Merde, merde and thrice merde: it’s back. And I managed to make it a whole lot worse when I brushed Louis Catorze:
There is a primary one and a secondary one this time.
Cat Daddy is cross with me for brushing him. But we can’t just stop doing it, since Catorze’s skin allergy issues are so much better when he’s regularly brushed. Plus I didn’t just brush that one spot (obviously); the fur came off from all over.
We really don’t know what to do now. In the past even the vet has been at a loss. No doubt there are tests and biopsies and whatever else that we could do to find out more, but Catorze isn’t the best patient, and I don’t feel it’s worth putting him through the stress for something that isn’t remotely bothering him. But it’s baffling. And it makes our “It must have been some other black cat” statement – the one we trot out whenever Catorze causes trouble in the neighbourhood – all that more difficult to believe.
So I’m going to leave it and see what happens. Well, I know exactly what will happen: the fur will grow back, then disappear, then grow back, then disappear, and this will go on forever, like some very annoying perpetual motion device.
Vampire fangs, reptilian tail, bright white bald patch … could this cat BE any weirder?
Louis Catorze, Cat Daddy and I live in Brentford TW8. We are just down the road from fancy Chiswick, W4, and just a hop across the river from fancy Kew, TW9, and fancy Richmond, KT2, so you’d be forgiven for thinking we were fancy too. We’re not. TW8 is a little rough around the edges and, when stupid shit happens in our town, people say, “That’s SO Brentford”. But we like it for all those reasons.
And we have a great football team. (No, Americans, AFC Richmond isn’t an actual team.)
Cat Daddy loves going out locally and bumping into people we know. I do, too, although it rather depends on where we are and what we’re doing. If we’re in the pub, fine. If I have unwashed hair and odd socks and I’m shuffling to the supermarket to pick up some paracetamol for my hangover, not so much.
After the shock of losing Luther, a supposedly street-smart cat, on the road when we lived in W13, upon moving to TW8 my only concern was for Catorze to be safe. And how lucky we were that Cat Daddy found us the perfect house.
We have a park at The Front, a playing field at The Back and very little traffic so, when Catorze is gone for the entire day, we don’t worry about what might have happened to him; after a few false alarms, we have learned to trust him to look after himself. We know how lucky we are not to have to worry about cars, coyotes, birds of prey, snakes, poisonous plants, marauding youths or nasty neighbourhood bully cats (well, there is one, and Catorze is it).
After being passed many times from foster home to foster home, Catorze spent a year with us at our previous place before we moved here. This was the first time in his life that he actually moved with his humans, and I like to think that, on some level, this registered with him.
We know that the little sod is happy here. I hope that you can tell this, too.
If that’s where the rainbow ends, I won’t be digging for that pot of gold, thank you.
Last year Cat Daddy planted some tarragon in the garden, and it didn’t go well. Look here and here if you want to know the reason why, although I expect you can guess.
An actual photo of what happened, if you don’t feel like looking at the links.
Not wishing to go through the same pain this year, Cat Daddy just let low-risk, plain grass grow in what used to be herb troughs. The idea of cultivating special grass for Louis Catorze to sit on, when there is a WHOLE FIELD FULL OF GRASS in the Zone Libre, is ridiculous. But such is the Catorzian way of life; nothing about it ever makes sense.
As you can see, Catorze has not set paw in either grass trough, not once. The grass remains utterly perfect and untouched, just like the tarragon wasn’t.
Oh.
To say that Cat Daddy is raging is a massive understatement. And he was even more furious when he discovered that Catorze had gone gadding about in the longer grass in the Zone Libre (evidence captured below), chugged down however-much of it and then left a massive pile of puke on one of our ruinously-expensive hand-woven Harris Tweed cushions. Unrepeatable Expletives of the Worst Kind poured like summer rain. And not a shite was giv’n by Sa Maj about any of it.
Cats are bastards. But you already knew that, didn’t you?
