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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 salon de coiffure

    What the flamin’ flip is all this?

    Ugh.
    Ugh.
    Ugh.

    More mats, that’s what. They are materialising from nowhere, like crop circles. It’s almost as if simply being touched by a matty hair is enough to mattify a previously-normal hair, a bit like turning into a zombie when another zombie bites you.

    The largest of the three mats quite literally appeared overnight. As in, there was no trace of it in the evening and then, suddenly, the next morning, it was there. I am puzzled and concerned, yet also strangely satisfied that I am getting such good value out of the Dematting Rake.

    Apparently there are many reasons for an older cat not grooming efficiently, including arthritis, bladder issues and simply not being as bendy as they were when they were younger. Dental problems are also listed as a reason, although l’m pretty certain that Louis Catorze no longer has them. And it’s just as well, because this was the advice given by one website:

    “If they have a painful mouth, they obviously won’t want to use their mouth to groom their fur, causing them to become more matted. Like people, cats need dental cleaning and regular mouth care. If you can, start brushing your cat’s teeth.”

    BRUSHING YOUR CAT’S TEETH. Nope, nope and thrice nope.

    Anyway, since removing these mats (with some difficulty, I might add), more have appeared, as has Catorze’s unsightly dandruff, and all I can do is continue brushing and raking. To be on the safe side, I’m going to tell the vet about them when we go for his next steroid shot.

    Hopefully this is all part of a general spring-summer purge and not a sign of anything more ominous.

    This kind of crazy caper probably doesn’t help.

  • Les pèlerins sont de retour

    Me: “So … [our new neighbours next door] have a guest coming for the weekend, and they’d like to know if they can bring her over to meet Louis?”

    Cat Daddy: “…”

    Me: “Did you hear what I said?”

    Him: “…”

    Me: “…”

    Him: “Are we some sort of tourist attraction now, or something?”

    Me: “…”

    Him: “Maybe we should put Louis on TripAdvisor? “Come to Brentford and visit the stadium, the steam and water museum and Louis Catorze’s Château”?”

    Me: “Erm … so can I say yes to the meet-up, then?”

    Him: “You’ve already said yes, haven’t you?”

    Me: “…”

    Narrator: “So the Sun King bestowed his blessings upon another devotee. And all was well with the world.”

    “The world revolves around moi.”

  • Les herbes folles

    Oh. Mon. Dieu. I have just found this among our condiments in the kitchen:

    I don’t think the good people of Italy would approve of this in their lasagne.

    This is the sachet of catnip that came free with Louis Catorze’s spring-summer bed. And the fact that I found it where I did suggests that a member of our household has been using it in our food.

    Now, when someone asks you whether you used the cat’s gear for cooking, there really is only one correct answer. I was, therefore, utterly dismayed when I asked Cat Daddy and he replied, “I’m PRETTY sure I didn’t”.

    Oh dear.

    Luckily for Catorze, drugs that are given as a free gift with a purchase are nothing special, and his really good shit is safely hidden at the back of the cat cupboard. However, the next time Cat Daddy makes dinner, I’ll be making sure I don’t drive or operate machinery afterwards.

    Photo taken by our friend Emily after consuming his birthday edibles. (Catorze consuming them, I mean, not Emily.)

  • Fixer le regard

    A couple of days ago, Cat Daddy and I spent the afternoon in separate rooms watching different television programmes; I didn’t want to watch whatever dull sports thing he was watching and he didn’t want to watch gruesome documentaries about serial killers.

    Naturellement Louis Catorze chose to sit in the kitchen with his papa but, after a short while, he came into the living room, where I was, to creepy-stare at me for food. It wasn’t long before I felt so uncomfortable that I succumbed to his sinister mind control, like a brainwashed cult devotee.

    Me, to Cat Daddy, as I opened the Orijen tin: “I can’t believe you’re sitting in the same room as the food, yet he came to creepy-stare at ME. Why didn’t he creepy-stare at you?”

    Him: “He did.”

    Me: “What? And you didn’t feed him?”

    Him: “No. I just ignored him. That’s why he went to you.”

    Me: “For goodness’ sake. It would have been so much less effort for you to do it. I’ve just had to get up and move rooms.”

