I don’t know if “admiration” is the right word. In fact, I even know what the right word ought to be. Is there a single word for “Gotta hand it to them for trying that stupid shit and getting away with it”?
I’m talking about cats, of course. Yes, all of them. Including yours.
Although their behaviour disgusts me at times, I can’t help but give them some sort of credit for being complete bastards, yet having the whole world coo at them and think that they’re cute.
Louis Catorze is the KING of all this. And he knows it.
Bastard cats. If it’s not yours being a massive shite, it’s someone else’s. There’s absolutely no respite from it.
Blue the Smoke Bengal went missing the other day. He went out in the morning and then didn’t come home, which is unusual for him. His mamma was, understandably, very concerned, especially as calling, shaking his food, and having us and Family Next Door search our sheds all failed to yield any results.
I even asked Louis Catorze to go out and tell his friend to hurry home. Naturellement he didn’t understand me, presumably because I said it in English and not French. And, even if he had understood, he’d have done nothing about it. In fact, he’d probably have gone to Blue and said, “Bien joué, mon pote! Quelle blague!”
Eventually I posted a message, on behalf of Blue’s mamma, on our street’s WhatsApp group, asking neighbours to look out for him (although I refrained from saying, “If you have cats, please ask them to pass the message along”). Blue then reappeared immediately, covered in crud and so filthy that his mamma had to scrub him down with a damp towel. Nobody knows where he went, nor will we ever find out.
Time elapsed between me posting on the group to announce him missing, and me having to post again to say he was home: three minutes. THREE MINUTES.
And about the same amount of time elapsed between Blue returning and his mamma having to teach an online class, so there was no time for her to decompress beforehand.
I know of others who have also had their missing cats return within minutes of posting the online SOS, and I swear the little sods do it on purpose to make us look neurotic and to have everyone think we’re too lazy to search properly.
In this case it wasn’t even my cat.
I guess it’s no bad thing that we have an almost-guaranteed method of getting them back when they disappear. It’s just a shame that we have to look like utter fools in the process.
*Yes, this incident actually did take place on a Monday.
What positive events have taken place in your life over the past year?
To be honest, 2025 has been a bit of a shit circus for me and Cat Daddy, and we can’t wait to kick its sorry arse out of the door and welcome in 2026.
Although my surgeries were a year ago, the consequences of taking the triple-whammy of antibiotics afterwards have been far-reaching; I still don’t feel normal, nor do I think I ever will be.
(At the time, we just take antibiotics because we’re told to do so, and because we’re scared that we will catch sepsis and die if we refuse. Perhaps if they told us the truth, i.e. “These are just a precautionary measure, but they will mess you up for months and months to come”, we would be a little more cautious.)
Cat Daddy’s health is also taking a dramatic downturn, with debilitating back and knee pain. He’s been suffering ever since mid-October and doesn’t seem to be improving much.
Louis Catorze, however, at the ripe old age of fifteen and a half (about seventy-eight in cat years) couldn’t be better. That is the most important thing. In fact, it’s all you need to know.
Every morning, I prepare my old-lady breakfast of stewed apple and ricotta and bring it into the living room. Before eating it, I wrap myself in a blanket and tuck the edges right underneath my body, a bit like when you wrap a beef wellington tightly in pastry. Once I’m sealed in, I’m there for the next half hour.
Catorze often comes to sit with me, but I have to be very careful in case he lunges for my breakfast. One morning he was especially maniacal and excitable, so it was quite the feat to do the wellingtoning with one hand and fend him off with the other. I was quite proud of myself for managing to achieve both but, in the midst of it all, I forgot to secure the spoon.
BASTARD CAT LICKED THE SPOON.
I was the left in a quandary: do I use a cat-spitty spoon, or do I un-wellington myself and dislodge Catorze to go and fetch another one?
In the end I did neither. I ate the apple and ricotta with my fingers, like a savage. And I had to sort of drink the last bits. Not my proudest moment but the Law of the Wellington decrees that, once wellingtoned, one does not move unless the house is on fire. Plus I was TUC, compounding the issue and making any kind of movement even more impossible.
We all know that the little bastards rule our lives, but to drive us to eat our almost-liquid breakfast with our fingers is quite something. Please, someone, send help now.
Cat Daddy is away in New York at the moment, so it’s just me and Louis Catorze at Le Château. And the bullshittery started on the very first day of Cat Daddy’s absence, with Catorze thumping around late at night, sounding just like an adult human, then either being invisible or sitting eerily still when I went to investigate.
