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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.

  • Le long voyage vers la nuit

    Louis Catorze’s trip to the vet on Friday gave us a few surprises. In typical Catorzian style, he was loud. However, we weren’t quite expecting the, erm, VARIETY of screams uttered when we did the Walk of Horror across the park. Even Cat Daddy flinched at one of them and said, “Eurgh. That’s not a good sound.”

    During the ten-minute walk (although it felt a lot longer), we were treated to the following:

    1. His normal screams (the ones that could strip paint).

    2. A sort of hiss-scowl hybrid (the sound that vampires make when you stick a crucifix in their face).

    3. A strangulation-type sound.

    4. An underwater strangulation-type sound.

    5. A goaty bray.

    As ever, Catorze screamed himself senseless all the way through his appointment, and was chillingly silent after that. It usually takes a couple of days for the Steroid Psycho to kick in. However, on this occasion (most likely because Cat Daddy was going out and I was home alone), Catorze decided to start straight away.

    He was in and out all night, stopping only to batter at the shutters so that I would let him out at The Front (denied) and, when I decided to take myself to bed to get away from him, he followed me upstairs, sat on my chest and creepy-stared at me.

    Since it’s a full moon in a couple of days’ time, and a BLUE MOON at the end of August, I don’t see this getting better anytime soon. Bastard cat.

    An actual photo of Friday night’s shenanigans.

  • Au revoir, adieu, auf Wiedersehen, bonne nuit

    What strategies do you use to maintain your health and well-being?

    In addition to enjoying the best food (Orijen and Cool Cat Club) and taking plenty of exercise in and beyond the grounds of Le Château, Louis Catorze stays well with regular trips to his royal physician. Sadly, she is about to leave her post to go travelling, and today is her last day.

    Cat Daddy and I had originally arranged to visit her, sans Catorze, with a thank-you card and a gift. However, because the little sod has decided that now is the time to start scratching, we will have to take him as well, for his steroid shot. So what was supposed to be a meeting of thanks and good wishes will now be a(nother) full-on fight to the death peppered with screaming, but at least the vet will be able to tuck into our champagne afterwards. She’ll need it.

    The perfect card for a vet.

    If you are a long-term follower of Le Blog, you may recall that Catorze’s previous vet, from the same practice, also left her job to go travelling. I don’t know whether this is coincidence or whether taking a year off work is the only remedy for the stress of being Catorze’s royal physician. It’s the former, non?

    We wish Charlotte the best of luck on her healing journey travels, and we hope that this is an “Au revoir” and not an “Adieu”. We are looking forward to meeting her successor, although hopefully it won’t be this vet.

    Number of vets forced to flee the country to date: 2 (two).

  • Devinez qui est de retour, encore de retour

    Cat Daddy and I returned home on Sunday evening.

    Upon arrival we were greeted by the chat-sitteur, who regaled us with tales of Louis Catorze’s almost-exemplary* behaviour during her stay at Le Château. He made a particular impression on her boyfriend, who declared that he’d “never met a cat like this before”. Yup. We know the feeling.

    *This was the “almost” bit.

    However, Catorze himself was very conspicuous in his absence from the welcoming party, choosing, instead, to sun himself on his outdoor cat plinths (yes, PLINTHS, plural – he fits perfectly well onto one but insists on lying across two pushed together). At one point I glanced outside, we locked eyes AND HE YAWNED AND WENT BACK TO SLEEP.

    When we went outside to marvel at how much the garden had grown, we thought the little sod would surely come and say hello then.

    Me: “Louis!”

    [Silence, tumbleweed, crickets.]

    Cat Daddy “Louis!”

    Catorze, very feebly: “Mwah.”

    Chat-sitteur: “Louis!”

    Catorze: “MWAHHHHH!”

    Not only did she receive the most rapturous “Mwahhh!” of all of us, but her voice seemed to galvanise him into action and he finally moved his lazy arse in our direction. He let us cuddle him, briefly, then went back to sunbathing on his plinths.

