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?
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.”
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.
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?
*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 …”
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.
This week, we have been mostly dealing with this kind of caper:
Not again!
In other news, I don’t know whether it’s a Weird Moon, whether the planets have aligned themselves in some unique way, never up be repeated again, or perhaps some other mystical force is at work here? But we appear to have solved a long-running Château mystery this week.
The mystery relates to the bird feeder and the fact that its fixing is buckled and coming away from the fence. Obviously it doesn’t help that Cat Daddy has now spent far more money on booster devices to deter the parakeets than he ever spent on the original apparatus, so it’s much heavier than it was when he bought it. But he was convinced that some beast larger than the goldfinches had been leaning on it and/or trying to rip it off the fence.
Oh dear.
Anyway, one fine morning, our weekend house guest managed to capture this:
What the actual HELL?
We have never seen Louis Catorze do this before. And, if I had ten Châteaux, I would bet the whole darned lot of them on him never being caught doing it again.
Next week’s mystery: how has our creeper, which once obscured the whole fence, suddenly fallen down in this one area?
In the U.K. last week, a person (who remains unknown, but I would bet Le Château on them being male) called the police to report that they were being followed by a cat. The story went viral in the media, leading the police to remind us, “Think before you dial”.
Despite being a nation of animal lovers, we Brits were quick to laugh at the story and/or condemn the caller. We may well live in a strange age of Amazon orders and takeaways arriving long before the police ever would but, even so, we don’t like the idea of anyone wasting their time.
But what if YOU were that hapless man? And what if the cat looked like this (below)?
You see? It’s not so funny now, is it?
“I’m sorry, caller, you want to report WHAT?”“Please secure your doors and windows. Uniformed officers will be with you soon.”
One of my international students, R, has lots of cats back home in Cyprus. Two of them are called, erm, Fluffy and Hitler. But the others don’t have names, nor is he even sure of how many there are. My mind is utterly blown at the thought of naming some cats but not others, and not knowing exact numbers.
Just a normal day at R’s house. (Picture from videostatic.com.)
Me: “What do you say if you want to call one of the nameless ones over to you?”
R: “I go “Pssspssspssspsss”.”
Me: “But then what if they all come?”
R, looking at me as if I’m an utter idiot: “That’s good. More cats coming to me.”
A good point, well made. More cats are always better than fewer cats. Unless they’re all this kind of cat:
It’s the summer solstice and, despite that we often refer to this time of year as Midsummer, it’s really the START of astrological (or maybe astronomical?) summer. I am firmly an autumn person, but Louis Catorze LOVES the summer – well, he is the Sun King, so it’s not surprising that he loves the long, bright evenings. Usually, I post something heartwarming and positive about him on this day. However, this year, I’m at my wits’ end because Catorze has rediscovered his lust for blood.
Last week the little sod caught three mice in a few days. Whilst most normal cats are taking it easy in the heat to conserve their strength, our old boy is finding the energy to hunt. Two of the mice – or, rather, what was left of them – were given the customary burial in the park bin across the road, and I successfully avoided That Neighbour (who disapproves of park bins being being used for this purpose*) during the drop-off. The third mouse was released by Catorze in the garden, before he could make it to the house, and it may or may not still be at large.
*That Neighbour may have a point: Hounslow Council say that we’re not supposed to put “domestic waste” in public bins. But what are we supposed to do if, for instance, the collection is at 7:00 and the bastard cat brings a mouse at 7:01? Should we really keep a mouse corpse rotting in a plastic bag for a whole week until the next collection?
Is one mouse “small scale”? Do two or more mice make it “large scale”?
1. It’s part of an involuntary natural instinct. 2. The mice/rodents are gifts borne out of love. 3. Cats think we are rubbish hunters, so are attempting to show us how it ought to be done. 4. Cats are little shits.
Somehow, despite the fact that one of those ideas stands out head and shoulders above the others, I didn’t come to any firm conclusions at the time and left the whole debate open. I know. What an idiot.
Now, the reason I refer back to this is because of what happened when Catorze released La Souris Numéro 3 last week. He was on his way indoors with it and, when he realised that Cat Daddy had seen him, he dropped the mouse and scarpered.
Let us, if you will, consider the above four theories once more, with specific relation to this highly suspicious action:
1. Were hunting an involuntary natural instinct (i.e. cats are evolved to catch rodents for food), it would have made far more sense to scarper WITH the mouse. Why lose your dinner AND potentially allow the taker-by-surprise to grab it?
