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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.

  • C’est un monde mélangé, confus et bouleversé

    The Bus of Misrule seems to be stopping off at every household but mine at the moment. I don’t know what’s in the air, but we’re going through an unsettling period of other cats being utter shits and mine behaving impeccably. 

    After hearing curious crunching sounds, my sister caught Otis under the bed happily tucking into the head of a “mouse”. She posted a picture of it on the family WhatsApp group and the rest of us could see, quite clearly, that this was far too big to be a mouse. But who was going to tell her? 

    In the end we all did. 

    My sister ended up having to poke Otis away with a broom, before retrieving and disposing of the three-quarters of the “mouse” that remained. 

    The very next day, my other sister reported that Mothra had brought in a live frog. This was eventually caught and set free in the garden.

    And, as someone who can’t bear to see naughtiness go by without getting serious FOMO, Boots – usurper stepbrother of Antoine, Louis Catorze’s frère-from-another-mère – couldn’t resist joining in. The naughty sod broke into a pack of Easypill* and scoffed what remained. 

    *As you can probably imagine, this is a paste used to coat pills, to make cats more inclined to eat them. A kind of meaty, pliable Trojan Horse, if you will. 

    It’s not often that I get to call other cats out on their unsatisfactory conduct whilst mine is an absolute angel, but I’ll take it. Let’s hope that this won’t rebound horribly on me. 

    Bastard cat.
    Bastard cat.
    Bastard cat.
    Good boy.

    For more Catorzian capers, please visit http://louiscatorze.com

  • Dormir toute la journée, faire la fête toute la nuit 

    Of which aspects of your cultural heritage are you most proud?

    (Sorry, I changed the wording because I couldn’t handle the clunkiness of the original.)

    Louis Catorze is very proud of being a black cat with vampire teeth. 

    This makes him astonishingly popular, with everyone – and I mean EVERYONE, kids and grown-ups alike – wanting to spend time with him in October. He usually starts taking bookings as early as July and, by late September, his diary is full. He has more visitors than us, by quite some way.

    Here are some of my favourite fangy photos of him: 

    Oldman.
    Lee.
    The Full Lugosi.

    For more Catorzian capers, please visit http://louiscatorze.com

  • Même l’homme le plus fort, le lit peut le vaincre

    Cat Daddy and I have just flipped the mattress in the main bedroom. We’re supposed to do it every few weeks, apparently, but we’ve been a bit lazy and left it, erm, quite a bit longer than that. 

    I felt that it was probably time to flip when I woke up with back pain every morning. Obviously, at this point, I should have done the deed immediately. But, again, because I was lazy, until I could muster up the spirit to do the task, I thought I’d experiment with sleeping in different positions: diagonally from corner to opposite corner, horizontally across the foot end, and so on. 

    Louis Catorze is a cat who doesn’t cope well with anything out of the ordinary from his daily routine. 

    Can you see where this is going, Mesdames et Messieurs? 

    The first night that I slept diagonally across my bed, with my head at the foot end, the little sod lost his shit. Upon discovering my new sleeping position, he bounced all over me, from left to right and back again, screaming himself senseless.

    Catorze returned every few hours, just to check, “Is she still doing it?” And, each time, his inspection was accompanied by more bouncing around and screaming. Eventually I stopped going back to sleep between inspections and was actually able to witness him jump up onto the bed, walk over to where my head would usually be and, for a split second, look completely puzzled. Were it not for the fact that I was exhausted, it would have been quite funny.

    By morning I had snapped out of my laziness, and Cat Daddy and I flipped the mattress later that day.  As soon as Catorze saw my head where it should be, normal service – well, whatever passes for “normal” in this place – resumed. 

    Here he is, photographed during a rare calm moment: 

    A bit of a rest before the next lot of drama.

    For more Catorzian capers, please visit http://louiscatorze.com

  • La fin de la chasse 

    What things give you energy?

    It’s the autumn equinox tomorrow. You all know by now how much I look forward to this day although, this year, we started celebrating autumn on 1st September, the start of meteorological autumn, just to squeeze in more autumn fun. 

