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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 masque de l’araignée

    One night, at around 3am, I went to the kitchen for a drink of water. I often do this in complete darkness but, for reasons that I cannot fathom, on this occasion I switched on the light. And what a good thing I did, too, because I saw a spider cascading down on its string from the light switch.

    Naturellement I had nothing in which to trap the spider, and I didn’t dare leave the room to find a suitable receptacle in case the spider vanished. So I had to tip my herbal sleeping pills out of their jar, then cup the empty jar over him (not an easy task as he was unusually bouncy). Once done, I shuffled the jar millimetre by millimetre downwards, with the last bit done VERY nervously indeed in case the spider came springing out in that brief moment at the bottom between the jar leaving the wall and hitting the floor.

    Louis Catorze was nowhere to be seen, presumed out bothering the foxes. What’s the point of living with an adept bug-hunter if the little sod disappears when he’s needed? Merde.

    I didn’t want to keep the upended spidery jar in the bedroom all night because the idea gave me the creeps, so I shuffled it along the floor and into the guest room, taking care to avoid the cracks between the floorboards in case it dropped between them. Once there, I knew it would be safe until Cat Daddy disposed of it later.

    After fetching my water and going back to bed, any idea of getting to sleep again was well and truly shot. I drifted in and out of a weird, wakeful doze, dreaming of spiders who were running amok beneath the floorboards, then awoke to discover that the scrabbling sound I could hear was real, and that it was Catorze, in a box of Cat Daddy’s cycling gear under the bed.

    The little sod had not, as I had imagined, been out in the Zone Libre. He, who is able to spot spiders across a dark room and run to eat them straight off a far wall, had been here the entire time, listening to me rummaging and stressing yet doing nothing to help me.

    I then had to get out of bed AGAIN to check that I’d shut the guest room door properly because, now that I knew Catorze was at large, I didn’t trust him not to kick over the spidery jar. Catorze, not caring one hoot that he had failed in his duty, settled across my stomach like a living, furry belt, and went to sleep for the whole of the four minutes before my alarm went off and I had to get up for work.

    I don’t know how we live with these hideous little critters. And spiders aren’t much fun, either.

    Bastard cat.

  • Êtes-vous contents de ne pas avoir allumé la lumière?

    Write about a time when you didn’t take action but wish you had. What would you do differently?

    Cat Daddy and I have started having guitar lessons, and we are utterly useless; after just one lesson our backs hurt, our fingers were bloodied, and we can’t imagine how we will possibly learn any actual songs when it takes us four minutes to play just one chord. But our teacher has a cat – a massive, fluffy ginge called Steve – and he makes it all better.

    At the end of our first lesson, after cuddles with Steve, Cat Daddy and I left the teacher’s house. As we passed through the hallway I noticed that there was an odd smell, but I did the typical British thing of saying nothing. (Well, what does one say: “Your hallway stinks”? Most Brits would be so affronted by this that they would be forced to take drastic action, such as leaving you off their Christmas card list or – GASP – not offering you the good tea the next time they hosted you.)

    As we left, the teacher sniffed and said, “Oh dear, I think Steve might have peed here.” He switched on the hallway light … and that was when we discovered that it wasn’t cat pee, but cat merde. And all three of us had walked through it.

    Picture posed by lookalike Fergus, to protect the identity and dignity of the real culprit, Steve.

    Oh. Mon. Dieu.

    Cat Daddy and I checked our shoes. The left ones were fine, but the right ones had been well and truly merded. The poor teacher was mortified.

    Somehow we managed to wash off the excess merde in a huge puddle in the road. Then Cat Daddy drove us home, one-footed (I have no idea how this is even possible in a manual car), whilst I sat in the passenger seat, shaking and sweating, with my right knee pulled up to my chest to avoid placing the merdique shoe on the floor. Even though I was holding my knee up with my arms, my leg was BURNING by the time we arrived home. I’ve been meaning to ramp up the leg-strengthening exercises for some time now, although in a general wellbeing kind of way; not once did I imagine I would need them to help keep my leg elevated during merde incidents.

    After hopping indoors, we placed the offending shoes outside at The Back, ready to be catapulted into space and nuked hosed down the next morning. I also washed my trousers because I couldn’t be sure that the hems hadn’t also trailed through the merde. It didn’t LOOK as if they had, however Louis Catorze then began prowling and sniffing around us in a suspicious manner, making me worry that there might be microscopic merde invisible to our pathetic human eyes and noses. We are powerless against the horrors of invisible, insidious, microscopic merde and I fear that, if I think too hard about it, I might die.