2. Were hunting a thoughtful, selfless gesture, Catorze would, surely, have approached his papa to deliver it, rather than running?
3. Were hunting merely a helpful demo for the benefit of us humans, again, wouldn’t Catorze have approached Cat Daddy to say, “Voilà! This is what you need to do, papa!”?
This only leaves number 4. And we’ve all seen enough heinous crime documentaries (haven’t we … or is it just me?) to know that innocent individuals don’t run when confronted.
I hereby conclude that the “Why cats hunt” debate, which pre-dates time itself, is over. Although we knew the answer anyway, didn’t we?
Joyeux Solstice. May all cat freaks spend this glorious day – and this season – sans souris.
The football fixtures for the next season were announced last Thursday. I had been looking forward to that day for weeks and was up early, sitting eagerly with my phone. (They don’t release the dates until 9am so I know that it’s a waste of time expecting anything to happen before then, but such was my excitement that I can’t help it.)
Packing for the next away game. I think that’s everything?
If you know anything about football, you will know that each club has a mascot. Brentford FC is known as The Bees, so it will be no great surprise to know that our two mascots are Buzz Bee and Buzzette. I find them quite terrifying, and I’m always trying to dodge them at matches when they come at me with their creepy hands. (Picture not shown on account of the creepiness.)
Our bitter West London rivals, Queen’s Park Rangers, also have a mascot. And this is it:
Erm …
I know. The fact that a Chat Noir would work for the opposition is bad enough, but Louis Catorze is quite outraged by the fact that it appears to be a vampire Chat Noir.
“Excuse-moi?”
The mascot is based on a real-life black cat by the name of Jude, who used to live at Loftus Road (as it was then called, before its name changed to the Kiyan Prince Stadium). I haven’t been able to find much information about Jude, other than the fact that the club’s then-new owner decided in 2007 that Jude should leave the stadium and move in with a member of staff. “No official reason” was given for the move, but there were rumours at the time about anti-black cat superstition and fear.
Given that Jude had apparently lived at the stadium for TWENTY YEARS until his eviction, perhaps there was some truth behind this. Could Jude be an otherworldly shapeshifter who is still alive and well and annoying the merde out of some poor person in W12? Has he outlived the person who originally took him in? Will he outlive the whole darned lot of us?
Although it’s highly unlikely that a QPR supporter will be reading this, I can’t help hoping that someone will reply and answer our questions.
Describe one simple thing you do that brings joy to your life.
We’re finding them anything but simple, but Cat Daddy and I are enjoying our guitar lessons and, happily, there have been no further Code Brun incidents. We have lost all sensation in our left hands, but at least we are now 0.1% less dreadful than we would have been had we not practised. And we are having great fun discovering all the songs we can play using the same few chords over and over. I don’t suppose our neighbours are having quite so much fun with this, but tant pis.
Whilst I accept that we aren’t great, and that it will take us years to become even passable, Cat Daddy is unbelievably impatient; he wants to be Dave Gilmour tomorrow. I have tried to explain that even Dave Gilmour took time to become Dave Gilmour, but he won’t listen.
Louis Catorze can’t stand the guitar. I am mystified as to how he can sit through hours and hours of pounding Led Zeppelin during Boys’ Club yet, after just hearing a single note of my guitar, he’d had enough. And I don’t even mean a single chord; I mean A SINGLE NOTE. I plucked one string one time and, after flatlining his ears and glaring at me in absolute horror as if I had just set fire to the last remaining pack of Orijen on this earth, the little sod was off.
I found Louis Catorze’s mouse on the afternoon of that incident. Luckily I didn’t have to search under the bed because, erm, the flies very helpfully guided me to where I needed to look. And it had no head, which either means that he has a taste for them (ugh) or I need to start shaking out every single under-bed item (much worse).
Two nights later, there was a further altercation: a squirrel (I think?) was scrabbling around in the wisteria outside my bedroom window, making the most infernal chattering racket. Sa Maj, perched atop my feet in bed, was deep in conversation with it.
And, yesterday afternoon, another mouse. Good grief.
So I’m not too happy with the animals of TW8. However, at least I don’t have to deal with live rat visitors, like my friend in India who has named her most recent house guest MonsterRat Caballé. She is quite the behemoth (the rat, I mean, not my friend).
In very slightly less awful news, hay fever season is upon us and, because I’ve been a bit useless at remembering to take my daily dose of local honey from Hen Corner, I haven’t fully escaped the symptoms. And I’ve had it with the “Can’t you take antihistamines?” brigade. Wow, I never thought to try antihistamines! Thank you for your insightful help!
