This kind of thing DRAINS me of energy. Will that do?
I can hear cat fight sounds coming from the Zone Libre right now. Now, most cat owners would immediately rush to intervene if they found themselves in this situation, but not me.
Firstly, I know that Louis Catorze can handle himself. But the main reason is because it’s broad daylight, and if any of my neighbours see me going to check, it will be a sign of guilt; if I don’t do it, I may be able to get away with pretending I didn’t bother to look because I KNEW it was some other cat, in the event of being asked about it later.
So I shall just sit tight until it stops, and wait for Catorze to pitter-patter indoors without so much as a whisker out of place. I hope the other cat fares as well.
EDIT: He came in minutes after I finished writing this, looking exactly as described above, then creepy-stared for food and promptly went back out again.
On Saturday, Cat Daddy invited two of his friends over for lunch. I hadn’t met them before but, since they were coming all the way from Italy just to watch our football team, I was pretty sure that I’d like them.
As soon as they arrived, Louis Catorze came pitter-pattering down the hallway. Our guests – yes, they were both men, merci for asking – stopped in their tracks and exclaimed, “A black cat!”
Oh dear, I thought. Not a good start. But their surprise wasn’t dismay but DELIGHT, because they have a black cat who looks exactly like Catorze. Startlingly so, in fact. Their cat apparently has “lots of names” but the latest one is Pipi, short for “pipistrello”, the Italian word for “bat”. (We refrained from mentioning the many names that Cat Daddy has for Catorze, none of which are repeatable in polite company.)
Then, before I knew it, Cat Daddy had told his friends all about Le Blog and had produced Catorze’s guest book for them to sign.
Now, when I meet new people, I like to keep most of my cat freakishness concealed until I know that they will respond favourably (and I regard any reaction that isn’t backing away in horror as “favourable”). So I was quite mortified to have all this laid out within an hour of our guests’ arrival. Astonishingly, seemed to absorb it as if it were perfectly normal, although they did add that, in Italy, guest books were “for museums, maybe weddings, but not cats”.
During lunch, our guests told us about a town called Vicenza, whose inhabitants are historically rumoured to eat cats. Apparently if you want to insult someone from this town, all you have to do is call them a “mangia gatti” (“cat-eater”). Most normal cats probably wouldn’t like this kind of talk. But Catorze was so happy to be photographed and stroked by new male friends that he didn’t care … or perhaps he knows that nobody would bother trying to eat him because there’s only enough meat for a couple of tiny bits of antipasti.
Our visitors signed Catorze’s book before they left. They also mooted the idea of a guest book for their cat, which Le Roi thinks is a great idea. In fact, he says it’s the absolute MINIMUM that any human should do for their cat.
Getting spruced up for his next set of guests.Ahem.
It’s autumn. If you have been following Le Blog for any length of time, you may have noticed that I like autumn. A LOT.
The air isn’t quite as crisp and autumnal right now as I’d like, but the summer humidity is no more (thank goodness), and most normal cats might be starting to retreat indoors and power down. Louis Catorze, however, still has his clock set to CST (Catorzian Summer Time) and is gadding about outside, goading the foxes (yes, we’ve actually SEEN him doing this) and so on. And he’s still mousing. When we came back from our weekend away, we found another one.
Oh, and when he comes indoors, he wants to play.
King of the autumnal garden.
My early mornings are now all about waving a pink butterfly on a string whilst a manic vampire cat chases it. Catorze is having the time of his life. Meanwhile, I am sweating, puffing and bleeding from the eyeballs in my pathetic efforts to keep up with him. It’s quite the departure from my once-gentle and serene introduction to the day, watching the sunrise, reading a book and sipping green tea.
Here is Catorze, having just bounced and landed, very appropriately, right under the watchful gaze of Count Dracula. Look at that flailing, mischievous tail:
He’s ready for the Spooky Season. But is it ready for him?
Cat Daddy and I are still reeling from the butchery that took place during our absence. To add insult to injury, far from being contrite, Louis Catorze didn’t show his face for a good hour or two after our return. We even wondered whether the chat-sitteur had taken him with her, but then we realised how silly that was because why on earth would she want to? Why would ANYONE want to?