    Him: “Well, that’s your own fault. You give into him too easily.”

    Me: “…”

    I have friends who get up at 5am to feed their cats because they can’t stand the physical bullying and intimidation, and I used to think they were pathetic. Yet here I am, being given the runaround just because this tiny, toothy little despot LOOKS at me in a certain way. He doesn’t make a sound. Mainly because he doesn’t need to.

    What a look, though. I challenge anyone to remain in the same room with this (see below, with bonus tongue on this particular occasion) and not be desperate to make it stop:

    “Feed moi.”

  • Les invités d’honneur

    Louis Catorze had a magnificent birthday weekend and marked it as follows:

    1. Stole a hair band from a guest’s bedroom whilst she slept, then rampaged around the house with it during the early hours, eventually dropping it downstairs in the living room.

    2. Indulged in some herbal edibles.

    3. Had some mystery fun with unknown individuals in the Zone Libre.

    4. Played with the toy that he received from Disco the dog:

    So. Much. Fun.

    Two never-seen-before members of the Chat Noir contingent stopped by a couple of days before the big day, to bid their comrade a Joyeux Anniversaire. We thought this first visitor WAS Catorze until we realised that the little sod was indoors, eating his Orijen in front of us.

    Look at the little sod’s tail, and the enthusiasm with which he runs to greet his nouvel ami.
    “Bonjour.”

    However, Sa Maj was less happy about the appearance of this absolute colossus, who sloped away after Catorze flew at him and told him to get lost:

    And you are …?

    The only reason he didn’t leave with his tail between his legs is because it didn’t fit. LOOK AT THE SIZE OF IT:

    “Dégage!”

    The photos aren’t the best because they were taken through grubby glass, but any attempts to go outside would have ruined the photo opportunity, with one or other party scarpering. You get the idea, though. Cats galore. It’s most apt that our place is called the CHAT-eau.

    Thank you so much for all your birthday wishes. It’s wonderful to know that Sa Maj has friends around the world.

    Official 12th Birthday Portrait.

  • Notre cher ami; une chanson pour fêter les 12 ans du Roi Soleil

    So no one told us he was gonna be this way
    This cat’s a joke, and blokes 
    Are all frightened away
    It's like he’s always stuck in psycho gear
    And he won’t behave today, this week, this month or even this year, but ...

    We’ll be there for him
    When the vet bills pile in
    We’ll be there for him
    Gonna bear it and grin
    We’ll be there for him
    If not us, well then who? 

    When we’re in bed asleep
    His screams ring through the night
    He knows we need our rest, but
    He don’t give a shite
    Nobody warned us there'd be cats like this
    And although he’s cute it’s really clear how much he’s taking the piss, but ...

    We’ll be there for him
    Even though he’s so odd
    We’ll be there for him
    What a weird little sod
    We’ll be there for him
    If not us, well, then who?

    No one could ever know him
    No one could ever read him
    Not even Satan has a clue
    What it's like to be him
    We’re knocking back the French wine
    ‘Cos of this crazy feline
    But, you know what, it’s all fine 
    And if it weren’t us it could be you ... yeah ...

    It's like he’s always stuck in psycho gear
    And he won’t behave today, this week, this month or even this year

    We’ll be there for him
    Though he drives us both mad
    We’ll be there for him
    Guess it’s not all that bad 
    We’ll be there for him
    If not us, well then who?

    Bon anniversaire, little sod.

  • Les douze

    Louis Catorze will be twelve years old on Saturday. This means that he will overtake Cat Daddy and become the oldest member of the household (based on cat years and their equivalent to human years).

    When Catorze first came to live with us, we didn’t think he would live very long because he was such a sickly little thing. Yet here he is, not just soldiering on but positively thriving. My dream of him turning fourteen – simply so that I can tell people that Catorze is quatorze – is now a distinct possibility. Back in 2014 the idea of another ten years seemed a bit of a reach, but not anymore.

    We had originally planned to be away for Catorze’s birthday – not to get away from him, I might add, but because Brentford are playing Manchester United away. However, the date of the match has been changed, so we will be here after all. Obviously he doesn’t give a shite whether we’re here or not, but I’m rather glad that we will be able to share his big day with him.