    I needed two double vodkas to calm my nerves. And Cat Daddy was so traumatised that it put him off drink for a whole twenty-four hours. The only good thing about this was the fact that, had the teacher not mentioned the smell, we would have unknowingly trodden merdique shoes into the car and into Le Château. At least we escaped that.

    What would I do differently? I dunno: mention the smell (and risk being excommunicated)? Turn the light on? Not trust cats, no matter how cute? Have three double vodkas instead of two? They’re all contenders for the list, aren’t they?

    “You wanna watch your step, salope.”

  • La couronne triomphale

    The king’s coronation takes place today and, if you actually give a shite, you’ll know about this already. If, like us, you don’t, you’ll probably still know about it because the whole world has been hearing about little else for the last few weeks.

    That said, it wasn’t us who carried out this act of vandalism (mainly because we didn’t think of it).

    Cat Daddy and I will mostly be hiding away and pretending it’s not happening. However, we couldn’t possibly let the weekend pass without this:

    Victorious, happy and glorious.

    Yes, this is actual bunting that we have put up on our actual house; no Photoshoppery here. We live in quite a pro-monarchy street, but what’s the worst that could happen? Apart from, erm, a Molotov cocktail through the window?

    If you happen to be one of the throng gathering in Central London today, good luck; you’ll need it, because it’s going to be tipping down with rain all day. We will be holed up here at Le Château, drinking Screaming Roi cocktails, eating French cheese and worshipping the one true king.

    “It’s all about MOI.”

  • Le rendez-vous d’affaires

    Now that Louis Catorze is officially a teenager, he is doing what teenagers do and spending most of his time out. I barely see him these days; although he’s beside me when I wake up, as soon as he’s had his breakfast he’s off out again.

    Nobody knows where he goes or what he does … or, at least, we didn’t know until Mamma Next Door sent me this photo:

    Discussing the security implications of a protracted conflict in Sudan?

    Catorze appears to be deeply involved in ICB* with Blue the Smoke Bengal. Relations between them have been, erm, somewhat mixed until now – and, naturellement, this was entirely Catorze’s fault for being a miserable sod – so I am delighted to see them getting along.

    *Important Cat Business

    I wish I knew what they were talking about. I like to think Catorze was giving Blue some fox-avoidance tips as poor Blue has been the victim of foxy bullying in the past, whereas foxes either ignore Catorze (not a worthwhile snack) or run away from him (no idea what he is).

    However, it’s quite possible that Blue was the one passing on advice to Catorze. And, since Blue is a highly prolific hunter with some impressive kills on his rap sheet, this could have disastrous consequences …

  • La machine à remonter le temps

    What topics do you like to discuss?

    Feline bad behaviour is what I do. Jackson Galaxy (who, despite the elaborate name, is actually a cat behaviour expert and not a cult leader) would be able to make several feature-length films from the material that Louis Catorze generates.

    One of my favourite blogs, the brilliant Bad Cat Chris, has a Throwback Thursday feature, which refers to the past feline adventures/transgressions of Chris and his siblings. I am considering something similar on Le Blog.

    This idea is not because I lack Catorzian content – far from it – but to show his newer followers that I have been putting up with Catorze’s evil for years. But I hesitate for a couple of very valid reasons.

    Firstly, I already struggle to fit in the little sod’s ongoing misdeeds, and this situation isn’t about to improve unless they invent a 943-day week (not likely) or Catorze starts to calm the heck down and act his age (even less likely). The WordPress daily prompts certainly don’t help, as they manage to turn things into blog posts that I didn’t even think were things. Adding more content to an already-bursting-at-the-seams schedule is going to make the backlog even worse.

    Also, in a sort of creepy, invocative kind of way, is referring back to past felonies simply going to manifest more? This really isn’t what I want. In fact, it’s absolutely the last thing I want. Do I risk it, simply because I want to convince internet strangers of my suffering at the paws of this mini-brute? I need to think very hard before I do this.

    If we snitch on him, he’s ready to do his worst.

    Meanwhile, if you fancy having a chuckle at the antics of Chris and the gang, here is a classic tale with a genius title.

  • 13 est le nombre magique

    Thank you, Mum, for this card.