We searched the house and garden for him and failed to find him. We did, however, find another dead mouse.
Meanwhile, if you’re stuck for what to wear in the transition period that is late summer to early autumn, why not stick with your usual black and accessorise with a contrasting cobweb earring?
Each piece is individually foraged by the wearer, so no two look exactly alike. Here is this season’s subtle but classy concept piece, modelled by Catorze:
Coco Chanel would be proud.It’s just as attractive from a distance.
Cat Daddy and I are away at the moment, and the same chat-sitting friend who looked after Louis Catorze in July is looking after him again.
This Geordie cat screamed at us from across the road. We were late meeting our friend, but we had to stop and stroke her.
We went away utterly unconcerned and full of confidence that everything would go well; after all, one of the good things about Catorze is that, despite being a massive shite for us, he behaves for other people.
Or so we thought.
First of all, there was this (which, incidentally, took place just an hour after the chat-sitteur’s arrival):
Not great but not a surprise either.
Then there was this:
Saint Jésus, Marie et Joseph, et le petit âne.
Note how polite she was being by saying “Louis or a friend” so as not to jump to conclusions.
He doesn’t have any friends. It was him.
After the initial shock had worn off, I requested photographic proof of the slaughter – not because I disbelieved what I’d been told but, rather, because I needed to see the full horror in order to reconcile it in my own head. Needless to say I wish I hadn’t asked, because it was an absolute bloodbath. There were three definite mice, along with a fourth, erm, thing which was either a butchered baby mouse or half an adult mouse. If the latter, we still don’t know where the other half is.
Oh. Mon. Dieu.
After directing our chat-sitteur to our supply of plastic bags, and instructing her to dispose of the hapless victims/pieces in the park bin across the road, Cat Daddy and I had a stiff drink and wondered how and why this could have happened. Catorze has never – NEVER – killed multiple mice in one night. He also only very rarely leaves them outside, preferring, instead, to leave them at the bottom of the stairs to be stepped on, or to bring them upstairs to our bedroom. Obviously we are glad that neither of those happened.
We are setting off back home later today, and we have no idea how we will bring ourselves to cuddle our cute, fluffy kittenalike knowing what he’s just done. We also don’t know how we will face the chat-sitteur again, but avoiding her for the rest of our lives might be tricky given that she, erm, lives just down the road.
Share a story about the furthest you’ve ever travelled from home.
Our part of west London was in the news last week, due to an inmate who absconded from Wandsworth prison. After much fuss and police helicopters hovering through the night, he was finally recaptured in, erm, Chiswick. Had I known he’d be there, I might have wandered down to look out for him, in the hope of scooping the £20,000 reward money.
Wandsworth and Chiswick are about six miles apart. I think even without the army survival training and insider help that this bloke had had, I’d have been able to make it further than that after four days on the run. In fact, even Louis Catorze, with his short legs, could have made it further than that (probably by slipping unnoticed into an Ocado van).
If you have an outdoor cat without a tracker, it’s impossible to know where they really go. However, the furthest that Catorze has been, to our knowledge, is the far side of the park over the road. After one of my surgeries (I don’t recall which one because I’ve had that many), the surgeon prescribed a short, supervised recovery walk every day, and laps of the park were a good way of monitoring my progress. So we set off one evening, and Catorze decided to escape out at The Front as we left and followed us, screaming.
Looking back, we should have recaptured him and locked him back up again but, like most escaped convicts, he’s impossible to recapture if he doesn’t want to be recaptured. Plus we didn’t think he would actually follow us all the way across the road and through the park.
He did.
By the time we’d reached the far side of the park, we had resigned ourselves to the fact that, for our first lap, at least, we would be pursued by a screaming cat. However, we didn’t quite make a full lap together because a dog walker then appeared, with two dogs running free, off the lead.
