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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.

  • 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.”

  • Il y a de l’eau dans le gaz

    What have you been working on?

    Never mind me: what are CATS working on? What the heck are they all up to? Mark my words: something is afoot.

    Caught communing with The Count.

    At the weekend, Cat Daddy and I went to Brompton Cemetery, where they host a series of spooky events throughout the month of October. Our talk on necromancy took place in the chapel and, not long after the presenter had started speaking, he was interrupted by an unearthly wailing.

    We thought we had finally solved the age-old debate regarding whether we could communicate with the spirit world. However, it was actually this cheeky sod (below), who had followed everyone in from outside and then caused utter mayhem when he couldn’t get out again:

    A magnificent cat. Also a total piss-taker.

    Meanwhile in TW8, Louis Catorze is prowling suspiciously and swishing his tail in the kitchen. Someone or something is in here and, whether it’s a mouse (likely) or a demonic entity (equally likely), I know that Catorze was the one responsible for bringing it in. The little sod is also relentlessly bullying me to let him out at The Front, and pushing coasters and pens off the table, one by one, if I refuse. He only ever does this when I’m home alone with him and is much better-behaved with Cat Daddy; this is partly because he knows that his papa will relent and let him out at The Front, but also because he knows it will make me look melodramatic and unhinged when I tell people about his behaviour.

    Has something happened to make all the cats in the world start acting like massive shites? And how badly will it escalate in the next few days? Suddenly I feel the need to burn lots of sage and sit in a circle of salt until Hallowe’en is over …

    “What do you wish me to do next, O Dark Master?”
    (I didn’t quite catch Catorze’s reply.)

  • Occupé à ne rien faire

    Do lazy days make you feel rested or unproductive?

    Yes and yes. Et alors?

    Having a rest after putting all his efforts into doing as little as possible.

  • C’est le mauvais chat! Et il a mal tourné!

    *WARNING: THIS POST GIVES AWAY THE PLOT OF NEVER LET ME GO. IF YOU INTEND TO READ IT, AND WANT TO BE SURPRISED WHEN YOU DO, STOP READING NOW.*

    I run a book club at school, and we have just read the fabulous Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro. If you haven’t read it, DO believe the hype. It’s written in an approachable and, dare I say it, almost mundane style, yet the story is gripping.

    Naturellement, the discussion in the club turned to cloning, its place in society and the surrounding ethical issues. One of my students then piped up, “You can buy cloned cats now!”

    Me: “Are you sure? I mean, I imagine it’s possible to clone cats, but I doubt if the general public can buy them commercially.”

    Our good friend Google confirmed that the kid was right, and I was wrong.

    Many questions ensued, but this was my favourite:

    “Miss, what if the first few clonings go wrong before you get it right? What happens to the weird wrong cats afterwards?”

    All of a sudden, things make sense. My initial concern regarding this topic was the idea of multiple Louis Catorzes, but now I realise that he must have been one of the weird wrong cats produced by accident.

    I considered the idea of a Zoom call with Catorze during the session, to help the kids to understand what life is like with a weird wrong cat. However, one or two of them met him during our lockdown online lessons, so they probably already know. (Oh yes: the now-Year 13s who were around during lockdown have some Catorzian stories to tell.)

    If the little sod’s behaviour isn’t enough to convince you that he is one of the weird wrong cats – and if you still don’t believe it after all this evidence, then there’s something wrong with you – maybe these photos will?

    What?
    He sees us.
    ???
    Yikes.

  • Nager le crawl

    What is your favorite hobby or pastime?

    I love watching horror films. I have just watched one called Crawl, which is all about a girl and her dad who end up trapped in the crocodile-infested, rapidly-flooding crawl space under their house during a storm. It’s pretty silly – the girl is a competitive swimmer (believable) who can outswim crocodiles (considerably less believable), but then I have never watched horror films for their accurate depiction of real life, so I don’t really care.

    The true hero of the film is a dog called Sugar. I only know about four dog breeds and she isn’t one of them, but she was, erm, medium-sized and black, possibly with some white bits, if that’s any help?

    Anyway, Sugar does exactly what she is supposed to do, when she is supposed to do it. On two occasions, her barking draws the attention of the rescuer to the exact location of the rescuee. And yet, when she is required NOT to draw attention to herself, for example when they are wading silently through the water, aware that the slightest sound or splash would alert the crocodiles, Sugar is perfectly quiet and doesn’t move a muscle.

