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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.

  • La révolte des anges

    I’m not quite sure what’s happening at the moment, but other cats seem to be the ones being complete shites whilst mine is behaving.

    I repeat: OTHER CATS ARE BEING SHITES AND MINE IS BEHAVING.

    Someone posted on our online neighbourhood forum, having found a discarded cat tracker in their garden. Apparently the wearer had been scrapping with the finder’s cat and, when the finder had gone out to break up the fight, the impinging miscreant had scarpered, leaving his ID behind.

    An absolutely mortified lady replied that it belonged to her cat, and apologised for his behaviour. Others then replied to her comment with words to the effect of, “Of course it had to be your cat! Who else would it be?” I felt bad for her, but also relieved that there’s a cat out there who is much worse than Louis Catorze. And, as luck would have it, he’s a black cat, too. Apparently he’s “huge with a massive tail” which doesn’t sound at all like Catorze, but hopefully I can persuade the next eyewitness(es) that large cats can look small from certain angles.

    There must be something in the London water at the moment, because the mamma of Chelsea-supporting tuxedo cat Boots had a similar experience recently. It was less public, but it made up for this in bucketloads with the level of embarrassment. One of her neighbours knocked at her door, asked if she had lost anything, then handed over a Chelsea cat collar which he’d found in his garden.

    Don’t be fooled by the cute little white heart.

    I don’t know which is worse: the whole neighbourhood knowing that your cat is a troublemaking scrapper, or one person seeing Chelsea cat merchandise and immediately knowing it must belong to you? I’m leaning more towards the latter.

    Boots’ mamma tried to explain that she wasn’t actually a Chelsea fan and that it was all a bit of a joke, but then that’s what I’d say if I WERE a Chelsea fan. I don’t know that her neighbour was convinced.

    Oh, and Catorze’s cat-cousin Roux brought in a bumble bee on Tuesday. If you really want to destroy the human race, what better way to go about it than to kill off the main animal that keeps us alive?

    Roux is on the lookout for more bees.

    Meanwhile, in a parallel universe somewhere, Catorze is behaving. In fact, when Cat Daddy was cursing Catorze for breaking into my sock drawer and pulling everything out, I had to admit that it was me who caused the mess when I couldn’t find my grey tights. (Cat-Disliking Friend’s advice was, “You should’ve just kept quiet and let the cat take the blame.”)

    We’re not sure how to handle this course of events. And why are Catorze’s comrades creating all these diversions? Is something cataclysmic about to go down here at Le Château?

    CATaclysmic … CHÂTeau … hehehe.

  • Se gratter un bon coup

    Usually, when Louis Catorze needs his next steroid shot, he will start scratching again, and this becomes more and more intense until we take him to the vet. The vet usually has plenty of availability, but occasionally we have had to wait. And, when the building housing the veterinary practice undergoes its long-awaited refurbishment, who knows how long we will have to wait? (In fact, who knows where we will even go?)

    I recently had Nutri-Paw supplements pop up on my social media feed, and I decided to try out their itchiness and immunity treats, in the hope that it might make Catorze more comfortable between vet appointments. And, at £19.99 per pot (or a bit less, if we subscribe) versus £80 per steroid shot, it had to be worth a punt, non?

    Yes to all of the above.

    As we are all aware, Le Roi is a ludicrously fussy eater, and buying something that we WANT him to like is usually a guarantee that he won’t touch it. So I made sure that Blue the Smoke Bengal – who happily eats anything that isn’t nailed down – was on standby to receive the treats in the very likely event of them being rejected.

    My plan was for these to feature in Catorze’s life as a Dreamies-type treat. Because I wanted him to like them but not love them so much that he refused his Orijen, I gave him one treat far away from his feeding station, in the hope that his silly brain would somehow register it as a different from his Orijen, rather than a replacement for it.

    And, astonishingly, he ate one. Nobody was more surprised than I, that the biggest hurdle was cleared with such ease.