    Thank you for all your birthday wishes for Louis Catorze. We could not have asked for more to celebrate the auspicious occasion of his thirteen years. Cards, gifts, visitors, jambon de Bayonne, Crémant and cherry gin cocktails (now named Screaming Roi, thanks to the landslide result of a vote among my cat freak friends), the traditional French feast of, erm, lasagne, an altercation with a parakeet, Kurt Zouma limping off the pitch with an injury (yes, we are STILL going on about that) … Catorze’s birthday weekend had it all.

    Surveying his kingdom from his favourite spot.

    At the start of the day we were worried about him because he appeared to have lost his voice, with only a weak, breathy squeak struggling from his mouth. Although we knew there was nothing wrong with him, and that he’d probably just overdone the screaming the day before, an almost-silent Roi is an eerie thing indeed. But, by this time his weekend visitor arrived, he had very much found his scream again and “normal” Catorzian service had resumed. And it hasn’t stopped since.

    As Catorze is now at the upper end of the “Senior” age spectrum, I do worry a little more about what we may face as he grows older; I don’t have much experience with older cats and feel out of my depth. But he’s pretty good at letting us know what he wants, even if we are too dense to figure it out immediately.

    Thank you for all the joy you bring, little sod. May thirteen be a very lucky number for you, although it doesn’t look as if this online source agrees:

    “The number 13 has always been an ‘unlucky’ number. The number 13 is the number that represents Satan, evil, wickedness, devils, and everything vile that is connected to them.”

    Antigone Books
    “Hark! I smell beaucoup de mischief to be had!“

  • Une chanson pour fêter les 13 ans d’un chat dévisageant

    Happy lucky thirteen, little sod. (Thank you, Lizzi, for this lovely card!)
    You could never know what I’m like
    I might look cute but I’m the Antichrist 
    And I’ve a loud and piercing scream that sounds like hell
    You’ll wind up bleeding from your ears and from your brain as well

    And do you really think you’ll ever win
    Well, look at me, chasing after men again
    I give you lots of grief and you live in fear
    And though you need to know why I’m still staring, you have no idea 

    You know I'm still staring harder than I ever did
    Looking like a spooky panther, being just a little weird
    And I'm still staring after all this time
    Gonna wait till 3am then do some parkour up your spine

    I’m still staring, ouais, ouais, ouais
    I’m still staring, ouais, ouais, ouais

    Once you hoped to have a peaceful life 
    But now my creepy staring cuts you like a knife
    I love to stuff things up and make a scene
    And if my life was just a movie it’d be Halloween

    You know I’m still staring harder than I ever did
    Looking like a chupacabra, scaring you a little bit
    And I’m still staring after all this time
    Trying hard to decimate your life and make you lose your mind

    I’m still staring, ouais, ouais, ouais
    I’m still staring, ouais, ouais, ouais

    [Instrumental break - please allow your cats to go psycho during this time and burn off some of that energy]

    Don’t you know I’m still staring harder than I ever did
    Looking like a goofy vampire, being such a little shit
    And I’m still staring after all this time
    Better find a darkened room and sit and cry and drink some wine 

    I’m still staring, ouais, ouais, ouais
    I’m still staring, ouais, ouais, ouais

    [Repeat until Louis Catorze stops creepy-staring or the world comes to an end, whichever happens first.]
    Still staring.

  • Ça, c’est bien les chats

    Merde, merde and thrice merde: it seems as if the mischievous fae folk of Beltane have already started working their naughty magic on Louis Catorze. Or maybe he is the one who controls them? That seems much more likely, doesn’t it?

    I have just caught the horrid little sod nuzzling my signed – SIGNED – copy of CJ Tudor’s The Drift. It’s almost as if he did this on purpose to avenge his defiled silverware, although it would be very unfair indeed because Cat Daddy is the silverware-defiler, whereas this book belongs to ME, the innocent party in all this.

    The edge of the book jacket is now scuffed, and there’s a fang mark on it. And it’s clear how firmly Catorze committed to his mission; the way the fur is all splayed out on his cheek shows that he was really, really going for it:

    For goodness’ sake.
    FOR GOODNESS’ SAKE.

    Now, before the extreme cat freaks among you – YOU KNOW WHO YOU ARE – suggest that the Catorzian stamp will somehow add value or improve the book, come on; this is hardly in the same realm as Banksy shredding Balloon Girl.

    The author describes herself on Instagram as a dog lover, and I am starting to think she might have the right idea. Cats are trouble … and black ones with book-ruining fangs, especially so.

  • Lent et régulier gagne la course

    Cat Daddy and I are back from his sister’s birthday extravaganza. During our absence, our chat-sitteurs sent us this photo of Louis Catorze cavorting around on their bed. Yes, they were in the bed at the time. No, Catorze didn’t care:

    Utterly shameless.