Cat Daddy: “You get all the ailments, don’t you? You must be a little runt, like Louis.”
Me: “Sorry, what?”
Him: “Not that that’s a bad thing. I mean, I took him in, didn’t I? I took you in, too.”
Me: “SORRY, WHAT?”
[Silence, tumbleweed, crickets.]
Anyway, Le Roi does not approve of my symptoms.
If he is on my lap when I sneeze, he swiftly departs. In fact, even when he feels me do the deep intake of breath that leads to a sneeze, he’s off, doing the bird-chatter noise as he goes. (Yes, I know this is weird beyond belief, but, y’know, Catorze an’ all.)
The last time I sneezed, the little sod took off, muttering obscenities under his breath. He returned but, when I sneezed again, he decided that enough was enough and went to sit on another sofa, glaring balefully at me.
Now, it may not sound surprising for a cat to dislike sudden noises such as sneezes. However, Cat Daddy has a a sneeze so monstrous that it sonic-booms birds from trees several miles away. He even apologises when he can feel one coming because it’s THAT offensive. And, would you believe, when Catorze is on his papa’s lap, he doesn’t even flinch during this absolute beast of a sneeze. Not so much as an ear-flick.
Clearly boys can do no wrong in Catorze’s eyes. But then we knew this already, didn’t we?
Boys’ Club. And what looks like a piece of grass seed shrapnel on Catorze’s arm.
I am prepared to cut Louis Catorze some slack when it’s a full moon; there’s no way that a black vampire cat CANNOT be affected by it so, sometimes, maybe he just can’t help it (whatever “it” may be). However, when the moon is in its NEW* phase, it’s more difficult.
*This is not a new moon in the way that most selenophiles would understand; in this household, NEW stands for No Excuse Whatsoever, meaning it’s not full yet the cats are still pissing us off.
On Saturday morning, at 4:15am, I was awoken by galloping and squeaking. I realised that Catorze was under the bed, and that he had company. This is never good.
I nervously pointed my phone over the edge of the bed like a periscope, and captured this:
Cat Daddy, much later: “Maybe he was chasing one of your socks around?”Me: “Does this LOOK like a sock?”Cat Daddy: “…”
By the time I had fully registered what was going on, both Catorze and the mouse had darted under the bed and were right in the middle, so I couldn’t reach them. I then decided to, erm, shut the door and leave both gladiators to fight it out in the amphitheatre, with the survivor being declared the winner. At that stage I didn’t care which one it was.
Cat Daddy was asleep in the attic bedroom (because we sleep very badly together), so I went to join him.
Me: “Louis has brought a mouse in and released it under the bed.”
Him: “Oh. So you thought the best thing to do was wake me?”
Me: “…”
Him: “Where is the mouse now?”
Me: “Still under the bed. I’ve just left them until one of them dies.”
Him: “We can’t just leave them there. We’ll have to try and catch it ourselves.”
We shuffled downstairs and Cat Daddy went to fetch a dustpan and brush. Catorze was still under the bed, tail swishing.
Cat Daddy: “We won’t be able to get the mouse out if he’s there. Can you grab him from that side?”
Me: “I can’t reach.”
Him: “Try! Grab his tail!”
Obviously I wasn’t going to pull Catorze’s tail in case it came off in my hand, but I managed to get my fingertips to his rump, haul him out and shut him out of the bedroom. However, we then realised that we needed him in order to locate the mouse, like a water-divining rod, so we promptly let him back in again.
Unfortunately, due to the amount of stuff under our bed, we had no way of actually seeing the mouse. So we reverted back to my original plan of shutting the bedroom door and leaving them to it, gladiator-style.
After a couple of hours of strange dreams involving all manner of dead and undead mice, I cautiously tiptoed back into the bedroom, hoping to find a dead mouse tastefully presented in the middle of the floor. However, all I saw was a sleeping Catorze on the bed. No mouse.
“Nothing to see ici, mes amis.”
Did Catorze eat it (unlikely, but then he’s all about the element of surprise, especially if it’s a surprise that nobody wants)? Is it living it up in the box containing Cat Daddy’s cycling gear? Has it managed to squeeze underneath the floorboards? Is it decaying acridly in the June heat, ready to be discovered by our easily-scared cleaning lady, like that other time when she found a rat that Catorze had saved for later?
Tune into the next episode of Le Blog, when the answers to all of the above will, erm, most likely still not be revealed.
louiscatorze.com 