    I had written a birthday song for him, too, remodelling the lyrics to Boney M’s Rasputin*. However, given recent events, it seems insensitive to post something with Russian references. I was looking forward to using the line “La la little sod, struts around as if he’s God” but he now has a new birthday song, to be posted on the day.

    *Younger followers: ask your grandparents.

    Here is the little sod, dreaming of the birthday tomfoolery that he can conjure up:

    Relaxing on what he believes to be HIS outdoor sofa.

  • La vengeance des nœuds

    Merde. We have just experienced MatGate 2.0. And, once again, the TWO mats in question were at the undesirable end of la personne royale:

    “ … There’s a mat on mi kitty, what ammm I gonna do? …”

    I don’t know whether these were new mats, or leftovers from the previous ones which I thought I’d removed but hadn’t. Either way, I have had to deploy the Dematting Rake again. This time the mats were stubborn beyond belief and our mutual friend was not happy with my efforts to remove them. And I don’t think I will ever recover from the fact that the larger mat was coated in some sort of transparent, dried crud which TOUCHED MY HAND. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if he had sat on a snail, the only animal too slow to move out of the way of his arse.

    This one was HARD WORK.

    I know that mats are not unusual for cats, but these two recent incidents are Catorze’s ONLY incidents. What could possibly make a once-unmatty cat suddenly develop them after twelve years? Does it mean that, in his old age, he is becoming less and less able to groom his arse end, despite being lithe and kittenish in every other way? That said, if it’s taken twelve years for us to see any signs of his advancing years, the little sod has had a pretty good run.

    Cat Daddy: “It’s just his runtiness. It’s all part of being the runt of the litter.”

    Me: “Awww. You think he was the runt of the litter?”

    Cat Daddy: “Oh my God. You DON’T think he was the runt of the litter?”

    [Silence, tumbleweed, crickets]

    Anyway, I don’t suppose it matters as long as Catorze has his entourage at hand to fix the problem (which we have, in time for his birthday so, hopefully, he will be presentable for his party). And that is exactly as it should be for a Sun King.

    Matty cat.

    UPDATE: since writing this post I have found yet another mat, again at the arse end. And this one was STICKY. Ugh.

  • Le brouillard

    Cat Daddy, Louis Catorze and I recently had one of our legendary vodka and horror movie nights. (We like Swedish vodka. And, when we went to Iceland, thanks to a very generous bartender who gave us a reduced-price sample, we discovered the pure joy that is Icelandic vodka. This is our new favourite and, amazingly, it’s available on Ocado.)

    Cat Daddy doesn’t like modern horror films and tends to favour the old classics, so we went for John Carpenter’s The Fog. If you haven’t seen it, and without giving too much away, it’s all about a spooky fog that envelops the land on the anniversary of a tragic event, bringing all sorts of nasties with it.

    Part of the story involves the town’s priest reading from his ancestor’s creepy old diary which documents said tragic event. And Cat Daddy and I couldn’t help but shriek with fear when we saw this entry:

    Oh. Mon. Dieu.

    Oui, Mesdames et Messieurs: this is the date detailed on Catorze’s paperwork as his birthday.

    All this time we have celebrated this day, year after year, believing it unlikely to be his actual birthday but going along with it as we didn’t have a viable alternative. However, the fact that it’s Beltane Eve, the second spookiest day in the calendar after Hallowe’en, made us wonder if there may be some truth in it. And, now that we have seen this – especially that last line – not only do we think he almost certainly WAS born on this day, but we would bet Le Château on him having been born between midnight and 1am.

    We were scared before. We’re absolutely petrified now.

    “Caller, the screams are coming from INSIDE THE HOUSE.”

  • Une mouche noire dans mon Chardonnay

    Some things are so predictable that not only should we see them coming, but we don’t really deserve much sympathy if we don’t. One of those is Louis Catorze doing the ONE THING that we don’t want him to do. And, yet again, he has delivered.

    The little sod has managed to slalom his royal rump between Cat Daddy’s barricades and is sitting in the tarragon trough again. Yes, I know you told me so. And, yes, I know I was stupid for thinking it would go any other way than this.