    These will make the perfect snack for fending off the creepy staring, during those times when he acts hungry but we know that, if we go to his bowl and fill it, he will just sniff it and walk away.

    However, despite being light as air, these things are too large to fit into the teeny-tiny Catorzian bouche, so I have to cut them in half. And they’re quite brittle and crumbly, so this is a messy task. I don’t mind it too much, but Cat Daddy will be swearing with every breath and turning the air blue with Unrepeatable Expletives if I ask him to do it. (That said, he swears about Catorze’s dandruffy fur, too, so he can’t have it both ways.)

    Catorze has been looking rather scruffy of late and, when I brush him, rather than ridding his coat of dandruff, it seems to dredge up more. Let’s hope that I can manage the cutting in half, and have him looking glossy and chic in time for his birthday in two months’ time.

    Oh, and let’s also hope they respond to my email to suggest, erm, a kitten version of the treat, suitable for little mouths.

    If you’re interested in trying out Nutri-Paw, have a look here.

    A calming treat, y’say? Tell me more.

  • Il y a deux moyens d’oublier les tracas de la vie : la musique et les chats

    Louis Catorze has been all over me lately, even, on a couple of occasions, choosing my lap over Cat Daddy’s. For a while I thought he was actually starting to like me, but then I realised that I am just the safe refuge from the dreaded guitar.

    Yes, Cat Daddy is still at it with the Discordant Instrument of Doom. And, yes, Catorze still hates it. (Cat Daddy shouldn’t take this too personally, though; I was on my phone whilst Catorze was on my lap, and I accidentally clicked on a link whose twanging guitar soundtrack sent the poor little sod running for his life.)

    However, just to confuse us, he is quite happy to sit for hours and listen to the likes of Jimmy Page blasting HIS guitar through the speakers. And he (Catorze, I mean, not Jimmy Page) has just climbed into Cat Daddy’s guitar case, thrashed around for a few minutes and then settled down for a nap.

    He doesn’t come from the land of the ice and snow. The land of hellfire and brimstone, maybe.

    My initial thought was that perhaps Catorze didn’t know that this was a guitar case, but he’s seen it plenty of times and has run away when Cat Daddy has reached for it to take out the guitar. Or perhaps he knew perfectly well what it was and was trying to assert himself over the Discordant Instrument of Doom and publicly declare that it wasn’t the boss of him (even though his reaction to its sound suggests otherwise)?

    Is it too much to hope that, one day, instead of running, Catorze might do this?

    And, whilst we’re all trying to figure that out, here is our guitar teacher’s cat, Steve, relaxing to his papa’s sounds:

    No Black Dog here. Just an orange cat.

  • Un tout autre chat

    If you could permanently ban a word from general usage, which one would it be? Why?

    Can you ban a word from the English language even if it wasn’t a proper word in the first place? If so, “nother” needs to go. It’s just silly.

    An example of that non-word in a context that we cat freaks will understand, is as follows:

    “When I brushed my cat, so much fur came out that I could make a whole nother cat with it.”

    Non, non and thrice non. Even Louis Catorze isn’t happy about this:

    Not impressed.

    If you have ever used “nother” other than to criticise it and to demonstrate what an absurd non-word it is, I’m afraid we cannot be friends.

    However, if you have ever made new cats from the offcuts (offbrushes?) of your actual cats, please show them to me.

    This cat will be much less bother than Catorze.

  • Par la soif, on apprend l’eau

    What is your favourite drink?

    Scully the pub cat is trying to cut down.

    Louis Catorze doesn’t have a repertoire of drinks, and is only allowed water. Well, you’ve seen what he’s like on just water – would you really want to see him on absinthe shots or cask-strength whisky?

    (Ok, I know that some of you would, just for the entertainment value. But, trust me, he would not be a force for good.)

    You’d think all waters were created equal, but they’re not. Cats are weird when it comes to drinking, and there’s no logic to their thinking. (That wasn’t supposed to rhyme.)