    He is not cross with us for leaving him; that would imply that he actually gave a shit. This is just classic Catorze. And it’s also classic CST; the little sod spent so much time outside on the day of our return that he missed the arrival of – and the chance to accost – Lee driving the Fig van from Ocado.

    I have another month-and-a-bit at home at him before I return to the company of moody teenagers. At least they will seem very polite in comparison.

    Typical: the one time that I attempt to photograph him across both plinths, he squeezes his arse onto one.

  • Se pavaner la tête haute

    Who is your favourite historical figure?

    It won’t be a surprise to learn that it’s Louis XIV, the Sun King.

    On the other hand, what may be surprising is the number of common points that Sa Majesté Louis Catorze, Le Roi Soleil, shares with his human counterpart:

    1. Becoming king at the age of four: coincidentally, this was also Catorze’s age when he stormed Le Château and seized the crown in July 2014.

    2. Believing that the universe revolves around him: well, naturellement.

    3. Overseeing the administrative and financial organisation of his realm: see previous point.

    4. Being of diminutive stature: both the human and the feline Sun Kings were/are teeny-tiny.

    5. Enjoying a string of military victories: although point 4 might suggest otherwise, our little Roi has never shied away from a fight. Nor has he ever lost one, despite facing much larger and more numerous adversaries.

    6. Annexing key territories: Le Château, The Front, the Zone Occupée and the Zone Libre (both of which form The Back) are all part of the wider Catorzian empire.

    7. Being a keen linguist: our Roi is fluent in English, French, cat, bird, fox and squirrel (although we’re pretty sure he only knows swear words in the last four).

    Catorze does, however, have two distinct differences from Louis XIV:

    1. Believing himself to be God’s representative on earth: trust me, whatever force birthed him is/was about as ungodly as can possibly be. If he’s not the devil himself, he is certainly the WORK of the devil … and he knows it.

    2. A liking for the ladies: erm … non.

    Although Catorze struts around loving himself on a daily basis, naturellement when I really, really wanted a picture of him doing so, he wouldn’t comply. So here, below, are my two favourite old photos of him which paint an accurate picture of his kingly arrogance.

    The first is from 2017 and, contrary to first impressions, no digi-trickery is involved. I really did lay out an enormous French flag, borrowed from my classroom, and plonk Catorze on top of it. And I happened to get lucky with this shot, open mouth and all:

    “Pledge your allegiance to MOI.”

    In the second photo, from February this year, he was probably looking towards the sound of a squirrel scrabbling around outside the window, but I like to pretend he was basking in the glow of his own majesty:

    The first part of being a king is all about the body language.

    The proverb “A cat may look at a king” suggests that cats are lower in status. I think all cats know that this is nonsense.

  • Cat People (Putting Out Fire*)

    *Most likely because a cat started it.

    Dogs or cats?

    A colleague and I were once talking about dating. No, not the two of us dating each other, but about dating as a general concept and, more specifically, what people ought to reveal about themselves on the first date. I added, “Most blokes would be off like a shot when I told them I like cats.”

    When faced with a comment like this, the only polite response is, “Don’t be silly, of course they wouldn’t” or some such thing. But, instead, he said, “Yup. And quite rightly so.”

    Oh dear.

    Does society see us as extensions of the animals that we like? Do others think dog people are loyal, affectionate and obliging? And, cat people, are we regarded as unreliable, aloof and unhinged?

    Even Cat Daddy, who likes cats, has been known to make this judgement. If a friend of mine, whom he hasn’t met before, is due to visit, and I tell him that the friend is “a cat person”, he makes a face. And, if I add that I met this friend via an online cat forum, he suddenly remembers that he has a very important appointment, somewhere far away, which happens to coincide with the friend’s visit.