    In other news, it’s that time again: the snail harvest is just beginning and Catorze is proving once again that, whilst you can take Le Roi out of France, you can’t take France out of Le Roi.

    I recently found this little blighter crawling up our kitchen sofa:

    Oh my.

    The only way it could have come in is via Catorze’s fur. Either he is brushing against snail-studded undergrowth and dislodging them, or perhaps he can’t help but oblige when the snail bids him a jaunty bonjour and asks for a lift indoors.

    With Catorze spending progressively more time outdoors as the weather brightens, no doubt there will be further extra guests sneaking in. At least I was able to catch this one before it ran amok – and, yes, we must be the only household who has to worry about catching the slowest animal in the world before it runs amok.

  • La mode se démode, les poils de chat jamais …

    Cat Daddy and I are away for the weekend, at his sister’s birthday celebration. Although it was tempting to just leave Louis Catorze to go feral and see how much time it would take him to move in with Family Next Door (who would probably love him as their pet) or That Neighbour (who wouldn’t), we decided that it wouldn’t be fair to do that to other people. So we asked some previous chat-sitting family members if they could come and look after him again and, astoundingly, they agreed.

    A photo from their last chat-sit.

    The last time they came, Catorze had a marvellous time with both of them but he took a special liking to the gentleman of the couple. We were pretty sure that Catorze would annoy the merde out of him and prevent him from working, so we advised him to do as much of his work as possible before coming over. However, it turned out that Chat-Sitting Gentleman had already planned to do exactly that, because Catorze had annoyed the merde out of him and prevented him from working the last time.

    Boss: “What’s that? You can’t do any work because of WHAT?”

    Packing to leave took hours; “smart casual”, something that no British person truly understands, is open to going wrong if people’s expectations differ, and I know that Cat Daddy’s sophisticated family’s “smart casual” is equivalent to my “white tie and diamonds”. Whilst packing, I noticed that some of the clothes that I had hoped to take were coated in some sort of grey fluff:

    Jumper: ruined.

    I had no idea what it was, nor how to get rid of it. The old trick of a fistful of Sellotape didn’t make much difference. Picking it off with my fingers also didn’t seem to do much. In absolute desperation, I reached for Catorze’s Zoom Groom brush (the reverse side, obviously, not the side with the spikes) to see if its static magic would somehow help to shift the mess.

    Not only did this work like a dream but, as the grey fluff came away, the pieces unfurled and lengthened. Oh. Mon. Dieu: the mystery fluff was compressed, embedded cat hair. The little bastard had been sleeping on my clothes.

    Cat Daddy: “Well, it’s your own fault. You should have put them away.”

    Anyway, no doubt our chat-sitteurs will regale us with tales of how angelic Catorze was during our absence. It happens every time. I guess he has learned by now that, since we are stupid enough to put up with his nonsense, he doesn’t need to bother behaving for us.

  • La peur du nombre 13

    Since my school friends and I are all turning A Certain Age these days, I’ve been in a busy routine of meeting them for dinner or going to their birthday parties. My meet-up with my best friend from sixth form, with whom I have had a couple of joint parties as our birthdays are close together, was especially funny and quite the departure from our past celebrations:

    ⁃ Our 18th party: dressed inappropriately, got drunk, don’t really remember much else.

    ⁃ Our 25th party: dressed inappropriately, got drunk, don’t really remember much else.

    ⁃ Our “A Certain Age” dinner: dressed sensibly, drank water, one of us read the menu to the other who had forgotten their glasses, home by 9:45pm.

    No such nonsense with Louis Catorze; the little sod is turns thirteen at the end of the month, yet he’s just as full of life as ever. We can’t believe he will soon be a teenager, which means he will be rolling in at sunrise after partying all night, treating Le Château like a hotel and generally taking the piss … OH WAIT …

    And good grief: his thirteenth birthday is on 30th April and, from 21st April to 14th May, our good friend Mercury will be up to his old tricks again. I know. A creepy black cat with vampire teeth turning thirteen on Beltane Eve, during Mercury Retrograde … what could possibly go wrong?

    I know that I say this every time he has a birthday, but we are astounded not only that he has made it to this age, but also that he is thriving and loving life. People who meet him can barely believe how old he is, because he looks and acts like a kitten. One of my friends, when meeting him, said, “Is he always going to be that size? Awww. It’s like having a KITTEN FOREVER!”