    Sa Maj likes his water from a tall glass, and it has to be either a highball/Collins glass, a wine glass or a pint glass. It’s a firm NON to a cocktail coupe, and don’t even bother serving him water in a bowl because he won’t drink it … and, if he has to go on thirst strike and shrivel up into a dry husk to prove this point, so be it. That said, there are days when he will leave his water glass untouched, preferring, instead, rainwater from the grimy surface of the outdoor table, or the murky, fly-infested depths of a bucket or watering can.

    Nobody understands why.

    Table water! Youpi!
    Bucket water! Youpi!

    Catorze’s departed cat-cousin, Alfie, had similarly unconventional tastes, refusing both tap water and bottled water and only accepting liquid refreshment from the water butt in the alleyway, once it had started to turn green. The first time I saw the state of his water bowl (decanted from the alleyway water butt), I thought his human was perhaps a bit negligent. He wasn’t. This was the only way that Alfie would drink – and, given the choice, green water is (a bit) better than none at all.

    Alfie lived to fifteen, so obviously green water didn’t do him any harm.

    We can blame evolution for most of their oddities, but I would love to know what force compels them to favour gross water over fresh and crystal-clear; nothing about it makes any sense. But, for once, I can confidently say that it’s not just my cat who’s this weird, and I’m sure that there are others out there who are even worse.

    Is yours one of them?

  • Ni manger, ni vivre (Partie 3)

    Saint Jésus et tous ses anges: Louis Catorze is eating normally. Nobody understands why he’s conceded, but he has, and we will happily take it.

    I am so glad I didn’t follow the stupid advice of my friends – YOU KNOW WHO YOU ARE – who told me to just give him the Michelin-starred hot-smoked salmon. I have been determined to stay strong throughout this whole escapade, hearing Charles de Gaulle’s voice in my ear telling me not surrender under any circumstances. I wouldn’t object to giving him (Catorze, I mean, not Charles de Gaulle) the salmon if he were on his deathbed, but certainly not whilst he’s perfectly healthy and just taking the piss.

    And now my efforts have paid off, because I just put his Orijen in his bowl and he eats it. I don’t even need to bother with the hot water anymore.

    The question is: how long will this last? And will there be some new, unanticipated twist to this whole saga sometime later? Lobster bisque drizzled atop the Orijen, perhaps? Or hot scallop consommé misted over the Orijen from a diamond-encrusted atomiser?

    He’s still a bastard cat.

  • Les frontières de la sagesse sont inexplorées (Partie 2)

    A while ago I posted about Wisdom Panel, a DNA ancestry test for pets, and my surprise at its seemingly incongruous advertising slot in the middle of a Prime Video show about serial killers or some such thing.

    Intelligent: nope. Easy to love: nope. Medium size: HELL, nope.

    I have just seen another ad for it, this time during the half-time break of the football match between West Bromwich Albion and Southampton.

    Once again, the placement seems ill-matched. Yet here I am, writing about it for a second time. Either this is a massive coincidence, or I happen to fit the very niche customer profile – football supporter from the south coast or the West Midlands, with deviant bloodlust – exceptionally well.

    This time, the focus of the ad was less about us adjusting our care according to the test results, and more about giving the little sods a Get Out Of Jail Free card. “Juniper [a dog] has genetic markers which make her likely to overeat.”

    Sure she does. Nice try, Juniper.

    Maybe I should try a similar line on my neighbours when “It must have been some other black cat” starts to grow old?

    “It’s not my fault he’s a massive shite. It’s his genetic markers!”

    Anyway, Cat Daddy and I still aren’t tempted to part with our money, despite the fact that this brand seems hellbent on targeting us (and despite the 20% discount on offer on their site). I’m wondering, however, whether the Dog Family should have conducted a test on Oscar when he was still around, because, according to Wisdom Panel, a Yorkshire Terrier looks like this:

    Oscar?

  • Condamner le crime ou condamner le criminel?

    Have you ever unintentionally broken the law?