    This is traditionally a time for honouring ageing deities. Louis Catorze certainly regards himself as a deity, but he seems to have forgotten about the “ageing” part; after a summer of looking frail and brittle (if you’re wondering how a cat can look “brittle”, just trust me on this), he seems to have a new lease of life.

    As for WHAT exactly is giving him energy, who knows? Darkness? Hallowe’en? Satan? All of the above? 

    However, one part of Catorze which lies very firmly in the past is his hunting; never before have we reached the autumn equinox without him having brought in at least one mouse. So we have reached the end of an era, although I will not miss the walk of shame to the park bin, hoping that I don’t bump into any neighbours whilst carrying the giveaway knotted plastic bag. 

    The sun may be setting on summer, but Catorze is just getting started.

    Happy Equinox to you all. 

    Waiting patiently for Hallowe’en?

    For more Catorzian capers, please visit http://louiscatorze.com

  • Pour présider, d’abord s’asseoir

    Have you ever thought that, after over eleven years of putting up with living with your cat, you knew everything about them, only for them to do something to prove you wrong? Louis Catorze’s latest thing, something which he has never done before, is to sit on the warm spot left by someone who has just vacated the sofa. 

    He even leaves laps to do this, which makes zero sense as the lap is obviously softer and warmer. And he does it in all weathers. Yes, even if it’s a raging Dantean hellfire outside. 

    It’s an endearing, sweet little quirk, despite being weird. However, the problem comes when he does this in the evening. A black cat + a dark sofa + dim lighting + a Cat Daddy who is a few glasses of wine under = you know where this is going, don’t you? 

    Oui, Mesdames et Messieurs: Cat Daddy has sat on Catorze three times in the last few weeks. 

    When it happened again last night, it was a good few seconds before Cat Daddy realised anything was amiss, because Catorze is too stupid to wriggle or scream to warn Cat Daddy of his predicament. However, he eventually realised and the squashed little sod was released, running straight outside.

    Cat Daddy was absolutely distraught and made me follow his boy outside to make sure that he wasn’t lying in a crumpled heap somewhere, gasping his last breath. He wasn’t. He was pitter-pattering around the garden and, when he saw me, he started screaming, so I took that to mean he was ok. 

    This is what it looks like when it happens. Luckily, this time, Catorze was able to move in time before the full weight of Cat Daddy’s arse hit him: 

    Catorze: “…”

    Humans with Chats Noirs: check under yourselves before you sit down in the dark. Or even NOT in the dark. If you think your cat is clever enough to move before being sat on, you may be giving them a little too much credit. 

    For more Catorzian capers, please visit http://louiscatorze.com

  • L’héraut de la mort 

    Something strange is afoot here at Le Château: Boys’ Club appears to have disbanded. Or, at the very least, it’s taking a hiatus. And the reason for this is because Louis Catorze can’t get enough of me. 

    I know. I KNOW. 

    The little sod now seeks out MY lap in the evenings. He also comes to bed with me, and is there again when I wake up in the morning. Sometimes he’s been pressed so firmly against me that I’ve squashed him, when leaning over in the middle of the night for my bottle of water. 

    When Cat Daddy comes to bed and turns off my infrared lamp, he finds me and Catorze curled up, fast asleep, together. This is quite unheard of. 

    Rather than accept this with grace, I worry that something is amiss. Perhaps Catorze senses that his time on the planet is running out, and he (finally) wants to repay me for all the things I do for him? Or maybe I’M the one who’s about to die and uncharacteristic affection is Catorze’s way of trying to announce this, like a small, toothy Bean Sidhe? 

    Here is proof that I am telling the truth. What do you make of this? 

    Is this the look of death? And whose death, exactly?

    For more Catorzian capers, please visit http://louiscatorze.com

  • Le bonheur est comme un chat et sa queue 

    When we first met Butthole, the Abhainn Dearg distillery cat, we assumed that he had either been in some sort of accident which had left his tail like that, or that he had a birth defect. It turns out that the first one isn’t true at all, and the second one is only half-true. He HAS had this curious affliction ever since birth, yet he can also hold his tail normally when he feels like it. 