    Good doggy. (Picture from screenrant.com.)

    Dogs in horror films can generally be relied upon to do the right thing. Cats, however, are another matter entirely.

    This is how I imagine a Catorzian horror panning out:

    1. Cat Daddy and I are trapped in a crawl space under the house, which is rapidly filling with water and crocodiles. Catorze ignores our cries for help and lets us scream ourselves unconscious.

    2. Rescuer arrives. Catorze does not react.

    3. Catorze sees that rescuer is male and switches to purring, rolling and flirting mode(s).

    4. Catorze realises that the end of Cat Daddy would also spell the end of Boys’ Club, so he informs the rescuer of Cat Daddy’s plight. Cat Daddy is rescued.

    5. Water rises. Rescuer asks if anyone else may be trapped below. Catorze says “Non”.

    6. Cat Daddy regains consciousness, flees the scene and lives happily ever after with Catorze.

    7. The End.

    If you would like to watch Crawl, it’s on Netflix.

    And, if you would like to witness true horror, please come and visit Sa Maj.

    Bad kitty.

  • Il pipistrello

    I am at my sister’s house for our traditional Halloweekend celebration of baking, crafting and horror films, whilst Cat Daddy has a lads’ weekend at Le Château with Louis Catorze.

    My sister has just discovered bats living in her maple tree and my nieces, aged seven and five, went absolutely … well … batshit upon seeing them. They were obsessed anyway following a twilight bat walk in a park in TW8 last year and bat-spotting in our garden during August’s Blue Moon, so to find them living in their own garden was just like unearthing buried treasure.

    We are now researching how to make a bat-friendly garden, and one of the tips given is, “Keep cats indoors”. Ahem. That said, I would be prepared to bet Le Château and all its contents on Catorze never catching a bat as long as he lives (and probably not making that much effort to try).

    Speaking of bats, after writing about Pipi the Bat Cat a few weeks ago, I received a number of requests for photos of him. His human brother was more than happy to oblige; just like me, he has about 8,983 photos of his cat on his phone and perhaps five of his human family members. And, if he runs out of space on his phone, no doubt he will delete the humans first.

    My favourite picture of them all is the last one, in which Pipi demonstrates his, erm, love for his dog-brother, Fulmine. Since he’s clearly an expert at that classic Hallowe’en cat pose with the arched back and the upright tail, I think Pipi needs an Official Hallowe’en Portrait, non?

    In fact, should it become our collective mission to ensure that every Chat Noir sits for an Official Hallowe’en Portrait?

    Gli amici.
    Il mondo dei gioCATtoli.
    La vita è bella.
    Colpito da un Fulmine.

  • La charge de la brigade féline

    I’ve just been looking after Blue the Smoke Bengal whilst his mamma was on holiday and, on the last day, the big sod brought me a mouse. I knew he was up to something because I could see him in the garden, with his head in the shrubbery and his tail swishing suspiciously. Then, when he came indoors, I could see the telltale little feet sticking out of his mouth.

    Worse yet, Blue was not giving up the mouse and kept darting away when I tried to grab it from him. Every time he set it down and went for his food bowl, I would make a move for it and he would double back and pick it up again.

    Eventually, after a comedic chase around the house, I managed to retrieve it and, as I left, I held it up to the Ring doorbell camera to inform Blue’s mamma of what her naughty boy had done.

    She later told me that hers was just a normal non-camera doorbell. So the people in the park across the road would have seen me holding up a dead mouse and talking to the door.

    Meanwhile, it seems that the fight with Goliath has revved up Louis Catorze, because he now wants to go out at The Front every night. And he requests this by racing to the shutters, sticking his silly head through and whining until someone opens the window.

    Cat Daddy often lets him out, and this was fine when we could see what he was up to; in the summer, Catorze used to sit happily on the window sill, surveying his fiefdom and causing no bother. However, now he disappears. We don’t know where he goes or what he does, and there’s no point in going out to check because there is never any sign of him. Any efforts to call him are just met with silence, tumbleweed and crickets.

    On a couple of occasions he‘s been gone for hours. I don’t like this at the best of times, but it makes me especially uncomfortable at this time of year. We don’t live in THAT kind of street but, given the choice, I would rather have him out at The Back than at The Front. And perhaps more of a worry than nasty people is the fact that it gets dark early and small black cats are invisible on the road.