    Well, let’s see:

    1. Trespassing: wandering onto other people’s land without permission.

    2. Breaking and entering: wandering into other people’s property without permission.

    3. Affray: loud disputes with at least one bird, squirrel, dog or other cat.

    4. Violent disorder: as above, but with numerous third parties at once.

    5. Threatening behaviour: causing alarm and/or distress with any or all of the above.

    I am talking about Louis Catorze, of course, not me. Although it would be funny as hell to see a human having a loud, public spat with a cat.

    The word “unintentionally” bothers me somewhat, as Catorze wouldn’t do these things by mistake. That said, “intentionally” suggests that he actually cares.

    He doesn’t.

    It would be more accurate to say that he commits the above offences with neither intent nor lack of intent but, rather, with a cold indifference and a blatant disregard for whether he breaks the law or not.

    It’s not often that I catch him in the act – which is good, as it lends more weight to my “It must have been some other black cat” argument, should anyone else witness anything – but here is one occasion when I did. Yes, it really was loud enough for me to actually get out of bed and come downstairs to investigate.

    Here’s another (worse) one.

    There are many, many more, but I’ll stop at that.

    Feigning absolute innocence (LIAR).

  • Et Dieu créa Le Roi

    Shadow the black Labrador’s folks have given me a cat modelling kit. It is designed to be for human use (obviously), not for cats, but Louis Catorze has decided that the plasticine effigy of him is his new favourite toy.

    His face says “Je l’adore”.

    He has knocked it to the floor at least 5,317 times since I made it in November. As a result it’s no longer the pristine work of art that it was when first created, but I don’t suppose Catorze cares. In fact, Cat Daddy thinks that, the more the little sod batters it, the more Catorzian it becomes.

    Michelangelo would be jealous – and, yes, one fang is squared off for added authenticity.

    My thoughts then turned to Catorze and how he came to be created. Clearly he wasn’t born of any species known to zoological science, so then how?

    (And, more importantly, why?)

    I have narrowed down the infinite possibilities for The Creation of Catorze to the scenarios below … and I even had to reword the instructions for one of them, as they contravened Bing’s decency standards. (Yes, this is really true. I wish I’d kept a screen shot of the warning issued, just for the comedy value.)

    Which do you feel is the most likely of these three scenarios? Incidentally, at no point did I state that the fanged black cat had to be screaming; it seems that the BingBot knows Catorze well and gave me what he does best.

    Aliens: “Let’s just dump it here and get the hell away.”
    Monster: “Make a pet for me.”
    Frankenstein: “It’ll all go horribly wrong.”
    Monster: [Does it himself.]
    Frankenstein: “I TOLD YOU.”
    No, he’s not being barbecued: he’s being forged in the fires of hell. Not even Satan will touch him with his bare hands.

  • Ni manger, ni vivre (Partie 2)

    Although The Great Salmon Grab was ages ago, its effects have been hard-hitting and far-reaching.

    Louis Catorze is eating, but there is something strange about the way he’s doing it. I once described it as “reluctant”, but that implies a certain – albeit very low – level of cooperation, and this isn’t really what’s happening. It’s more “resentful” than “reluctant”. Maybe even “bitter”. Can one eat a meal “bitterly”? Well, Catorze can and does, presumably to protest about the fact that no further Michelin-starred hot-smoked salmon has been forthcoming.

    “Feed moi. With saumon fumé.”

    Whilst he can take or leave his own food, he’s obsessed with ours. Since The Great Salmon Grab, he has lunged for the following:

    ⁃ Avocado

    ⁃ Peanuts

    ⁃ Salmon pâté (ok, I guess I was asking for trouble with this one)

    ⁃ Blueberries and kefir

    ⁃ Home-made salted caramel sauce

    ⁃ A cup of silver tip white tea

    It’s over, isn’t it? The joyous, golden époque when we were able to eat whatever we wanted without incident, and even leave food unattended, is no more. We are now forced to deal with bullying and intimidation at the hands of this tiny, toothy despot.