    We are so lucky that our Forever Kitten is in such good shape at the moment. Here he is, captured in a very fortuitous photo opportunity, on a blanket of skulls and with a real rainbow shining down on him:

    Le Roi is both goth and gay.

  • Le regard a toujours un but

    When Cat Daddy and I met Shadow the black Labrador, her humans told us that she was an expert at seeking out people who had food and giving them the Full Hepburn, playing the convincing part of a starving dog. Her Dog Grandpa repeatedly vows not to fall for her act, yet always gives in.

    I told the Dog Parents that Louis Catorze does something similar, except that his creepy staring is a means of bullying, rather than eliciting pity. When I give in and feed him, it’s not “pandering to him” as Cat Daddy often says; I am genuinely fearful.

    Catorze, being much smaller than Shadow, is easier to ignore; in fact, if he is right up close to the sofa and I’m leaning back, sometimes it’s a while before I even notice him. However, he has wised up to this, and has moved his efforts from ground level to eye level to increase the intimidation factor:

    Yes, those are my knees in the foreground. Yes, all that fluff and crud on them is from his body.

    On that note, I’d better go and feed the little sod.

  • Animal, végétal ou minéral?

    Into every Cat Mamma’s life a little rain must fall. However, sometimes it’s not a little rain; it’s a lot. A full-on hurricane, in fact. With a hefty dose of pollution thrown in. Oh my, this was a bad one.

    When Louis Catorze came indoors a couple of mornings ago and settled on my lap, I was dismayed to see what appeared to be a hair on his leg. It did not match mine or Cat Daddy’s. And, judging from its shape and length, it seemed to come from, erm, a body part other than the head.

    Oh. Mon. Dieu.

    Naturellement I didn’t dare touch it to find out. Before I could give the situation the careful consideration it deserved without making it worse – for instance, sending the hair floating off or, worse, hoovering it up into my nostrils – the little sod had rolled over onto it. And, when he unrolled, it was gone.

    What do you mean, “It must have been there somewhere”? It wasn’t. Believe me, I turned the room over – and turned Catorze over – like CSI, but there was no sign of that hair. And Catorze has previous when it comes to making things disappear just to make my life hard. Look here if you don’t believe me.

    Now, if you are one of those rare people who own a normal cat, “gadding about with semi-clothed or naked strangers” would be the least likely of things for your cat to do when they leave the house. However: CATORZE. Clearly when Occam was doing his razoring all those years ago, he had never met a cat like him.

    Cat Daddy: “Maybe it wasn’t a hair. Maybe it was something from outside.”

    Yes. Flower stamens or leaf fibres or whatever else happens to look like body hair. “IT WAS PLANT MATTER” shall now become the mantra that I repeat over and over, in between sitting on the floor and blowing into a paper bag, until I actually start to believe it.

    Please let it be this. (Picture from crocus.co.uk.)
    Please let it be this. (Picture from hobbycraft.co.uk.)

  • Quand le soleil se lève

    What are your morning rituals? What does the first hour of your day look like?

    Sleeping through sunrise after a long night out on the lash.

    Louis Catorze is the first person that I see every morning. He is like one of those Lumie alarm clocks with different pre-recorded sounds, most of which are pretty jarring and awful. But I love waking up to this one:

    Quite a departure from the typical Catorzian scream.

    The first waking hour of every day is spent just the two of us – unless Catorze is out bothering the local wildlife on an ICB* all-nighter, in which case he’ll roll in whenever like a wayward teenager. I like to pretend that he consciously chooses me and values this precious morning time together but, in actual fact, it only happens because his first choice person, Cat Daddy – who sleeps in the attic due to his thunderous snoring – keeps his bedroom door shut. So my company is only marginally better than no company at all.

    *Important Cat Business.

    After a few minutes of listening to his soothing purring, I walk downstairs – being sure to take an extra big stride at the bottom, in case I step on a dead rat – and make myself a pot of green tea. During the winter months Catorze snoozes on my lap whilst I drink the tea and read a book but, now that it’s spring, he just pretends to sleep. His eyes are closed but his ears are upright and alert and his tail thumps from side to side, indicating that he’s ready for mischief. And, if it doesn’t come his way, he will go looking for it.

    This blissful state only lasts as long as it takes for Cat Daddy to start stirring; the minute Catorze hears his papa up and about, the spell is broken and he’s off to join him. But, despite the fact that I’m used and then cruelly discarded, I don’t take it too personally because I know that I’ll be able to do it all again the next day. I am very lucky to be able to start every day like this.