    So I am officially declaring that The Front is out of bounds until further notice, and we will be keeping Catorze under especially strict surveillance on Hallowe’en. I will have to monitor Cat Daddy, too, due to his penchant for letting Catorze out and then forgetting whether or not he’s come back in. Last weekend, for instance, he’d had a few drinks and he swore blind that he’d seen Catorze at The Back. He hadn’t. Catorze had been out at The Front for two hours, having escaped when Dog Mamma and Dog Daddy left our house after dinner. And I was just about to start trawling the street looking for him, when he tapped on the window requesting to come in again.

    Whatever The Mothership seems to be telling them all right now, I don’t like it one bit. Oh God, and there’s a full moon just before Hallowe’en. Keep your enemies close and your cats closer, Mesdames et Messieurs.

    Little sod.
    Big sod.

  • L’art est une illusion

    Who are your favourite artists?

    There is a lot of art that I like. However, for me, there is a clear distinction between “I like looking at that” and “I would have that in my house”. Very few pieces manage both.

    Someone who DOES attain that holy grail of the shared segment in the Venn diagram is Mark S. Gagne, a Canadian artist who specialises in dark, folkloresque visions. Now, Mark has never met Louis Catorze, except perhaps in his nightmares, yet he somehow manages to capture his essence in many of his works, even those that don’t feature cats.

    I recently treated myself to a couple of his prints and, as you can see from this picture, Catorze approves. In this one, the fact that the black vampire cat has a levitating crown is very fitting … although, as a friend pointed out, to make it truly Catorzian the crown would say 666 instead of 9.

    Seems faintly familiar …

    (In numerology, the number 9 is said to signify “a humanitarian at heart; it is compassionate, kind, and intent on putting its efforts toward creating the greatest good”. So clearly the artist has a sense of humour as well as talent.)

    If you want to buy Mark S Gagne’s art, have look here. His website is well worth a visit at any time of year, but something about this month makes it a very pleasurable browse indeed.

  • Mon ring, c’est la rue

    On Friday evening Louis Catorze was badgering us to let him out at The Front, so Cat Daddy obligingly opened the window. This has happened many times before without incident but, on this occasion, Catorze poked his head through the open window, yowled and swished his puffy tail. And some unknown being outside was yowling back.

    Saint Jésus.

    When he looked outside, Cat Daddy saw that it was Goliath, that massive ginger cat with whom Catorze has had at least one altercation (to our knowledge). And, as we debated whether or not we should pull him back inside and close the window, he shot out.

    Catorze on the left, Goliath on the right, me in the middle not knowing what to do with myself. (Picture from idn.com.)

    I was concerned that our neighbours would hear the horrendous racket and come out to see what was going on (yes, it’s happened before), so I decided to try and recapture Catorze. By the time I’d put on my shoes and gone outside, he had positioned himself on one side of the road, with Goliath, three times his size, having run away from him (!) to the other side, and the pair of them were staring each other down like boxers, yowling up a storm. I approached Catorze, but the little shit ran underneath Family Next Door’s car where he knew he wouldn’t be caught.

    The yowling continued. And, because the street was empty, the sound echoed like a peal of bells, in the most embarrassing fashion imaginable.

    At that point, my options were as follows:

    1. Wriggle on my belly underneath the car to grab my screaming cat, risking not only personal injury and failure but also being captured doing so on Family Next Door’s Ring doorbell camera.

    2. Leave the cats to it, go back indoors, turn up the television to drown out the God-awful sound and prepare to trot out the “It must have been some other black cat” line, if anyone asked.

    Since I didn’t really want Family Next Door gathering around a laptop screen and watching that video with their popcorn, I went for option 2.

    The little sod rolled back about half an hour later and we let him in through the window. And, within a few minutes, he was battering at the shutters to go out again. It was a firm, hard NON to that. In fact, if this is the kind of caper that we can expect when we let him out at The Front, it’s going to be a firm, hard NON to it for the foreseeable future.

    I shall say it again: he is a senior cat who should be taking it easy. Why is he like this?

    Now all I can do is await the comments on our local neighbourhood forum: “What a disturbance. I thought this was a nice neighbourhood. [Anonymous]”

    Ivan Drago.
    Roi-cky Balboa.

  • Y a-t-il quelqu’un dans la salle?