    Coincidentally, Catorze’s cat-cousin Otis seems to have received the same food memo: my sister caught him on the kitchen worktop the other day, tucking into the leftover apple pie. The bastards are all at it.

    Every time I prepare a meal, I look for Catorze to try to determine whether I’ll be eating in peace or batting him away like an annoying wasp who’s after my orange juice. And my mind drifts to how those few careless seconds have permanently altered our existence. Oh, and Cat Daddy still blames me. In fact, if I appear annoyed with him about anything, he retorts, “Just because YOUR dinner got stolen by a cat, don’t have a go at me.”

    Catorze has ruined everything and, furthermore, he’s made it all look like my fault. What a horrid beast he is.

  • Le traitement anti-puces

    Louis Catorze’s new spot-on treatment, which covers fleas, ticks and two types of arse-worm, is a life-changer. However, as is the Catorzian way, this doesn’t stop the little sod from making it as difficult as is felinely possible when it happens.

    There is a rather handy gap in our coffee table, between the flat wooden bit and the metal frame bit. The tube fits upright in this gap, so I was able to take off the lid, stand it up within reach and wait for the little sod to appear.

    What a piece of luck.

    Except … he didn’t appear. I have no idea what he was doing – clearly not Rodent Duty, because his friend came back to do that on his behalf (see below) – but Catorze was absent for ages. When he did finally show his silly face, he sat upright on my lap, sniffing suspiciously around him and refusing to sleep.

    “It’s all under control here. As you were.”

    After a few minutes of feigning sleep, Catorze started washing. Then he went for a drink and pitter-pattered over to a corner of the room to look at nothing in particular. Then he went outside again. He did everything but the one thing I wanted him to do: fall asleep on my lap. And, all the while, the liquid in the teeny-tiny tube was probably evaporating fast.

    I got him in the end. Incredibly, I was even able to burrow right down to the skin, which is what you’re supposed to do with spot-on but I’ve probably only managed it twice in my life. There was much less liquid than in the previous Broadline tube, so there was less neck ick afterwards and Catorze didn’t seem inclined to roll off the residue onto every absorbent surface in the house. And, astonishingly, I was forgiven immediately afterwards. He ran at first, but then came back and settled on my lap again.

    A bit less gross than usual.

    It wasn’t the most fun that Catorze or I have ever had in an afternoon. But the fact that I don’t have to do it every month certainly dulls some of the pain, even if it does come at the price of £44 per treatment.

    If you fancy going through the torment of spot-on four times a year instead of twelve, this is the magic elixir.

  • Un inspecteur vous demande

    Do you need a break? From what?

    Come on. You know the answer to this.

    We have a school inspection going on at the moment. If you have ever worked in a school you will know what utter purgatory an inspection is, not just because of having people watch you teach (although that’s quite awkward and embarrassing) but because of the unbelievable amount of paperwork required. Most of it is either utter shite, or a duplication of other paperwork, or both.

    Also, the kids can’t be trusted not to show you up. One inspector came to my Spooky Club; when he asked a usually impeccably-behaved kid to explain what the club was all about, she replied, “It’s basically like a cult.” Saint Jésus.

    Anyway, when it’s inspection time at school, you want all other aspects of your life to be going normally and peacefully. It’s really not the best time for the following:

    1. Being clawed and stamped by a screaming cat when you’re trying to get your work done. It was so bad that I had to beg Cat Daddy to remove him and keep him contained elsewhere.

    2. Waking up to a dead mouse in the bedroom when you’re rushing off to work early.

    3. Nocturnal scampering which wakes me at 2:30am then, when I turn the lights on, Catorze is just sitting in the middle of the floor, with his tail neatly wrapped around his paws. Incidentally, this was not on the same night as the mouse, so we are yet to discover what he was chasing (and, more importantly, where it is).

    Cat Daddy asks me how each day went and looks after me when I come home, but all his efforts are cancelled out by a manic Catorze. I bet he’s been waiting since the last inspection to do all this.

    Bastard cat.

    Le Roi and his shadow self are ready to do their worst.

