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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 chasseur du scarabée

    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:

    1. Strikingly pretty metallic emerald beetle gets caught in spider web.

    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.

  • Un nouvel ami?

    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?

    Ugh. I know what dogs do on pavements.

  • Où sont mes poils?

    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?

  • Rester toute la journée, en sécurité au soleil

    What do you love about where you live?

    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.

  • L’herbe est plus verte ailleurs (Partie 2)

    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?

    “Circumstantial evidence! Le Roi was framed!”

  • Trier les déchets

    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.

  • Qui a confiance en soi conduit les autres

    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.

    King of le jardin.

  • Alors tout le monde peut prendre note, prendre note

    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.

    “Doncha wish your kitty was bad like moi?”

  • Il y a quelqu’un dans la maison

    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”.

  • Attention travaux

    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?”

  • Le sang attire le sang

    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.

  • Le sèche-chat

    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.

  • Les frontières de la sagesse sont inexplorées

    What are you curious 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.

  • L’art de guérir

    Have you ever had surgery? What for?

    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.

    Pretending to be cute.