Last night I also heard cat fight sounds coming from outside. No, I didn’t go out and look to see if it was him. Yes, I already knew.
Actually Catorze isn’t fat, but he’s certainly plushier than he was,thanks to the winter coat that he developed in, erm, August.Catorze’s chonkier American relative.
Rather more creepily, Catorze’s voice has changed. It’s just different. I can’t explain how, but it is:
Sorry … WHAT?
Is this even Catorze, or has Satan swapped him for some malevolent changeling? And, more importantly, should I try to find out what’s happened to the real Catorze, or just keep the changeling, who will, most likely, be less of a pain in the arse?
I haven’t even bothered to tell Cat Daddy about most of this, because there’s no point. Not only would he disbelieve me but, by the time he came back, Satan would have had enough of Catorze and swapped back. So at least I’m only stuck with this – whatever “this” may be – for a few more days.
Cat Daddy took Louis Catorze for his booster jabs not long ago. The trip there was the usual shit circus, with constant screaming on the journey there and in the waiting room.
The vet was a new one who hadn’t seen Catorze before. When she attempted the injection with Catorze on the table, it didn’t work because the little sod fought and kicked with the strength of ten angry bears. Because he’s small and sickly, people always assume he’s physically weak. But he always surprises them – especially when they’re trying to get him to do something he doesn’t want to do.
So they had to attempt it again, this time with Cat Daddy holding him, and luckily it was fine the second time.
On the plus side, the vet did say that Catorze looked good for fifteen and a half (true), and that he was cute (whatever). And Cat Daddy created a new song for him, to the tune of Sloop John B like last time, as follows:
“Louis went for a jab He felt quite a stab But now he’s ok ‘cos he’s on his way home He’s on his way home He’s on his way home Louis Catorze, he’s on his way home.”
After arriving home Catorze was absolutely manic, racing around in circles from the kitchen through the dining room and into the hallway, all the while howling like a rabid wolf. Cat Daddy was convinced that Catorze was trying to tell us something. I searched our absolute tip of a dining room as best I could and couldn’t see anything, although no doubt I’ll pick up some random object tomorrow and find an oozing, maggoty rat underneath.
Although he wore himself out and ended up snoozing happily on my lap, we have never previously seen this kind of deranged behaviour in him straight after a vet visit.
What happened? Will this be yet another Roi Mystery, never to be solved?
What technology would you be better off without, and why?
Coincidentally, a week or so before WordPress issued this prompt, my students and I were having a very similar discussion in class. The brief was to name an invention that they would erase from history, although there was a catch: they would also have to live without the benefits of anything influenced by this invention.
Kid 1 suggested erasing the wheel, “just to see what happened”. After realising the variety of exotic food that this would exclude, and the fact that we would have to live on “boring British food, like strawberries”, we decided that this wasn’t worth the risk.
Kid 2 suggested the atomic bomb, because “anything that killed that many people for no reason couldn’t be good”. Then Kid 3 pointed out that electricity was indirectly invented as a result of this. Since he’s a highly intelligent Einstein-in-waiting, I didn’t even bother to Google to see if this was correct and just took his word for it.
Kid 4 wanted to erase social media, as a statement about online bullying. Most of the class appeared to be in agreement with this until Kid 1 piped up, “But, without social media, there wouldn’t be any cat videos!”
A chilling silence befell the group.
“But we could still watch them on YouTube?”
“No, YouTube is still social media because people comment and stuff.”
“So how would we share cat videos?”
“We’d have to record them on one of those old video cameras, and then pass the big tape thing around.”
Suddenly, eking out a miserable existence eating boring British berries, in the dark, didn’t seem quite so bad. Foregoing cat videos, on the other hand, would be a step too far.
And here is one of my favourite videos of Louis Catorze, greeting me in the street when I arrived home from work. I always share this with people when they don’t believe me when I describe how loud he is:
No, nothing is wrong. This is just his normal voice.
I bet you’re grateful for social media now, aren’t you?
Do you or your family make any special dishes for the holidays?
*WARNING: DO NOT ALLOW YOUR PETS TO SEE THIS POST.*
When Louis Catorze was diagnosed with hyperthyroidism I was determined to be strict with his diet, allowing zero human food, in order to aid his recovery. However, now that he is chubbing up and doing much better, I have started to feel more relaxed about letting him have the odd treat in tiny amounts.