The dogs scampered up to Catorze and, for a second, I actually felt my soul leave my body as I prepared to jump in and save him from the ensuing carnage. Despite all his bravado with dogs when he’s on his own turf, Catorze decided that a confrontation outside the safe confines of the Zone Occupée and the Zone Libre (all Catorzian territory) was a step too far and he was off, hurtling back home at breakneck speed, with the dogs deciding NOT to give chase. We then finished our lap at equally breakneck speed so that we could let him back into Le Château.
Me: “That was negligent of us. We should never have let him follow us. We were lucky that the dogs and the owner were nice.”
Cat Daddy: “It’s fine. Cats go into parks all the time.”
They absolutely do not. I can count on two fingers the number of cats I’ve seen in parks in my entire life.
I’d like to say that Catorze learned his lesson after that, but he didn’t (either because he’s so thick that he forgot, or because he just doesn’t care). He still yearns for far-flung adventures at The Front and is always trying to escape out. And if it were up to The Fun Parent (Cat Daddy), he’d be there all the time.
Luckily The Boring Parent (me) is at hand to rein things in and spoil the party. It’s a hard NON to anything that might involve marauding dogs.
What was the last thing you searched for online? Why were you looking for it?
The last thing I Googled was “Is my cat a psychopath?”
The reasons are pretty obvious. And the sheer number of results indicates that others have clearly been there before me (with their own cats, I mean, not with mine), although they all seem to be about listing signs and none of them really help us to break free of our entrapment.
It’s great that I’m not alone. But it’s terrifying that living under their rule seems to be an international habit, with them treating us like dirt and us letting them.
“Signs of a Psychopath” is my latest Discovery Plus treat. This show, whose content is exactly as it sounds, may appear to have no place on a blog about cats but, if you know Louis Catorze, you can most likely imagine the direction in which this post is going.
Whether or not someone you know qualifies as a psychopath rather depends on where you look; sources cite checklists of anywhere between four and forty (!) signs to look out for. But these seem to be common throughout:
1. Superficial charm.
2. High intelligence (just hear me out).
3. Pathological egocentricity.
4. Manipulative behaviour.
5. Parasitic lifestyle (Cat Daddy nodded very emphatically when I told him about this one).
6. Callous lack of regard for humanity.
7. History of behavioural problems.
Louis Catorze ticks six of the above seven boxes. I’m sure you can figure out the anomalous one.
Here he is, pretending to be cute. Don’t believe him:
On Saturday it was the hottest day of the year in the U.K., beating the record which was set, erm, the previous Thursday.
Cat Daddy and I absolutely hated it, and cursed all the people who complained about the short-lived summer (yes, the heatwave is YOUR FAULT). But, for Louis Catorze, it was business as usual, and the poor little sod couldn’t understand why I didn’t want him on my lap. Likewise, I couldn’t understand why he DID want to be on my lap. So it was a day of cluelessness and misery all round.
We have, of course, read lots of advice regarding keeping cats cool during a heatwave: multiple water stations*, that kind of thing. However, following the success of his advice on how to upend a bin bag, Catorze would like to offer his own tips for dealing with a heatwave. No, none of them make logical sense. But then nothing about him ever does.
*We tried this with him during the last heatwave. He used his extra stations a grand total of 0 (zero) times.
1. Sleep in the part of the garden that traps the sun all day:
The shade is, in fact, my shadow whilst taking this photo. So not real shade at all.
2. Head for the hottest room in the house:
Why?
3. Snuggle up on a woollen cushion, underneath a fluffy winter blanket:
Also why?
If you are able to do all of the above whilst also drinking no water whatsoever, letting yourself shrivel into a dry husk that crumbles to dust when the wind blows your way, extra kudos to you.
Please, no more freak heatwaves. We want crisp air and pretty leaves and morning mist and pumpkins. PLEASE.
Cat Daddy and I have booked a course of music theory classes with our guitar teacher, to supplement our guitar lessons. We’ve just attended a Zoom taster session, with a view to starting the full set of classes properly the week after next.
As you are aware, Louis Catorze is an utter pest on Zoom calls. However, since it was a warm evening and there was mischief to be had outside, we were quite confident that he would have better things to do than annoy us.
He didn’t.
The little sod appeared during a very quiet part of the proceedings, when the teacher had put a piece of sheet music on the screen and we were all supposed to be working out the note values in silence.