    Having met a lot of cat people, both in person and online, I have to admit that most of us are a bit weird. But, usually, it’s in a good way. I know that it sounds dismissive and clichéd to say, “We’re not ALL crazy!”, especially if you see some of the petty yet vicious arguments that kick off on online cat forums (usually between Brits and Americans, usually triggered by a debate about whether or not cats should be allowed outdoors). But … well … we’re NOT all crazy. Despite the fact that I named my cat Sa Majesté Louis Catorze, Le Roi Soleil, I really am one of the more normal ones. And, the more cat people that Cat Daddy meets, the more he is coming to realise this, too.

    So: dogs or cats? If you’re a friend, you won’t need to ask because you will already know the answer. If strangers ask, in order to distance myself from those complete freaks whose behaviour is embarrassing (YOU KNOW WHO YOU ARE), I will probably say, “Both”. It’s not an outright lie, because I like the IDEA of dogs; I am super-cordial when I meet them, and I don’t like it when people are mean to them. But do I want to share a house with one? Not really.

    That said, there are times when I don’t want to share a house with Louis Catorze, either. But, now that he’s in, we have no idea how to get him out (and we’re scared that he might do something bad to us if we tried). Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

    “C’est MON Château.”

  • Oh la vache!

    What bothers you and why?

    Bugs. The ones I can see, the ones that I can’t, the ones that are there AND the ones that aren’t.

    The Scottish midges have, despite everyone’s warnings, been scarce so far. The kamikaze horseflies, on the other hand, have left life-changing scars. They like the taste of Cat Daddy better than me so, that one time when we forgot to apply bug repellent whilst out walking, my job was to walk behind him and swat them as they landed.

    Cat Daddy didn’t like being hit without warning, so he made me alert him to each incoming swat. I wonder what observers might have thought, watching me trailing him and shouting out body part names before hitting them? “Left shoulder!” [Thump!] “Lower back!” [Thump!] We could have done with Louis Catorze who, despite being useless in many ways, is an excellent fly-hunter.

    We really have struck gold.
    Cat Daddy bought me two swimsuits and made me pack both. I do not – and never did – intend to swim.

    In its bedroom of our second week holiday let. we were greeted by this fine individual:

    Where’s Theseus when you need him?

    When I told Cat Daddy that I wouldn’t be able to sleep under this beast, he thought it was because I was scared of cows. I’m not. I’m not even scared of this one falling off and impaling us as we sleep. My fear was the possible bugs living on/in its fur (do cows – including fake ones – have fur?), which could drop onto us during the night.

    If you’ve seen that meme about not wanting to swim in a pool containing one dead body, yet happily swimming in the ocean which contains countless dead bodies, perhaps you’ll think I am the idiot for not wanting to sleep under a cow that may contain bugs, yet happily sharing a bed with Catorze whose fur definitely contains countless bugs? Over the years there have been all sorts of things deposited on/in my bed, having been transported by cats. Surely nothing residing on/in the cow could be worse than THIS horror (not an actual bug but still awful)?

    In the end I slept upside-down on the bed with my feet at the head end but, when Cat Daddy came to bed later and made me right myself, I sleepily did so. I wasn’t aware of any bugs during the night, although I guess that’s the point of the urban legend about swallowing spiders in your sleep; apparently we all do it, but we don’t realise.

    Catorze and the chat-sitteur are still having a marvellous time together, and she has only had one complaint about him so far: he was all over her, but dropped her like a hot stone when her boyfriend visited, resuming his affections only after his departure. I did warn her that this would happen, but she had assumed that reports of Catorze’s man-love, as with all events featured in Le Blog, were served with a helping of poetic licence. Now, of course, she understands that I am producing a memoir, not a work of fiction.

    Here is Catorze, snuggling up to her in bed. I shall refrain from mentioning what may, or may not, be hidden in his fur:

    Bastard cat.

  • Si vous voulez écrire, ayez des chats

    The above is a quote from Aldous Huxley. Here he is with his cat, Limbo, which is possibly the best cat name ever (apart from Sa Majesté Louis Catorze, Le Roi Soleil, of course):

    Picture from twitter.com.