Following BinBagGate last week, I have two questions:
1. How?
2. Why?
The first of these is relatively easy to answer: we suspect that Louis Catorze actually tried to get into the bin bag – I KNOW – and, in thrashing around inside, somehow rolled it across the floor and tipped it over. The thought of this repulses me to my very core because, that very morning, I cuddled the little sod in bed.
Oui, Mesdames and Messieurs: I ALLOWED A CAT, WHO HAD JUST BEEN INSIDE A BIN BAG, INTO MY BED. I may, in my half-asleep state, even have felt his damp fur and assumed it were rainwater, not realising that it was actually bin juice. (I don’t recall if he felt wet or not. To be honest I daren’t think too hard about it.)
As for the second question, we are completely lost. Why would a noble monarch, the elder statesman of vampire Chats Noirs, want to climb inside a disgusting bin bag (other than because we wanted and expected him to leave it alone, of course)?
Cat Daddy and I will probably spend the rest of our lives trying to understand it. Catorze, however, having successfully traumatised me from this ridiculous escapade, is busily planning the next.
Pretending to cuddle me but secretly rubbing bin juice all over the sheets. Eurgh.
What is the most important thing to carry with you all the time?
Obviously cats aren’t burdened with having to remember their keys, phone and debit card every time they leave the house. They just go, knowing that they can come back and let themselves in whenever they want, in some cases having access via a security door that doesn’t allow interlopers through. Alternatively, in the absence of such a door, some human chump will let them in if they scream loudly enough, whatever time of the day or night.
I know. They have quite the cushy deal, don’t they?
So, when Louis Catorze leaves Le Château on ICB, he doesn’t have to remember anything other than his regular feline sass, which he has by the bucketload. Despite the fact that he’s easily the smallest cat on the block, predators and competitors keep their distance. Even when he goes into the Zone Libre, which is Foxy Loxy’s territory, we trust him to look after himself, and we have been more reassured than ever since the day that Cat Daddy saw three foxes take one look at Catorze and run away.
Catorze has never been bullied by another animal, nor has he been hurt in a fight (apart from that one time when he took a fight wound to the forehead and the vet told us that CATORZE WAS THE AGGRESSOR). We don’t know whether it’s confidence, a total lack of a sense of danger or some sort of creepy Chat Noir magic thing but, whatever he’s doing to keep himself safe, it’s serving him well.
How wonderful to have such an easy existence that the most taxing part is thinking of new and inventive ways to annoy people. If reincarnation is a thing, I want to come back as my own cat.
Cats: do you ever worry that your behaviour isn’t bad enough? Do your humans think you are a Good Boy/Girl? If so, here are Louis Catorze’s top tips for remedying this state of affairs:
1. Drag filled-to-capacity bin bag across hallway.
2. Tip bin bag over.
3. Allow bin bag to leak bin juice and various other unpleasant items that don’t belong on the floor.
4. Sit back and watch the fun as one human cleans up the mess, then accuses the other human of having caused it.
5. Your work is done. Have a nap.
Here is Catorze, demonstrating how to carry out point 5 – and just look at his silly little fang sticking out. You’re welcome.
Ever since MouseGate last week, eerie things have been afoot at Le Château.
Louis Catorze’s eating habits, which always shift a little during CST to account for the increased daylight hours, have gone completely haywire. In the mornings he still wakes me as if wanting food but, when we come downstairs and I plate up, he stares right through the food as if it’s not there. He is still fixated with the area under the sideboard where he caught that mouse, but I have also seen him on Rodent Duty by the cupboard under the sink.
Not only is the most expensive food on the planet failing to satisfy the little sod, but his latest victim-to-be is somewhere in our house. This is not great.
I imagine it’s only a matter of time before we discover a headless body. But where will it be? Will our cold-blooded killer display the trophy in his usual trophy cabinet of choice (the bottom of the stairs – spookily, exactly what his big brother Luther used to do)? Or will he deliver us a plot twist in the form of a surprise new location?
I was about to say “I can’t wait to find out” but I’m in no hurry.
We may or may not discover what it is that he’s staring at. I’m leaning more towards “may not”.
We have just had builders in, fortifying the battlements at Le Château.