    So … cats and séances. You probably won’t like the idea of your sweet little kitty communing with evil spirits, but they’re all at it. It’s not just the black vampire cats, although blackness and vampirism do somewhat increase the chances of evil doings. (Don’t ask me how I know this.)

    If cats are in a group, the pack mentality takes over and they all whip each other up into a spooky frenzy, as my friend Dawn’s cats did (below). Dobby, the large ginge, was clearly the one who hatched the plan, with Ollivander, the tabby with the white toes, happily following suit and Neville, the pinstripe tuxedo, being somewhat reticent yet not exactly going out of his way to avoid trouble, either. Sorry, Nev, but, unless you are actively anti-demon, you are still complicit.

    Nothing to see here.

    At the moment that this photo was taken, they had just been caught out and Dobby was gasping, “Oh shit, it’s Mum!” But it was too late for Dawn; as we can see, they had already succeeded in summoning the Antichrist, aka Jasper, the black kitten rising from their witch board. And, once the Antichrist has been summoned, it’s impossible to get rid of him. (Don’t ask me how I know this, either.)

    If you only have one cat, regretfully you are still not in a spook-free zone; it seems it’s perfectly possible to form a coven of just one. I caught Catorze mid-ouija earlier this year, a couple of nights before a full moon. If he can do this in February at a time when he was supposed to be convalescing and taking it easy after his dental surgery, I dread to think what he does on long October nights when he’s at peak psycho.

    Nothing to see here, either. Move along, s’il vous plaît.

    As we count down towards the spookiest night of the year, you don’t want to mess with cats, whatever their colour. It’s like trying to take on the Mafia; life is easier if you just pretend you didn’t see anything.

    Ollivander fun fact: he’s from Puerto Rico so his first language is Spanish. He is also fluent in ignoring English.
    Neville fun fact: he was found as a stray when his now-mamma was searching for Ollivander, who’d gone missing. No doubt the little sods planned it.
    Dobby fun fact: he is the meatiest and cuddliest of the bunch.
    Jasper fun fact 1: he was being offered free of charge, at a market, just before Hallowe’en. Luckily his now-mamma took him and ensured that he would be safe.
    Jasper fun fact 2 (yes, he gets two as he’s the Chat Noir): he has lots to say … whether or not you want to hear it.
    The boys are still dabbling in the occult and, as you can see, they are summoning larger demons these days.

  • La poésie en images

    What skill would you like to learn?

    I have recently joined a Smart phone photography social media group. People post their original shots versus the edited versions, and everyone compares the two and tells them whether they’ve gone a bit overboard or got the balance right.

    People mainly post landscapes and human portraits in the group, but recently there have been more and more cats. There was even one cat pictured DURING A VET VISIT, who sat perfectly still and whose photo was blade-sharp and blur-free.

    I am always impressed by people’s editing skills, but I’m more amazed that they can get their little sods to sit still. I can’t.

    Every so often I post saying, “This is what I managed with Louis Catorze”, accompanied by a picture of an indistinct black haze or a glimpse of his arse end walking away. This makes me the funniest person in the group but also by far the worst photographer

    The fact that my Catorzian photography hasn’t improved in nine years, and the fact that not even a Smart phone photography group can help me, don’t bode well considering that it’s October and I still haven’t managed an Official Hallowe’en Portrait.

    I have the perfect props: some giant home-grown pumpkins gifted by Cat Daddy’s friend Mike. And I have the perfect subject matter: a black cat with vampire teeth. But it’s not working. Each picture is more shit than the last, because the subject matter either doesn’t want to play or just wants to annoy me (or possibly a bit of each).

    My only hope is that, since Catorze behaves for other people, one of his many October visitors will manage to take a good picture. But at least his weird bald patch is disappearing back to whichever strange dimension from which it came. So that’s something. (I’m reaching for any positive that I can find, to be honest.)

    Me: “Will we EVER get a decent Official Hallowe’en Portrait from him?”

    Cat Daddy, without looking up from his phone: “When the sun freezes over, maybe?”

    No.
    No.
    Dear God, no.
    I give up.

  • Le chat féerique

    What is your favourite special occasion? Why is it your favourite?

    Since we share a house with a black cat with vampire teeth, it’s practically compulsory to love Hallowe’en. And Hallowe’en isn’t a day: it’s a season. And that season started on 1st October (with pre-season having taken place throughout the whole of September).