    I brought a handful of books on holiday (although no Huxley this time) and am about to start reading my second one. Just like the final story of the Stephen King anthology that I read last week, it involves a writer who retreats to some remote location in the hope of creative inspiration for their work – although, weirdly, I didn’t choose them for that reason and only found out after arriving here that both had the same idea.

    For me, however, life isn’t imitating art. In fact, it’s quite the opposite, although this is probably just as well, since every story with this premise has always ended badly. I am in one of the most beautiful places on earth, with unlimited time and no other commitments, yet, without Louis Catorze, I just can’t write.

    This post took me multiple drafts and redrafts, and it’s hard to know whether the final result is what I want because there is no real story. Not even the WordPress daily prompts help that much. When I’m at home, I almost don’t want to look at them because they give me too many ideas for the time and space available. Here, they take me halfway there but then I don’t know how to finish.

    Although Cat Daddy will never admit it, Catorze IS my creative inspiration and we miss the little sod.

    Meanwhile, in a parallel universe somewhere down south, Catorze has been impeccably behaved since we left. And I know that, when we return, unlike most cats, who are either delighted to see their humans again or upset with them for leaving, he will be all over his papa and indifference itself towards me. Bastard cat.

    Our chat-sitteur sent us these last week. What can I say?

    Rolling sluttily.
    Pretending to be starved of love (lies).

  • Le boucher de Brentford

    What’s the most delicious thing you’ve ever eaten?

    *WARNING: CONTAINS GRAPHIC DESCRIPTION OF MURDER AND DEATH*

    I would love to be able to answer this question with “Jambon de Bayonne” or “organic aged Comté from the local cheese deli”, giving the message that Louis Catorze is a cultured gentleman with a sophisticated palate. However, these days it’s more like, erm, mouse heads and blood.

    I know.

    When we first noticed that Catorze’s kills appeared to be sans tête, both Cat Daddy and I hoped that the heads had just become detached during battle. Obviously the thought of finding them in some unexpected place wasn’t very pleasant, but it seemed fractionally less awful than the thought of our boy biting them off and eating them.

    However, when the little sod caught his last mouse, Cat Daddy witnessed him start to tuck into the head AND lick up the blood. Oh. Mon. Dieu.

    Before you say, “But it’s their natural instinct”, I know this. What I can’t reconcile in my head is how cats can be so sweet and affectionate, yet transform themselves into killing machines in an instant. They’re such two-faced shites.

    I also fail to understand how Catorze can happily munch mouse heads, with teeth and skulls and everything, yet refuse a piece of fillet steak if it’s too chewy, or if it’s medium rather than medium-rare.

    Having just read a book in which the zombie virus is spread by the cute, friendly doggie who chews on infected corpses and then goes around licking people’s faces, I now don’t want Catorze on my bed. In fact, I don’t even want him living in my house. But at least he’s someone else’s problem right now, headless mice and all.

    And anyway, how does one overthrow an established monarchy? (I’m not joking: we Brits want to know.)

    Taking a break after yet another murderous rampage.

  • Le col du chat

    Remember Boots and his wardrobe of Chelsea collars? Well, it’s been around four months since Sa Maj gifted six collars to his ami, and the big sod has already lost three of them.

    Blue is the colour … or, rather, it was.

    I know that not everyone thinks collars are a good idea for cats, but Boots really, really needs one. As well as the bell warning his stepbrother Antoine of his arrival (and giving Antoine a chance to take cover), the collar itself differentiates Boots from his doppelgänger, Vic. Most of us prefer to know whether it’s our cat or his identical Neighbourhood Nemesis out there … apart from me, of course. I’ll take every scrap of similarity that I can, because it all supports me with my “It must have been some other black cat” get-out-of-jail card.

    A visual representation of all the collars lost by Boots so far this year. (Photo from eBay.co.uk.)