    His human employer (I wasn’t really getting a “Cat Daddy” kind of vibe when we visited the distillery) mentioned that Butthole was fully aware of the attention attracted by his weird tail, and probably did it on purpose for this very reason. 

    How? Why?

    I tried, the other day, to curl Louis Catorze’s tail in the same way, and it just wouldn’t work. It’s very difficult to do this with one hand whilst filming with the other, but this was one of my more successful efforts: 

    Nope. We are in a Curl-Free Zone.

    As you can see, the tail just won’t life flat against his body in the way that Butthole’s does. Not even the weird reptilian segments were able to help us out here. 

    How? Why?

    So Catorze is only the second-weirdest cat on the planet. What a relief. 

    For more Catorzian capers, please visit http://louiscatorze.com

  • Le diable essuie sa queue avec l’orgueil du pauvre

    We have managed to solve the long-standing mystery of how Louis Catorze manages to come indoors with a parchment-dry body and a dripping wet tail. 

    As well as drinking from his water glass, Catorze drinks from the rainwater that pools on our outdoor table. This makes it impossible to answer when the vet asks us whether he’s drinking normally, but we can’t do much to stop it, so tant pis. However, when sitting down for a drink in his outdoor bar, he perches on the slightly drier Caithness flagstone place mat things but trails his tail across the table top where most of the water collects:

    Yuck.

    Tucking his tail around his arse would have helped to keep him dry but, for whatever reason, he didn’t want to do that. None of us can understand the appeal of having any part of one’s body trailing in cold water, but that’s Catorze for you.

    Anyway, that’s one Roi Mystery solved. Only 98,311 to go. 

    Speaking of mysteries: why DOES he love the rain so much?

    For more Catorzian capers, please visit http://louiscatorze.com

  • Le beau jour se prouve au soir 

    What are you doing this evening?

    Having ignored me for much of the summer, now that temperatures are dropping (not by much, but we’ll take it), Louis Catorze seems to have remembered that I exist.

    So, hopefully, this evening I will be watching a horror film with him on my lap. 

    Here he is, pictured from below, pretending to be asleep on me, but secretly planning more bullshittery:

    He actually has two fangs, but the other is hidden on account of that cheek/jowl hanging a little lower.

    For more Catorzian capers, please visit http://louiscatorze.com

  • Nous sommes vos enfants, vos maris, nous sommes partout

    What personality trait in people raises a red flag with you?

    Psychopathy and narcissism aren’t exactly brilliant traits. Why, then, do we tolerate them from cats?

    A psychopathic narcissist … or a narcissistic psychopath?

    For more Catorzian capers, please visit http://louiscatorze.com

  • En état de combattre, tous les jours et à toute heure (Partie 3) 

    The mousey saga at my sister’s house has come to an end, although neither Otis nor Roux did a single thing to bring about this resolution. 

    The humans kept a bucket in the living room, with the intention of using it to catch the mouse in the unlikely event of seeing it scurrying around. Yes, I realise the absurdity of having two hunting cats in the household yet having to use a bucket to catch mice yourself, yet that was where we were at the time. In fact, we’ve been there many times, with many cats. It’s BEYOND idiotic. 

    Anyway, one morning the humans just found the mouse, dead, in the bucket. No explanation, no signs of feline involvement, just that. Nobody has the slightest idea what happened.

    So the house is, once again, sans souris. However, since Otis and Roux are the king and queen of bringing in beasties and setting them free in various parts of the house, how long will this last? 

    Yeah, thanks for nothing, Otis.
    Roux is fending off Idris, The Cat With The Human Face, but doing sweet FA about keeping the house rodent-free.

    For more Catorzian capers, please visit http://louiscatorze.com

  • À l’intérieur comme à l’extérieur

    The males of this household seem to be on sort of synchronised bullshittery mission at the moment. And I could really do without it. 

    Cat Daddy let Louis Catorze out at The Front again the other night. Luckily, this time, I had managed to catch Catorze and administer his thyroid medication beforehand, so it wasn’t quite the same desperate situation as it was a few nights ago. However, I didn’t want him out there all night, so Cat Daddy was under strict instructions to call him back in again before going to bed. 