    Bastard cat.
    Insouciant royal rump.

    Cat Daddy, as you can imagine, is enraged beyond belief. He has now jabbed even more shanks into the trough, at various forbidding criss-cross angles, in an effort to discourage Catorze, and only time will tell whether or not this will work. We have to hope that it will. Otherwise, what next? Poison-tipped razor wire? Motion-activated toxic gas sprinklers? Garlic and a crucifix?

    I often talk about ear plugs to block out Catorze’s screaming. However, right now, it’s the Unrepeatable Expletives that are battering my eardrums. Between them, the males of this household are doing me in.

  • La folie de la lune

    We took Louis Catorze for his steroid shot just a couple of days before the full moon. And, on the night of the full moon, I kept the uppermost shutters open because I like the moonlight coming in and I find it quite relaxing.

    I have now paid the price for my stupidity.

    Firstly, having the uppermost shutters open and the lower ones closed provides a platform onto/from which feral little sods can jump. And, secondly, direct moonlight flooding in, as opposed to it being hidden by the shutters, is rather like giving said feral little sods a neat double vodka instead of a single measure diluted with soda.

    Catorze was absolutely manic all night, bouncing around from the shutters to the dresser to the bed to the bedside tables and back again, knocking bottles and jars to the floor and generally being a pain in the arse. I actually had to sit up in bed and yell at him, not that it did any good because he just resumed his stupid behaviour as soon as I had drifted off to sleep again.

    The next morning I was as far from being relaxed as is humanly possible, and I had to crawl around on the floor to retrieve various skincare products which had been kicked from the dresser during the chaos and which had rolled under the bed.

    Cat Daddy: “It’s your own fault. You should have known that he’d want to get up onto the shutters and look outside at the foxes in the park.” (???)

    I had a lot of things to do that day, and I have no idea how managed them on no sleep. Catorze, of course, doesn’t have to concern himself with such trivialities, and happily enjoyed Boys’ Club as if nothing had happened.

    Bastard cat.

  • Une femme noble et son thé

    A couple of mornings ago, Louis Catorze and I settled in front of the television for our usual early morning horror extravaganza.

    I had prepared for being TUC by making sure I had as many important things as possible – tea, the remote control, a book and my phone – within easy reach, so that I wouldn’t have to wake Cat Daddy and ask him to bring me further supplies. He was already cross enough with me because, since the research I carried out for my Louis le Comte post, he has been inundated with county notifications. So I didn’t really fancy annoying him for a second time.

    Email sent to me by Cat Daddy the other day.

    Anyway, as Catorze stirred on my lap, his tail dipped into my mug of tea. I had a teapot at hand but only one mug, and I didn’t want to pour good tea into a mug containing horrible taily tea. And there was nowhere to tip out the taily tea without displacing Le Roi. So I had a dilemma. I knew that Cat Daddy would not appreciate being woken to help me. In fact, he would have just drunk the taily tea had he been in this situation. But I have horrifying visions of where that tail has been, so that wasn’t going to happen.

    Teay tail.

    Just as I had finished typing my message but before pressing SEND, Cat Daddy’s wine subscription delivery arrived. Now, as I have mentioned previously, dislodging a cat when TUC is akin to blasphemy in the cat freak world. However, not answering the door on this occasion would have meant losing the life-giving substance that fuels Le Château and helps us cope with Catorze, and that – along with Cat Daddy’s Unrepeatable Expletives that would have ensued – was utterly unthinkable.

    So Sa Maj was undignifiedly turfed off my lap to allow me to take the wine delivery. He was not pleased.

    I am expecting nothing short of Armageddon now.

    Send holy water to TW8, merci s’il vous plaît.

  • Des souvenirs dorment dans cette chevelure

    Louis Catorze had his steroid shot yesterday. There was the usual Benny Hill-style chase when putting him into his transportation pod and, as I was leaving, Cat Daddy – who was in the middle of a massive DIY session – asked me to pop into the hardware shop on the way back and buy a lightbulb and two little transponder-type things.

    Catorze screamed all the way through his examination, but the vet confirmed that all was well and that he was “looking good”. He fell deathly silent as we went into the hardware shop then, as the shopkeeper spoke, the screaming resumed.