As you know, Louis Catorze LOVES tradesmen – builders, gardeners, locksmiths, anyone, really – and one of his favourite things to do is annoy them and make their work last for longer. On the morning that the builders arrived he was in especially high spirits, bouncing around and screaming. But, as soon as they started work, he disappeared.
It’s not uncommon for Catorze to vanish during the day, especially when it’s summer and there is gadding about to be done in the Zone Libre. But, when his food remained uneaten from the morning – he’d screamed and screamed for it, circling my feet like a hungry shark, then walked away the minute I served it – I started to wonder where he was. It even occurred to me that he might have crept into the builders’ van. But, although they’ve been here before and are used to peculiar Catorzian ways, I was too embarrassed to ask them to check.
He won’t. But the builders certainly will, if he’s around.
At around 3pm, the little sod reappeared in the living room, screaming indignantly, which I took to be annoyance at the drilling and stomping (even though it has never bothered him before). I then found out that he’d been accidentally trapped in the guest bedroom the whole time. He’d shot out, screaming, when Cat Daddy went to put something in laundry basket. And he may well have been screaming for some time, but we wouldn’t have heard him over the builders’ noise.
Poor Catorze then needed an emergency session of Boys’ Club to recover – not because of the builders’ presence, but because he was cruelly kept away from them. It must have been like having a really good bottle of wine but no bottle-opener.
Would it be weird to invite the builders to Le next Club?
“Hark! Is that the sound of HOMMES DANS MON CHÂTEAU?”
Cat Daddy came home from his weekend away on Monday morning. Upon his return, Louis Catorze completely failed to acknowledge him, choosing, instead, to sleep on my lap. This kind of behaviour is utterly out of character for him. And there was no full moon, no Mercury Retrograde, no thinning of the veil, no Lucifer Rising … in fact, No Excuse Whatsoever.
Sometimes you just KNOW when something is afoot, don’t you? In Catorze’s case, seeing him on his best behaviour and/or choosing me over his favourite person, are good reasons for suspicion and general unease.
I messaged my friend to tell her that that the apocalypse was nigh, and she replied, “He’s up to something”.
I knew it. Ugh.
Later that afternoon, Catorze sat creepy-staring at a completely full bowl. I picked up the bowl, waved it under his nose to remind him of its fullness and set it back down again, but he remained statue-still and didn’t even flick a whisker. I then realised that he wasn’t creepy-staring at the bowl at all, but at an area just to the right of it.
In fact, what I was witnessing wasn’t creepy staring. Mesdames et Messieurs, THIS WAS RODENT DUTY.
Oh. Mon. Dieu.
After prowling suspiciously around the kitchen for some time, Catorze was rewarded for his efforts: he dived underneath the sideboard and emerged with a twitching mouse in his mouth. Cat Daddy and I watched, frozen in horror, as he licked it from top to toe, but I snapped out of my shock-trance and was able to whisk it away before he could leave his customary serial killer calling card (eating the head).
Classic suspicious prowling pose.
At the time of writing this, Catorze had barely eaten any food since the incident. I am now terrified that his taste for mouse blood is so irresistible that no other food will do.
Do we have a mouse infestation from which our hero cat is dutifully liberating us?
Had he brought the mouse in and saved it for later?
And, if this is the kind of caper that takes place with no celestial or magical intervention, what on earth can we expect WITH said intervention?
Catorze knows the answers. But I don’t imagine he’ll tell us.
Scour the news for a story. Consider how it connects to your life. Write about that.
(The original brief was for an “entirely uninteresting” story, but I ignored that bit.)
It was International Cat Day yesterday. We didn’t bother telling Louis Catorze because he already thinks every day is all about him, so it wouldn’t have changed a thing.
On the morning of International Cat Day, Cat Daddy’s brother sent me this picture (below). Having heard all about Catorze’s penchant for gadding about in storms, he asked me if I wanted one of these contraptions for Christmas (and I think he was only half-joking):
Yeah, I’d be pissed off, too.
Oui, Mesdames et Messieurs, this really is a cat-dryer. A dryer for cats. And, somehow, it made it into the Daily Telegraph.