We don’t prepare celebratory meals for him for special occasions; at most, we give him a few slivers of jambon de Bayonne and of organic aged Comté from the deli. Most of my friends think this is enormously extravagant, and they ask why we don’t just give him supermarket meat and cheese. Erm, because he refuses it. That’s why.
Watching this lady (the one in the video, I mean, not my friend Monique) prepare her cat’s breakfast has made me feel far less guilty about the treats we give to Catorze, yet also desperately negligent and inadequate. Trust me, these two seemingly-disparate emotions really can exist side by side.
I have bought caviar once in my entire life, in about 2001. Oscar has it every day. (Photo from the YouTube video.)
(And, no, we didn’t understand “chargers”, either. Is that American for “plates”? US followers, help us out, please.)
Bear in mind, too, that this video wasn’t even filmed during the festive period; this was just a regular, everyday breakfast. We would LOVE to be a fly on the wall when Oscar eats his Christmas dinner.
Cheer up, Oscar. You’re eating better than most humans in the world. (Photo from the YouTube video.)
In fact, we would love to be Oscar, full stop.
Catorze expectantly awaits his caviar. He might be waiting a long time.
We have had a few freezing cold days in London. There was even a brief flurry of snow on Thursday but this didn’t settle, due to the ground being too wet, much to my students’ disappointment.
Just as the sun is retreating, the cold weather has drawn the mighty Sun King inwards, and the little sod has been spending most of his time on our laps. Yes, this includes the second favourite lap in the household (mine). And I will gladly accept whatever meagre crumbs of affection that he casts my way, even if he is only doing it to stay warm.
Here he is, on my lap, looking uncharacteristically elegant – well, apart from the old man white hairs and the specks of dust:
Smart boy.
Perhaps there is hope, after all, that he could produce a halfway-decent Official Winter Solstice Portrait (Cat Daddy: “It could be the last one he ever does”) in the next few weeks?
Every now and again, I read something which reminds me that, actually, Louis Catorze isn’t the worst cat in the world. You cannot imagine the relief to find out that your cat is only moderately horrendous, as opposed to the absolute worst.
A friend of mine told me about these Japanese street signs, which are exactly what they appear to be: they’re to warn hapless passers-by that marauding cats could attack at any minute.
Warning: marauding cat! (Photo from fakti.bg.)Warning: synchronised team of marauding ninja cats! (Photo from fakti.bg.)
Now, Catorze can be a marauder from time to time but, in reality, the chances of being accosted in the street by him are fairly slim. Even if you happened to be walking past Le Château at the exact moment of his gadding about at The Front, it’s very rare for Catorze to follow anyone down the street (well, ok, apart from that one time). Plus the odds would be even further against you if you happened to be female.
In Japan, however, the fact that there are so many of these warning signs, and in more than one area, suggests that this is a widespread issue, not just a one-off mishap. This is clearly something that happens a lot, with several cats.
Who are these predatory felines? What do they want? And is anyone tempted to send their bitter enemies over there, with pockets full of catnip, to find out?
Louis Catorze’s cat-cousins Rodan and Mothra have just been to the vet. It wasn’t the most fun visit, especially for my poor Nephew 1 who was pissed on by Rodan. (Mental note: NEVER travel to the vet with the transportation pod on your knees, unless said pod is made of the same sturdy, impermeable material that they use to make the hulls of ocean liners.)
Quote from Nephew 1: “I THOUGHT something was warm.”
Eurgh.
Look at Rodan’s “Je ne regrette rien” face.
Anyway, Rodan is 4.5kg and Mothra, 3.07kg. Catorze’s other cat-cousins, Otis and Roux, are between 3.5kg and 4kg. And his cat-auntie Zelva is, according to my mum, “just under 4kg”, although her floppy belly gives the illusion of more. (Zelva’s belly, I mean, not my mum’s.)
Chonks (compared to Catorze, anyway).
This makes Catorze, at 3kg exactly, the smallest cat in the family. I imagine every single one of you saw this coming.
Luckily his small stature doesn’t hold him back; what he lacks in physical oomph, he more than compensates in attitude and general bullshittery. I don’t suppose this comes as much of a surprise, either.
Fight, Flight or Freeze. That’s what they say living creatures are programmed to do, isn’t it, when faced with danger? Sadly I don’t think Louis Catorze received the memo; the silly sod wouldn’t know danger if it kicked him up the arse.
I have witnessed his Fight, Flight and Freeze in action at various points in his life, but Fight is most certainly the default Catorzian setting. When he meets dogs, larger cats (mind you, they’re all larger than him) and foxes, he’ll gladly take them on.