    The shopkeeper was startled and looked outside, thinking there was some altercation taking place.

    Me: “Oh, that’s just my cat.”

    Shopkeeper: “Sorry?”

    Me: “My cat is in this bag.”

    Him: “There’s a cat?”

    Me: “Yes.”

    Him: “IN THE BAG?”

    Me: “Erm, yes.”

    Him: “…”

    I should have explained that I’d come straight from the vet, instead of just saying “My cat is in this bag”, but I didn’t think of it at the time. So now the shopkeeper thinks I am the kind of weirdo who goes shopping with her screaming cat. And I can never go back to that shop again.

    Although Catorze is in good health, his body is still spewing out fur. Clumps of it are drifting around Le Château like tumbleweed rolling through the American west.

    A few days before the vet appointment, we had a Code Gris emergency on our hands. And by “on our hands”, I actually mean “on Catorze’s arse”. This (see below) started out as a few tiny strands of grey undercoat sticking out from his fur and I left it, imagining that, at some point, it would just come off by itself.

    It didn’t. In fact, over the course of just a couple of days, it grew.

    What in the world …?

    My sister: “It’s a mat. You can get special mat combs that get them out.”

    Me: “Could I not just use scissors?”

    Her: “Do you trust him to hold still and not injure you or himself?”

    [Silence, tumbleweed, crickets]

    Narrator: “And so she bought the special mat comb.”

    Anyway, the comb arrived the next day, and it seems that someone in the marketing department felt that its appearance wasn’t quite scary enough, so they named it the Dematting Rake. RAKE.

    Ouch.

    Catorze sat on my lap and, astoundingly, was happy to let me hack away at his arse end with this device, only emitting the occasional squeak when I accidentally pulled too hard. Perhaps he felt uncomfortable and knew that whatever I was doing had to be better than living with the mats? It was quite the feat but, eventually, I managed to loosen and remove the TWO horrible knots:

    The mats, alongside my customary £1 coin for scale.

    So Le Roi is now a mat-free zone. And I have something fun and unique to tell my students when they ask me what I did during my holidays.

    What a time to be alive.

    The Catorzian arse, sans mats.

  • Un plat qui se mange froid

    Remember Kurt Zouma? Remember what he did? The British public certainly do and, given that he’s now being prosecuted AND he had the ignominy of an own goal against Spurs a few weeks ago, it seems that Lady Karma is doing her thing.

    However, we certainly weren’t about to pass up an opportunity when West Ham came to play Brentford on Sunday. Now, I’m not one of those who shouts abuse at sportspeople, no matter what they’ve done. Instead, I decided to take a leaf from the Catorzian Playbook of Unsettling Behaviour and just creepy-stare, with the help of one of these:

    Good grief.

    These items, unbelievably, are not props from The Purge but part of a kids’ party pack of a dozen animal masks, of which seven are cats (and one is a fox but looks sufficiently cat-like from a distance). There isn’t a fully black cat, as you can see, which upset Cat Daddy far more than he will ever admit, so he picked one of the tuxedo cats, which were plain black on the reverse, and wore it inside out.

    I bought two sets of masks and handed them to anyone who would agree to wear them. However, it seems we needn’t have bothered, because the rowdy blokes in the West Stand were on it. Not only did they boo every time the ball went to Zouma, but they blasted him with two new, never-heard-before chants. The first was “R, S, P-C-A, R-S-P-C-A!” to the tune of Oops Upside Your Head (aka Louis Catorze’s Chubbing Up Song). And, when Zouma hobbled off, injured, after twenty-nine minutes, he was hailed with a chorus of “Put him down, put him down, put him down!” to the tune of Stars and Stripes Forever.

    I would never wish an injury on anyone, not even Zouma. But there was something about it that felt like a karmic coup de foudre.

    At the start of the game, one of the blokes who sits in front of us asked me for my score prediction, and I said, “2-1 to Brentford, with Zouma being sent off.” And that’s so eerily close to what ended up happening that I can’t help wondering whether The Mothership had anything to do with it.

    Catorze doesn’t need a lawyer because he knows we can’t prove anything.