Me, in my head: “Oh dear God, no.”
Catorze jumped onto the sofa and walked across me and past the screen to his papa’s lap, screaming himself senseless.
Me, out loud: “Oh dear God, no.”
Luckily we were all on mute, so nobody heard him. However, because Cat Daddy was wearing a white* shirt, it was very obvious to everyone on the call that there was a black cat clambering all over one of us, whilst the other was in fits of giggles. You didn’t need volume to figure all that out.
*Cat Daddy absolutely NEVER wears a white shirt. It’s as sure as night follows day that his shirt will be dark. If he had done as he normally does, it would have been much easier to conceal the marauding Catorzian form from everyone else on the Zoom call.
The worst part of it was that Steve, our guitar teacher’s massive ginger cat, sat beautifully behind his Cat Daddy during the session and didn’t make a sound. So cats CAN behave during Zoom calls, if they want to. Ours just doesn’t want to.
The last part of our lesson involved playing our guitars**. Catorze can’t stand the sound, so off he went. And, as soon as our lesson ended, the foxes started their stomach-churning, unearthly shrieking in the Zone Libre, and Catorze couldn’t resist going out to investigate.
**Sorry to Family Next Door and all our other neighbours; “House of the Rising Sun” has probably been the ruin of many an evening and weekend, thanks to us.
We now have a problem to resolve before the full course starts. Suddenly that lead-lined underground vault is no longer just a joke that I make.
His face shows exactly what he thinks of our guitar playing.
Louis Catorze wasn’t on my bed when I woke up a couple of mornings ago. I went downstairs, made my usual pot of green tea and read my book, but there was a cat-shaped space on my lap where Catorze would ordinarily be. This was highly unusual.
When I took a cup of tea up to Cat Daddy, I asked him whether he’d seen Catorze. He hadn’t. And, even though I ought to know better, my mind played every horrible scenario imaginable, with a particularly unpleasant one taking centre stage.
This was it:
These chaps live in the Zone Libre.
Cat Daddy and I drank our tea, listening out for the telltale “Ba-doomph” of Catorze’s preposterously loud feet on the floorboards. But there was nothing. The only sound we could hear was a magpie going absolutely ballistic outside.
Just as we had decided to get out of bed, the little sod appeared, screaming himself senseless. And, as if by magic, the magpie fell silent at the same time. Coincidence?
Catorze has given us so many false alarms (this one was the worst one) and we still don’t seem to have learned our lesson. I shall keep repeating the following mantra until it’s imprinted on my brain:
“WE MUST NOT WORRY ABOUT SA MAJ UNTIL HE HAS BEEN MISSING FOR AT LEAST THREE DAYS, OR UNTIL A NEIGHBOUR REPORTS A DISTURBANCE, WHICHEVER COMES FIRST.”
Ah, the joys of buying a new phone and seamlessly swapping all your shit over from the old one.
Well, when I say “joys”, I mean the opposite. And when I say “seamlessly”, I mean the opposite of that, too. Anyone who has ever upgraded their phone will know exactly how I feel right now.
For whatever reason, the magical transfer method where you hold one phone above the other and the fizzy mist takes care of everything*, didn’t work. So I had to do it all manually. And, after a few skirmishes and having to reset every single password I have ever had, the only thing from which I remained firmly barred was Le Blog.
*I’m not making this up. The data-transferring fizzy mist is an actual thing. IT’S INCREDIBLE.
Oui, Mesdames et Messieurs, you have read that correctly: I successfully managed to access the scammers’ delights that are my bank account and my PayPal, but Le Blog was not happy with me for attempting to log on using a new device.
(Oh, and I couldn’t phone anyone, either, nor could anyone phone me, but I didn’t really care about that. I’m one of those people who will watch the phone ring in my hand, then WhatsApp the person to say, “What do you want?”)
This prompted me to wonder what people might think if they didn’t hear Louis Catorze’s antics for a while? The most logical conclusion, of course, would be that the little sod had killed and eaten me, but how much time would elapse before you started to worry?