Now, since trying to put Catorze into his transportation pod for vet visits is quite the Herculean labour, I don’t imagine that putting him into a dryer would be any easier. And the vet visits are only once a month, whereas the storm gadding-about takes place whenever it rains, multiple times per downpour, and often through the night, too. Do I* fancy Greco-Roman wrestling Catorze into a dryer that many times a day/night? Non.
*Let’s face it: it would be me, wouldn’t it, and not Cat Daddy?
Cat Daddy is concerned about the environmental impact of the device, especially since Catorze is so small. And he has a point. Would putting a tiny cat into a dryer be the equivalent of switching on an oven just to roast one potato?
Whilst we debate these intellectual and highbrow issues, here is Catorze, fresh from – yes you’ve guessed it – gadding about in yet another storm, and taking a drink from the water pooled on the table. And look at the army of birds in the background, who daren’t come down to feed until the apex predator has moved his arse:
Must keep hydrated in readiness for the next gad-about.
Cat Daddy is away at a festival, so it’s just me and Louis Catorze at home. No, I wasn’t tempted to go. And, after accidentally clicking on a link that was a video of a Glastonbury toilet, I knew that I would not attend any outdoor festival, EVER, as long as I live.
Testing out the camping gear before his papa’s departure.
My normal television viewings – which were temporarily halted on holiday as there was only one TV, so we had to compromise – have now resumed. Yesterday, when I was watching one of those Prime Video programmes with the obligatory ads that you can’t forward through, there was an ad for Wisdom Panel. At first I thought, “Why on earth would they advertise that now, in the middle of a show about bloodthirsty serial killers [or ghosts, or sharks, or whatever it was]?” but the fact that I remember the ad and am now writing about it, yet I’m unable to remember the programme that I was watching in the first place, shows that they have their marketing exactly right.
Wisdom Panel is an organisation who does, erm, DNA ancestry for pets. Oui, Mesdames et Messieurs: for the kingly sum of £89.99, you can gain “valuable insights on their genetic health, traits, ancestry and more”.
I’m curious. But not £89.99 curious.
We already know that Catorze is part-vampire, part-demon, part-alien and part-cryptozoological critter yet to be discovered. We don’t need a test to find this out. Wisdom Panel also claims to allow us to customise our pet’s healthcare according to its findings but, if what we already do for him isn’t “customised care”, I don’t know what is.
Regretfully, where the system comes crashing down for us cat freaks is that, in order to conduct the test, we have to rub a swab (just like the Covid ones) between the animal’s cheek and gum line for fifteen seconds. Now, this may not seem like a long time, but anyone who has ever had to pin down a screaming, hissing, writhing hell-beast of a cat to administer their meds, will understand that this just won’t work.
And, as if to add insult to injury, the Wisdom Panel site has two videos of well-behaved doggies sitting perfectly still whilst their humans swab them. There are no videos of anyone swabbing a cat.
So Cat Daddy and I will be putting our £89.99 to better use – for instance, buying more alcohol to help us deal with all Catorzian capers. I think we’re gonna need a bigger drinks trolley.
Waiting to accost the postman as he delivers the swabbing kit.
It seems I’m trying to attain the world record for the greatest number of surgeries undertaken by a human being. I have had the following, so far, in this order, with the last one only last week:
⁃ An osteotomy
⁃ A disc fusion
⁃ A myomectomy
⁃ Erm, a shoulder thing (can’t remember the medical name for it)
⁃ An emergency appendectomy
⁃ A hysteroscopy, a transcervical resection of fibroid and an endometrial biopsy (all three together)
Perhaps Louis Catorze has inherited his sickly constitution from me? That said, given that he’s had so many medical treatments himself, it’s strange that he should have zero empathy for people who are sick or convalescing. If I sneeze, and he happens to be on my lap, he scowls contemptuously and runs off, doing the bird-chatter noise as he goes. And he seems to save up his worst behaviour for when I’m recovering from something, as this and this will demonstrate.