    So … where are the missing collars? Are they scattered around the badlands of South London like markers for some weird orienteering challenge? Or are they all piled up together in one secret place, ready for some hapless resident to find (before spending the rest of their life wondering what on earth happened)?

    Does your cat lose collars? And can they beat Boots’ record of 9,063 collars lost to date?

    Here he is, showing off the third one before it went missing:

    “Chelsea till I die.”

    And again, not giving a shite about his mamma’s collar consternation:

    “What do you mean, where’s my collar? Where’s YOUR collar?”

    EDIT: Since writing this post, one of the collars was found in his house, behind the sofa. Is he managing to wriggle out of them? Or – gasp – is he somehow scrapping with neighbourhood interlopers INDOORS?

  • Les chats sauvages

    Describe your most memorable holiday.

    I have zero memory for places I’ve been to, so my most recent holiday will have to do. And it’s so recent that, erm, we’re still here! Cat Daddy and I are in the same part of the Scottish Highlands that we visited last year, and I’m writing this post whilst looking out over exquisite scenery and drinking tea.

    Grey but still beautiful.

    I have brought Stephen King’s “If It Bleeds” as part of my cheery holiday reading arsenal. Mine is the English version, but I prefer the look of the French one:

    Oh …

    One of our friends has very kindly agreed to live with Louis Catorze during our absence. When she came for the orientation last week, he galloped straight past me and ran to greet her, up-tailed and screaming. And he was happily snuggled up on her lap within a couple of hours of her moving in. Bastard cat.

    Packing all the essentials.

    Cat Daddy says he’s loving being away from Catorze. That said, we could be disturbed by felines of a different kind, if it’s true that panthers have emerged from, erm, wherever they have been hiding, and have been seen in Scotland. I would love to live here, although the thought of wild panthers would make me worried for Catorze’s safety. Would we have to supervise his outdoor ICB, for fear of him becoming panther food? Would they recognise him as their own kind and take him into their fold? In fact … would we even be able to differentiate between his form and that of a marauding panther, if looking from afar? If you have a cat, you will know that the same one can look very different in different photos, depending on the angle and the setting. Catorze can look like a regal, velvety thoroughbred in one picture and, in the next, like something that the wind blew in from a nearby landfill site.

    Just before we came on holiday, I saw a black cat at the end of the garden, atop our upended fire pit. There was plenty around to give a sense of scale, but somehow this cat looked large to me and I thought he might be an interloper.

    I stared at his chiselled face, which was quite unlike Catorze’s ball head, and he stared back at me. When I approached to take a closer look, he jumped down from his perch and bounded towards me with the inimitable “Mwah! Mwahhhh!” that could only belong to Le Roi.

    We black cat people pride ourselves on knowing our own cats. So … what just happened? Was this one of those veil-crossing moments, like scrying in a mirror or crystal ball, when your own reflection starts to warp and look weird to you? Or was it like doing magic mushrooms, when everything looks weird to you?

    Either way, the “It must have been some other black cat” excuse, which I use whenever there’s trouble, could actually be more convincing than I originally thought?

    Here are some of the very different looks of Catorze, which prove my point perfectly. Who would ever imagine that these were the same cat? In fact, who would ever imagine that some of these were even a cat?

    “Aww, what a cute little kitty!”
    “Is he … in that box?”
    “What even IS that?”
    “That’s enough now.”

  • L’herbe mortelle

    What are your daily habits?

    In the summer months, they mostly involve efforts to escape the evil pollen: lighting beeswax candles, swallowing antihistamines, applying eye drops, that kind of thing. Fun! However, I haven’t had much success, and this is mostly Louis Catorze’s fault. If you share a house with an animal who goes outdoors during allergy season, any avoidance measures taken are rendered utterly useless.

    Earlier in the week, I was lying on the sofa with my head on Cat Daddy’s lap, watching television. Catorze clattered through the cat flap, fresh from offending the parakeets / pigeons / foxes / squirrels / whoever, and, naturellement, he was displeased to see his favourite place occupied.