    What happened next is going to come as absolutely no surprise whatsoever. 

    At 00:40 I was awakened by the sound of faraway yet loud-enough screaming coming through the open window. I came downstairs to find Cat Daddy fast asleep on the sofa, and Catorze still outside at The Front, screaming absolute bloody murder.

    After letting him in, I went back up to bed. Cat Daddy woke up hours later, still on the sofa, to discover Catorze asleep on his lap. And, after reading my curt, to-the-point WhatsApp message saying, “Louis is in”, he guessed that he’d massively dropped the ball. 

    It turned out that Cat Daddy had gone out three times to call the little sod in, but Catorze, who used to be quite responsive when called, has now figured out that, if he doesn’t respond, nobody can make him. So he just ignored Cat Daddy until he was ready to come in, and that’s when he started screaming. I don’t know how long he had been screaming by the time I heard him at 00:40 and, frankly, I daren’t think about it. I’m just relieved that at least one set of neighbours was away at the time. 

    Anyway, Catorze’s jaunts out at The Front have been banned indefinitely, and Cat Daddy, who is no longer speaking to Catorze on account of his disobedience, isn’t disputing this. 

    Does this mean that we’ll have some calm and order here at Le Château, just for once? 

    Confined to The Back forever.

    For more Catorzian capers, please visit http://louiscatorze.com

  • En état de combattre, tous les jours et à toute heure (Partie 2) 

    My sister and her family have been exiled from their own living room for several days now, due to an impinging mouse. The situation has not moved forward in the slightest since I posted about it last week. 

    Louis Catorze’s cat-cousins Otis and Roux have failed to catch the mouse. Or, rather, Roux DID catch the mouse – twice, in fact – but dropped it again, leaving it free to scurry off into the unknown. As my sister put it, “Roux is only good at locating them. No point expecting her to get rid of them.”

    Oh dear. 

    Otis, despite this whole problem being his fault, has done even less to try to resolve things, so the humans have been very much on their own. At one point they succeeded in coaxing the mouse three-quarters of the way into a humane trap but, regretfully, it realised what was going on, reversed out and, once again, scurried off into the unknown. 

    So it looks as if the family will be stuck with their new housemate for some time. I think they’re going to need more marshmallows. 

    Roux: “Whatevs.”
    Otis: “Zzz …”

    For more Catorzian capers, please visit http://louiscatorze.com

  • Parfois au milieu de l’automne

    What brings a tear of joy to your eye?

    Here in the UK, autumn is coming early. 

    Falling leaves and ripening berries are usually among the joys of September but, this year, because of our apocalyptically dry summer, we started seeing them as early as mid-August. I don’t want to like this, because I know that it’s bad news and an indication that the planet is doomed. Nevertheless, the sight of these first whispers of my favourite season somehow comforts my soul. 

    Soon there will be trees ablaze with colour, misty mornings, spice-scented candles (well, not in this house, because a certain someone’s sensitive skin means we’re not allowed), hearty autumn recipes and, best of all, cuddling cats. 

    I like the last one best of all.

    During the summer, I rarely see Louise Catorze. He loves the warmer months so much that he is constantly out, all day and all night, only coming indoors to eat and drink water (and, sometimes, not even bothering to do that). The cooler mornings and evenings mean that he spends more time on my lap. I know that he’s only doing this because he’s cold, but I don’t care. I’ll take it. 

    Inexplicably, after spending the summer looking like he’d just been dug up from an ancient tomb, his fur is now Vantablack and plushy, and he has an alertness in his eyes that he didn’t have before. He actually looks younger and better than he did two months ago, as if some hidden force is feeding him life. 

    Still enjoying Rodent Duty at the end of the garden.

    Equally inexplicably, he appeared to gain his winter coat at the end of last month. Yes, in August. No, it’s not normal.

    Cat Daddy: “You’re getting meatier, Louis! What’s happened?”

    We don’t know. Nobody does.

    As one of my blog followers once said, someone somewhere has a painting of him in their attic. And they’re right. I can’t prove it, but I know it. 

    The last ice cube massage of the year.

    For more Catorzian capers, please visit http://louiscatorze.com