode? In fact, is that the reason why falling cats are said to always land on their feet? If they’re in the habit of falling through time and space, they will have had ample practice in perfecting their landing technique, non?

    So many questions.

    I have asked Louis Catorze if he can explain it all. He says he can, but he doesn’t want to.

    “Non.”

  • Tout le monde a besoin de bons voisins

    What makes a good neighbour?

    Cat Daddy and I have always been extremely lucky with our neighbours. Over the years we’ve had one neighbour* who was quite unpleasant, and another** who was just downright odd, but everyone else has been delightful.

    *I saw her let her dog go to piss on our front wall and, right after I objected, we had a surly typed note through our door telling us “You don’t own the street; in fact, you don’t even own that house”. A few days later, as if by magic, a dog turd appeared on our front path. I wanted to pick up the turd and post it through her letterbox but Cat Daddy vetoed my plan, muttering something about “no proof that it was her” or some such nonsense.

    **He once knocked on our door and asked if we had any bananas. No explanation or context e.g. “I’m in the middle of a recipe and I’ve just realised I don’t have any”, “I’m about to slip into a diabetic coma and I need sugar quickly”, that kind of thing. We didn’t have any bananas. He had never knocked on our door before then, nor did he do so after that.

    When we lived in W13 we had a cat-hating elderly neighbour who used to knock on her window shouting “Shoo!” whenever Louis Catorze was in her garden. She eventually became friendly with Cat Daddy when he started doing handyman things around her house, although that friendliness was put to the test when she came round to complain about someone or something shitting on her lavender; naturellement Catorze entered stage left at exactly the wrong moment and did exactly the wrong things.

    Here in TW8, every single neighbour, without exception, is wonderful. That Neighbour, although his nickname may not indicate as such, is lovely. In fact, many followers of Le Blog assume that he is so called because we don’t get along with him, but it’s really because he is the one who always brings Catorze back when he escapes out at The Front and wreaks havoc. When I related the latest drama to a friend and asked them to guess who escorted the escaped inmate back to his cell, the friend would always say, “Not that neighbour again?” And so the nickname was born.

    As for what makes a good neighbour, these are our criteria:

    1. Liking cats. Or, at the very least, not hating them.

    2. Being kind enough to ignore any cat-fight sounds and, if asked, claiming not to have heard them.

    3. Pretending to believe my lies when I deny all knowledge.

    I don’t feel that we ask for much. But then anyone who lives near us has to put up with Catorze, so I don’t suppose we’re best placed to be fussy.

    “It must have been some other small, black French cat with vampire fangs and a crocodile tail.”