In the likely event of me still being alive when he started to eat me from the feet up, and the somewhat less likely event of me being able to send out a brief SOS on another social media platform before he managed to chew off my texting fingers, would this trigger the required emergency response? Or is this kind of thing just standard Catorze?
Eventually, through an arduous process with labyrinthine twists and turns too complicated to mention, I was able to successfully gain entry to the Promised Land of WordPress or JetPack or whatever it is. And it has since dawned on me that, if I wanted to signal for help, I would have to post something like, “I’m so lucky to have such an impeccably-behaved cat who always does as he’s told.” If people read those words, they would know that the end of the world was nigh.
Well, either that, or they’d think I had a new cat.
When it comes to hunting, Louis Catorze commits to it for a few days, then does nothing for months. This is both good (it’s not a daily occurrence) and bad (just when we think he’s grown too old for it, we have the shock of another headless mouse with the blood drained from its body).
The following took place some time ago but, as ever, I didn’t have a chance to post it in real time due to the copious amounts of other nonsense taking place:
2. Much smaller spider approaches, then clearly thinks, “Merde: how am I going to eat this thing?”
3. The pair of them tussle, whilst Catorze looks on.
4. Beetle manages to wriggle free of web. Catorze continues to watch.
5. Beetle falls off fence and into gap behind bench.
6. Catorze decides that now is the time to try and reach it, despite having been in a perfect position to do so before (and done nothing whatsoever about it).
7. Mission aborted. Well, not so much aborted as, erm, never actually begun in the first place.
8. Catorze recovers from his failure and goes back to having cuddles with his beloved papa.
Oh, Catorze, an apex predator you are not. Ok, so he may have caught a few mice last month, but this doesn’t makes him a hunter any more than going for a run makes me a runner.
Well, Louis Catorze? Aren’t you going to …… oh, forget it.
Our Cat-Disliking Friend came for dinner again at the weekend. And, since he has just moved to the area permanently, I expect we will be seeing more of him.
When I told him about Le Blog, and about the fact that refer to him as Cat-Disliking Friend, he revealed that he does actually like individual cats, and finds them “soothing” company, but just doesn’t like it when they shit in his garden. When I reminded him that at least cats have the grace to bury it, and that not only do we have to pick up after dogs but they roll around in fox shit*, he agreed that maybe cats weren’t so bad after all. Although he wasn’t able to explain exactly who these soothing cats were, and where I might find them. I think there might have been a sighting of one somewhere in 2018 but … does anyone know for sure?
*When Catorze’s sparring partner Oscar the dog was around, Dog Mamma would tell us the most awful fox shit stories. If you don’t know about dogs and the things they get up to with fox shit, you have dodged a bullet.
When CDF arrived, after considering whether to be aloof or obsequious, Louis Catorze eventually settled for, erm, full-on aggressive. For twenty minutes there was purring, headbutting and rolling so intense and relentless that I occasionally wondered if I should intervene (but I didn’t bother because it was funny). Then the little sod spotted movement in the area under the bird feeder, and went to assume the position for Rodent Duty.
He then spent the rest of the evening out at The Front, popping in occasionally through the open window to put his front paws on CDF’s legs and scream in his face. CDF would stroke him and say, “What do you want?” Mon gars, it’s been nine years and we still don’t know.
Overall, I think Catorze had it right in terms of the balance of “I’m going to annoy the merde out of you” and “Whatever, couldn’t give a merde”, whilst also ensuring that he didn’t miss out on man-love. Bien joué, Le Roi.
Whilst on their second bottle of wine (although the first was a magnum so, really, it was their third), the gentlemen mooted the idea of creating a Dark Web version of Le Blog, run by Cat Daddy. The following topics were mentioned for publication:
1. “What I REALLY think” (I can’t say I like the sound of this, whatever it might mean).
2. “Click here if you want any of Catorze’s leftover Gabapentin” (the fact that CDF wanted to take up this offer should, in itself, be a worry).
How do you feel about the idea of Le Dark Blog? Can you think of any material that you would like to see? Or do you think it’s an absolutely terrible idea which should never see the light of day?
louiscatorze.com 