Flight is reserved for situations such as, erm, a teaspoon dropping onto the floor, or Cat Daddy reaching for the dreaded guitar. Yes, I know it would make far more sense for Catorze to choose Flight in the presence of potential predators, instead of cutlery and musical instruments. But that’s Catorze for you.
Freeze is something that we see very rarely in a cat as rambunctious as him; he’s never still, unless he’s asleep. However, Freeze makes the odd appearance when we shout “No!” at something we don’t want him to do, such as sticking his face in a cup of tea or digging up some plant that we want left alone. He halts for a split second, ears flicking back, proving that he’s not as stupid as he looks because he does actually understand commands. Unfortunately he just isn’t interested in following them.
So Freeze – actually more of a momentary pause than a proper Freeze – is often followed by him reattempting the undesirable action, unless we intervene.
To summarise, the Catorzian way is as follows: Fight is for meeting something likely/able to kill you, Flight when it’s something utterly benign, and Freeze when you want humans to think you might actually give a shit (when, in fact, you don’t).
Therefore, no, we absolutely do not trust Catorze’s instincts. But, since he’s still managing to pitter-patter about the planet at the age of fifteen and a half, clearly he’s doing something right.
What’s the first impression you want to give people?
Well, that rather depends on what cats want at the time. It might be food, or love. Or they might just want to gaslight their humans for fun.
On our local neighbourhood Facebook page, people often post to announce that a starving stray cat has just turned up at their house. This is a trick that piss-taking cats have been playing since time began but, for whatever reason, we stupid humans are only just starting to get wise to it. For every ten stray cat posts, there are nine replies saying, “Oh, that’s Alfie from Whatever Road. Don’t believe his lies.” But it doesn’t stop us from posting to ask anyway.
Boots – he of the Chelsea/Crystal Palace collars – is another massive con artist. He picks on his stepbrother, fights with any animal that has a pulse, costs his mamma heaps of money and is generally a bit of a bastard. Yet, when he goes to the vet, he’s charming and impeccably-behaved in front of staff and affable towards other animals, all in an effort to make his mamma look like a delusional fantasist. In fact, he’s the only cat I know who loves going to the vet, because they roll out the red carpet for him and lavish him with praise every time.
“He’s so lovely and well-behaved!” Whatever.
Louis Catorze is just as bad. As well as having a desperate, plaintive meow, Catorze has an additional weapon in his arsenal of deceit: looking like shite. When he screams at people, not only does he want attention but he wants, where possible, for others to look at him and either think he’s a stray or think we’re shit parents who haven’t been looking after him. It’s gaslighting of the highest order. So our biggest fear isn’t that Catorze might be kidnapped or run over, but that some well-intentioned citizen might scoop him up and deliver him to a rescue, thinking they’d done a good deed.
Here he is, doing his fake “I’m being kept prisoner!” voice. He isn’t. He just wanted to go out at The Front:
All lies.
In short, that first impression could be anything from “a bit neglected” to “profoundly suffering”. Whatever they may convey, cats are master manipulators so the truth is likely to be the opposite.
Despite not really minding fireworks all these years – in fact, he once moved up the stairs to get a better view through the hallway window – Louis Catorze took exception to the ones that he heard on 5th November.
These days, our social media feeds fill up with firework precautionary advice from as early as the start of October, and I have always been grateful for the fact that we have never had to bother. In fact, we don’t even keep Catorze indoors when there are fireworks, because being imprisoned distresses him far more than the noise. (And, even if we did keep him in, he would only use his Cloak of Invisibility to sneak out.)
Here is the Cloak, in action. You SEE how powerless we are against it?
On 5th November, however, one particularly loud set of blasts at The Back sent him scuttling off to the living room, thoroughly unimpressed. Not long after that, the same happened at The Front so he scarpered to The Back again. Luckily he didn’t spend the whole evening cowering in fear; in fact, he had an otherwise perfectly pleasant evening. But he’s never been scared before. And, on that day, for a short while, he was.
I hope this isn’t something that will deteriorate with age. Assuming the little sod makes it to the next Diwali / Hallowe’en /Bonfire Night / whatever other tenuous occasion people might choose to light fireworks randomly in the street, I don’t want him to be afraid.
So, next year, just in case, I will consult our dear friend Spotify for some banging classical tunes and stock up on Feliway. May my poor old boy never feel fearful again, not even for a second.
Maybe the Diwali fireworks were more bearable because he had company?
louiscatorze.com 