  • Ici pour un bon moment, pas longtemps

    In what ways do you communicate online?

    Mainly to share useless dross. Nothing constructive or admirable.

    Dog people, however, get to do THIS kind of thing (below). Social media has informed me that there is a Sausage Dog Meet-Up scheduled for Saturday 11th February.

    Before you tut at me for not anonymising names and faces, THIS IS A PUBLIC EVENT.

    It will be taking place in a park close by (not the one over the road, although that would have allowed me to observe from a window, giggling to myself, without even leaving the house), in honour of Daisy’s first birthday. And it has been created by a group called the London Lowriders; I have no idea who they are, but they sound like some sort of south supremacist gang.

    Daisy is, apparently, is a therapy dog. It sounds as if she has done a great deal in just one year, whereas Louis Catorze has been on the planet for almost FOURTEEN TIMES THAT LONG and has achieved the square root of bugger all.

    The last time I checked, there were eleven guests confirmed and one hundred and two interested. No doubt by the time the event takes place, more will have signed up. However, posting the event on a public setting has the potential to go a bit Project X*, non? What if two hundred sausage dogs turn up? Or two thousand?

    *Older followers: ask your kids/nieces/nephews who are in their early twenties.

    You’d be forgiven for thinking that there couldn’t possibly be that many sausage dogs living in the area, this is Richmond, sweetie. Sausage dogs are quite the upper-middle class accessory, just like Breton tops and jauntily-coloured wool blazers.

    If you have a dog, and you happen to be passing through TW10 on Saturday 11th February, I’m pretty sure you wouldn’t be turned away if you dropped into the event even if your dog isn’t a sausage dog. Dog people are like The Mob: they stick together.

    And if you have a Chat Noir, meet me and Catorze in the cemetery on Hallowe’en night. Which cemetery? Just follow the sound of the screaming.

    Catorze will probably leave early on account of the lack of men.

  • Les diodes lumineuses (Partie 3)

    I am lucky enough to run a paranormal club – nicknamed Spooky Club – at school. This is something that would terrify most headteachers and parents but, luckily, ours are progressive and trusting and let me get on with it. Our most recent session was about thermal cameras and the creepy things that show up on them.

    You can sense where this is going, non?

    I decided to tell my students about The Curious Incident with Chris the Heating Engineer on the Infra-Red Camera. They’re a cynical bunch and they think everything is Photoshop or Fake News, so I was ready for them to debunk my story with some sort of perfectly logical explanation.

    Kid 1: “What colour is your cat, Miss? And what colour is the floor?”

    Me: “Black cat, grey floor. Why?”

    Kid 1: “Oh, right. I was gonna say that if the cat and the floor were the same colour, maybe they’d absorb or reflect infra-red waves in the same way. But they’re not.”

    Kid 2: “Had the cat been outside, Miss?”

    Me: “Yes, but he’d been indoors for ten minutes at that point. So he should have warmed up.”

    Kid 2: “Maybe he was still cold from being outside?”

    Kid 3: “That still shouldn’t mean he was the same blue as the cold floor, though. If you’re showing up as blue on the camera, you’re basically dead.”

    Kid 4: “How long have you had your cat, Miss?”

    Me: “Nearly ten years.”

    Kid 4: “And is this the first time he’s done weird stuff?”

    [Silence, tumbleweed, crickets.]

    Anyway, after spending the rest of the session Googling pictures of cats on infra-red cameras to see if there were any that resembled what I saw on that fateful day (nope) and begging the headteacher to spend £2,000 on an infra-red camera so that they could mess about with it and attempt to recreate The Curious Incident (also nope), the kids concluded that, perhaps, Catorze was possessed and needed an exorcism. I already knew this anyway.

    Oh, and my colleague who teaches Physics confirmed that what I’d witnessed makes no scientific sense. I already knew this, too.

    A normal cat, as seen on an infra-red camera. (Picture from gst.ir.net.)
    My weird cat, with no effects or filters whatsoever.