    We have always known that Louis Catorze isn’t just a normal cat, and we change our minds every day about whether he could be an alien, a demon, a cryptozoological freak of nature yet to be discovered by science, or a combination of all three. But I now wonder if he might be a Cat Sìth.

    No, I haven’t misspelled one of Cat Daddy’s Unrepeatable Expletives; a Sìth – pronounced “shee” – is a generic term used to describe a fairy creature of Celtic myth and legend. And a Cat Sìth is believed to appear in the form of (obviously) a cat. Guess what colour? Go on, I bet you’ll never guess.

    The idea of Catorze being of fairy origin makes absolute sense. Although he has a feline silhouette, his vampire fangs and his exaggerated manga eyes make him look like something from a fantasy illustrator’s sketch book (the rough, tea-stained drafts that were discarded, obviously, not the polished final design). Other animals seem to be aware of this, because creatures who would, ordinarily, finish him in a fight – foxes, larger cats and the like – run away from him. He chases and eats spiders and flies, yet knows to leave bees alone. Does he recognise them as his allies?

    Catorze is highly sensitive to the phases of the moon, putting extra vigour into his nocturnal parkour in the run-up to a full moon. I have a moon phases app which I barely check these days, because I can tell by his behaviour if a bad moon is rising. He can teleport silently – usually to places we don’t want him to go – yet also stomp forcefully across our floorboards when the mood takes him, sounding like an adult human. This is especially unnerving when it’s the middle of the night and I’m home alone. (Yes, we do warn our chat-sitteurs about this.)

    If you’d like to read more about the Cat Sìth, have a look here. But this photo alone should be enough to convince you that our little sod is not of this world:

    There’s something weird about him.

  • Soyez sympa, rembobinez

    What’s your favourite word?

    Cat Daddy has several favourite words. Very few of them can be repeated in polite company. Yet, yesterday morning, I heard a torrent of them flowing from the kitchen, interspersed with feline screaming.

    Cat Daddy had switched on the television, started watching the golf, and rewound the live broadcast to catch up on the bits that he’d missed. However, Louis Catorze had then stepped onto the remote control and changed channels. When Cat Daddy switched back to the golf, it had finished and he was no longer able to rewind, on account of the channel change.

    Cat Daddy: “He’s ****ing ****ed everything up now. What a **** he is.”

    Catorze: “Mwah!”

    Cat Daddy: “Bastard cat.”

    Catorze: “Mwah!”

    This is just the beginning of post-steroid Catorze’s pre-Hallowe’en shenanigans. I can’t quite bring myself to tell Cat Daddy that it can, and will, only get worse.

    Catorze is well and truly up for it. Whatever “it” may be.

  • Les malheurs et les jumeaux ne viennent jamais seuls (Partie 2)

    Puppy Mamma and Puppy Daddy had twins last year. So their household now consists of two grown-ups, two babies, Nala the dog AND Gizzy the [insert name of species].

    Louis Catorze loves kids but isn’t a fan of babies; he’s met a couple in the past and is confused by them. The minute they see him and they let out that excited screech, his ears flatline and he’s off.

    Other cats? Dogs? Foxes? Bring ‘em on.

    Babies? C’est un grand NOPE.

    Naturellement, considering all of the above, we thought it would be fun see how Catorze would get on with two of them.

    The encounter had the potential to fail abysmally but, to our astonishment, the little sod was great with each kid individually. He lay and meowed gently as Twin 1 rubbed his bare feet on his fur. Twin 2 cried when she saw Catorze – we’ve all been there, so we can relate – but, when she realised that he wasn’t a monster and eventually settled, he contentedly flicked his tail across her legs and feet as she gently stroked him with one finger.

    A tail-hug for Twin 2.

    (With normal cats, tail-flicking is a bad sign. But Catorze does it when he’s happy. Yes, we know that this is really weird, but it’s still one of the less weird things about him. Sometimes, when he doesn’t want to be on a lap but still wants to feel close to a human, he will lie close by and flick his tail repeatedly onto the human’s arm or leg to remind himself that they’re still there.)

    Both babies at the same time, unfortunately, proved to be a step too far: when Twin 1 and Twin 2 sat on either side of him, Le Roi made his excuses and left. However, I was impressed that he even made it that far.

    Next step: posing for a very special Official Hallowe’en portrait together? Can we make it happen?