Anyway, the most recent three-in-one extravaganza was, in actual fact, quite short and straightforward, so I was home the same morning. Surprisingly, Catorze could not have been more affectionate. And his fur was super-soft, the way it always is when he’s been in the care of a chat-sitteur before turning to merde again when we resume duties, so it was wonderfully therapeutic for me to be able to relax on the sofa, stroking and cuddling him.
All good, non?
Well … NON.
Since I didn’t have my wits fully about me as I recovered from the general anaesthetic, I forgot that Catorze is just like a toddler: a too-long sleep and insufficient tiring-out during the day mean torment after dark.
After sleeping on my lap all day, he went absolutely berserk that night. And the fact that there was a storm outside not only unlocked an extra level of psycho in him, but also meant that he was constantly rolling his cold, wet body onto us, then going back out to re-wet so that he could do it again. And again. AND AGAIN.
The next morning, he was perfectly dry and back to being sweet again. As long as I live, I shall never understand this animal.
Are you one of the chosen ones whose cats are nice to you when you’re ill? Please comment with some uplifting stories which will restore my faith in catkind.
A couple of nights ago, when I was sitting in the living room with Louis Catorze on my lap, Cat Daddy walked into the room and said, “There’s a huge full moon outside.”
Not even a second after those words had left him, Catorze jumped off my lap, ran to the window and headbutted the shutters.
Cat Daddy: “He knows, doesn’t he?”
Before I could stop him, Cat Daddy had opened the window and let Catorze out at The Front. He disappeared for about twenty minutes but then returned to sit on the window sill and look out at his royaume, with the full moon shining down on him. Oui, Mesdames et Messieurs: HE WAS CHARGING UP. If you believe in the power of crystals and charging them up under a full moon, then why not cats (especially this one)?
However, if you think that full moon madness means we are spared from any nonsense at times of other moon phases, you would be mistaken. Here is an old photo of the little sod demonstrating that, moon or no moon, he is perfectly able to power up for mayhem and mischief anytime:
A charged-up Catorze is like when Banner transforms into the Incredible Hulk.
We all know that Louis Catorze can tell the time; look here, here, here and here for examples of when he has proven this. And, after a few days of living with our chat-sitteur whilst we were in Scotland, he worked out what time her alarm went off and ensured that he started the screaming just beforehand.
However … are they actually capable of altering the passage of time? Or is that a step too far, even for a black vampire cat with demon/alien ancestry?
If you have ever experienced any of these, could the cat(s) have been responsible?
⁃ A peaceful night uninterrupted by a cat – if, indeed, you are lucky enough to experience one of these at all – despite the fact that you live with a cat (Feels Like*: 60 minutes, maximum).
⁃ Being TUC with a cup of tea on a cold, miserable work day morning (Feels Like: 3-5 minutes to you, longer to the cat).
⁃ The vet administering any kind of pill to your cat (Feels Like: 0.4 seconds).
*In the U.K., they often tell us the temperature but then add “Feels Like: [a different number altogether].” We Brits can only really relate to temperatures below 0°C and those above 27°C, so telling us that this morning it’s 10°C but feels like 5°C means absolutely nothing.
And, if any of these are familiar to you, perhaps you have unknowingly fallen victim to the little sods messing with time in the opposite direction:
⁃ A fitful night interrupted repeatedly by a cat (Feels Like: forever, or longer if it’s a full moon).
⁃ Being TUC when you’re desperate for the loo (Feels Like: variable depending on weight of cat and distance from loo, although even gossamer-light cats can make one paw exert horrendous pressure when it pushes on your abdomen).
⁃ You administering, or attempting to administer, that same pill that appeared to take the vet 0.4 seconds (Feels Like: forever³).
Little sod.
I once had a deeply religious colleague who would say that the feeling of time speeding up, with weeks appearing to pass like days, was a sign of Armageddon approaching. Cats are known Masters of the Dark Arts, so why WOULDN’T they hypnotise both us and time itself through some unseen power?
Where will this end: in a universal feline uprising? Or, as my ex-colleague predicted, in Armageddon? Are they even different things?
“Feeling bored, might press button later, IDK.” (Picture from twitter.com.)
louiscatorze.com 