    There would have been room for both of us to coexist happily, but Catorze wanted his papa’s lap to himself. So, to send me packing, he shook his horrible, polleny fur into my face.

    This was how the sequence of events unfolded:

    1. Toxic pieces of invisible plant weaponry sting my eyes like acid.

    2. I scream, sit up and instinctively rub my eyes.

    3. Scream startles little sod, sending him clattering back out through the cat flap.

    4. Cat Daddy: “Aww! You scared him!”

    5. Me: “But … my eyes!”

    6. Cat Daddy: “We were about to start Boys’ Club, and you ruined it!”

    7. Silence, tumbleweed, crickets for remainder of evening.

    After that incident, I was determined to step up the Catorzian coiffure and brush him as much as possible especially if he’d just come in from outside.

    My first attempt was as follows:

    1. Brush Catorze, stupidly choosing the hottest time of the day to do this.

    2. Brushing makes me too hot.

    3. Switch on fan.

    4. Fan blows polleny fur all over the room.

    5. Some of the polleny fur settles on my face and sticks to my lip balm, giving me a sort of poisonous cat hair moustache.

    6. I splutter and spit, going “Pthuh pthuh pthuh” trying to get rid of moustache.

    7. My “Pthuh pthuh pthuh” startles Catorze, who takes off outside to get all polleny again.

    8. The whole tragic cycle repeats itself, I guess until grass pollen season is over.

    I’m pretty sure that, even if I locked myself in a lead-lined vault – the same one that I would like to lock him in, to stop him from going out and causing trouble – Sa Maj would teleport in, all covered in pollen, roll all over me before teleporting back out again. And he would take the vault key with him, leaving me trapped to ensure the continued sanctity of Boys’ Club.

    I give up. Is there any point in trying to do anything with him around? (Thank you to our recent guest for these fabulous photos of the little sod.)

    Off to seek more pollen to poison his maman.
    Puffing out his stupid fur to maximise pollen absorption.

  • Personne ne me contrôle; je suis incontrôlable

    It’s our last guitar lesson of the term tomorrow, and we are going to take our teacher out for a drink. We really love our lessons, so we will miss them during the summer break. We are not sure that our teacher will feel the same, but tant pis.

    When I was practising the guitar recently, Louis Catorze pushed the door open from the other side. Usually he would pitter-patter in immediately afterwards, tail aloft and screaming, but this time he didn’t. He peered nervously into the room, then rethought his decision to come in.

    It was a hot day so I imagine he was coming in for water. And it seems that my guitar-playing is so bad that he would rather shrivel into a brittle husk than endure the sound even for a short time whilst having a drink.

    We mentioned this to our guitar teacher at the following lesson, and he told us that his cat, Steve, “wasn’t a fan” of the guitar, either. Oh dear. It doesn’t fill us with hope to know that Steve doesn’t even like proper music produced by a proper guitarist. Our noises – it would be very flattering indeed to call it “music” – must feel, to poor, sensitive Catorze, like hot pokers being shoved into his ears.

    Our teacher then told us that one of his musician friends recorded special music for dogs. (Stupidly, I asked him to send me the Spotify links so that I could listen, and he said, “Erm, you won’t be able to hear any of it.”) He also added that one of the songs on the Sergeant Pepper album contained a dog whistle sound, and our later research revealed that it was A Day In The Life. Apparently John Lennon chose to add the sound to the song just after the 5:00 mark, to wind up dog owners. I wonder what – or, rather, who – gave him that idea?

    I KNEW IT. (Picture from twitter.com.)

    I’d rather he’d put in some Judas Priest-esque subliminal message which, when played backwards, declares that hell awaits those who don’t pick up their dog shit, but I guess you can’t have everything.

    We don’t have a dog, obviously, but we asked Dog Daddy to try it out on Disco, and this was the result:

    1. Song was played.

    2. Disco looked up.

    3. The End.

    I also tried it on Catorze, and his reaction was as follows:

    1. Song was played.

    2. Catorze yawned.

    3. The End.

    The second experiment proves one of two things: either cats can’t hear dog whistles, or Catorze shares his mamma’s view on A Day In The Life. I know that this is not popular opinion but, much as I enjoy The Beatles, I find that particular song a bit Emperor’s New Clothes. (Herman, if you’re reading this, just breathe deeply, have some ice cream and pretend I never said any of it.)

    Here is Disco, looking cute:

    “Four thousand holes in Brentford Middlesex …”
    “Some holes were big and some were small … we know he dug them all …”

    And here is Catorze, pictured not long after I played him the song. I guess this is one way of ensuring that I don’t play the guitar:

    Catorze is more of a Simon and Garfunkel fan. The Sound of Silence, merci s’il vous plaît?

  • Il porte un tutu framboise

    If cats had taglines*, what would yours be?

    *I thought this said “tagines” at first, and was about to reply, “Clay, glazed, not cast iron and DEFINITELY not plebby aluminium.”.

    Well, it’s not so much a tagline as an earworm. I apologise in advance for the fact that, after you read this, you, too, will be singing it all day. With these lyrics, not with the original ones.

    Since Louis Catorze is so fond of sleeping on a tutu, we have bought him one of his own. This was partly because we would do anything for our boy and, if it’s a tutu he wants, a tutu he shall have. But it was mainly so that we could laugh about it. And the choice of pink was Cat Daddy’s idea, “because it would look nice against his black fur” (?).

    I even made up a song about it, although Cat Daddy didn’t quite share my enthusiasm:

    Me: “He’s got a raaaasp-berry tutu, the kind you find o-on A-m-aaa-zon …”

    Him: “That is SACRILEGE.”

    Me: “Raaaasp-berry tutu, and if he were human, he would put the thing on.”

    Him: “…”

    Me: “Raaaasp-berry tutu, I think he looooo-o-oves it …”

    Him: “Please stop now.”

    Here is Catorze (below), enjoying his new bed, and just look at his silly little tail tucked into the mesh in the second shot. Should we buy him a different colour – and create a new song – for each season?

    “He was going with the flow in a fine Château
    His name was Louis Catorze …”
    “I told him where to go when he slept on all my clothes
    But he just ignored me, of course …”

  • Car je suis libre, rien ne m’inquiète

    Merci à Dieu: it’s the summer holidays. I was looking forward to relaxing, but Louis Catorze has other ideas and has been absolutely wired, burning off about 3% of his excess energy on ICB and using the other 97% on us throughout the night.

    One night he was especially beastly, waking us countless times by screaming, bouncing on the bed and rolling his cold, drenched body onto us. Cat Daddy is pretty sure that one of the screams meant, “It’s raining!” and another was, “I’m bored!” We haven’t yet worked out the other 753 screams.

    It’s quite clear that our cat just isn’t normal but, for whatever reason, Cat Daddy blames ME for everything. “Have you noticed that he mostly screams on your side of the bed? That’s because you give him attention. And don’t say you don’t. I’ve SEEN you stroke him at 4am.”

    As well as thoroughly enjoying the summer heat, Catorze is having a whale of a time gadding around in the summer rainstorms. As I have mentioned before, he LOVES the rain. His favourite thing to do is go out, get completely soaked, come in, roll the water onto whatever/whoever is nearby, then go back out again to restart the cycle.

    However, on one occasion he came in looking like this, with his hindquarters drenched, yet the rest of his body completely dry:

    It looked as if he had been, erm, sitting under the outdoor table with his arse sticking out. Obviously most normal cats would adjust their position upon feeling cold rain on their rump, but then this is Catorze we’re talking about.

    I’m glad that our old boy is enjoying the summer so much. Meanwhile, I shall be spending half of my summer holiday yearning for my beloved autumn, and the other half trying to fathom why Catorze does the things that he does.