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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.

  • Qu’ils mangent du gâteau (Partie 2)

    Yesterday it was my birthday. I don’t usually have a birthday cake – the last one I had was ten years ago, and the one before that was probably as a child – but I wanted one this year. And, since I can’t bake, I decided to have one made for me.

    You’d think this would be easy and that, in these difficult times, bakers would be more than happy for my business, non? Well … NON. One of the three local bakers whom I approached replied promptly and told me that she no longer made bespoke cakes (fair enough), another promised to contact me with costs but then didn’t despite me politely following up, and the third just didn’t reply at all. I messaged her on WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger, she read both messages (ah yes, the magic of modern technology and read receipts) but still didn’t reply.

    Merci à Dieu, then, for Cat Daddy. He has never baked, nor has he decorated a cake, in his life. But, when he saw my predicament, he stepped in to be my dashing knight. And this magnificent masterpiece was the result of his efforts:

    Saint Jésus et tous ses anges.

    It may be 70% sugar and 30% food colouring, but it’s the best thing in the world. Bravo to Cat Daddy for stepping out of his comfort zone to save the day, and to my sister and nieces for making the fondant features. The cake tasted as good as it looked, and the only costs to us were the ingredients, the constant questions and Unrepeatable Expletives as Cat Daddy prepared it, and black tongues for several days.

    Louis Catorze had plenty of attention over the weekend and is now recovering on his papa’s lap after all the over-stimulation. After all, he needs to conserve some mischief for the rest of the month.

    Don’t overdo it! There’s still almost half of the party month left to go.
    Take it easy, little sod.

  • Qu’ils mangent du gâteau

    Earlier this year I treated myself to a Discovery Plus subscription, with the intention of taking advantage of the cheap trial period and then cancelling before the £4.99 per month kicked in. However, after just a week or two I was hopelessly addicted, and now I have lost all intention of cancelling. In fact, I’d happily keep the subscription even if it cost £499 per month.

    One of my new favourite shows is Hallowe’en Wars, which is essentially The Great British Bake-Off except American and Hallowe’eny. I rarely bake because I don’t enjoy it, and most of the things I bake turn out awful but, dammit, I will happily judge an experienced artisan confiseur’s sugar work and remark that it looks wonky.

    However, a warning to my fellow Brits: Bake-Off it ain’t. On Hallowe’en Wars, they randomly stop the teams mid-task to announce that there’s a surprise twist. Contestants are snarky and gobby towards the judges. There is in-fighting between team members, resulting in individuals storming off in a huff, never to be seen again, and eventually being replaced by members of previously-eliminated teams. And at no point do the presenters let the losers down gently and Britishly by saying, “And, sadly, I have the horrible job of announcing who will be going home this week.” Instead, they just turn to the eliminatees and say, “You’re done”. It’s brutal.

    In one of the earlier episodes of series 1, the challenge was to create a scary animal-themed cake. I couldn’t have thought of a better premise than a cat who came back from the dead to eat its owner. And, naturellement, such a cat couldn’t possibly look any other way than this:

    Saint Jésus.
    SAINT JÉSUS.

    I know. It’s like a flash-forward into the future, when Louis Catorze is denied entry into hell for being too creepy and decides to come back to lay his vengeance upon me.

    I don’t usually eat cake but I want this one. And I bet you do, too.

  • La ferme des animaux

    As the cooler weather continues, normal cats are beginning to spend time indoors. However, the more troublesome adventurous cats among us are still fixed in summer mode and are constantly out. And, unfortunately, this means that there are rather more encounters with Foxy Loxy and his relatives than one would want.

    Some cats clearly take their guard duties very seriously. Boots, the usurper stepbrother of Louis Catorze’s frère d’âme, Antoine, happily shows the fox contingent who’s boss. And Larry the Downing Street cat, possibly the most famous cat in the United Kingdom, doesn’t hesitate to get stuck in. Although, being an employee of the Cabinet Office, it’s hard to know whether he is defending his territory (GOOD) or sharing his employers’ stance on seeing off anyone who may appear to be slightly different, even if they need help (BAD).

    As for Catorze, referring to his encounters as “encounters” is probably a bit of a reach, since foxes either don’t notice him or run away from him before an altercation can even start. Obviously this is a positive thing, although we do worry that, one day, the foxes will get hungry enough, or just plain fed up with his nonsense, and finish the little sod once and for all.

    Here are Boots and Larry in action (not together, obviously … although that would be very funny to watch):

    “Gerroff my lawn!”
    “And stay off!”
    Seeking to rapidly remove those with no right to be here.

    And here is Catorze, giving Foxy Loxy one of his trademark creepy stares and knowing that that’s enough:

    Evil lives here. (Well, not HERE because this is on next door’s territory, but you know what I mean.)

    EDIT: Don’t get too comfortable, Mesdames et Messieurs, because it appears that the foxes are fighting back. A family member’s chat-sitteur has a fox who regularly comes in through her non-Sureflap, and not long ago it left a dead rat on her bed.

  • Il y a plus dangereux que les vampires ce soir

    Cat Daddy and I have just returned home from a weekend away.

    When we away, Family Next Door often feed Louis Catorze, as they did this time. And, sometimes, Daughter Next Door, aged eight, likes to come over and play with the little sod when we’re here. The last time she came over, we had some Catorze photos lying around on the coffee table. We told her that she was very welcome to take some home with her, and so she did.

    When we went over to their place for drinks recently, this was what we found in their kitchen. Oui, Mesdames et Messieurs: Catorze is creepily hovering on their knife block. THEIR KNIFE BLOCK.

    Stabby little sod.

    I know. Just as we thought he couldn’t possibly be any more sinister, THIS. And the following elements of the whole ensemble make it all the more chilling:

    1. The smug look on his face.

    2. The fangs (zoom in and you’ll see them).

    3. The random extra blade on the block, for no apparent reason.

    4. The fact that one knife is missing.

    I plucked up the courage to ask if I could take a picture, but was too scared to ask Mamma Next Door any of the many, many questions that I have.

    I am now counting all the knives in our kitchen before I go to bed. And, before you try to convince me that nothing could possibly go awry, may I remind you that Catorze has past form when it comes to attempted murder (look here if you don’t believe it). Oh, and he’s a black vampire cat with a Beltane Eve birthday, who lives in a house containing a haunted sculpture.

  • Aux idiots l’argent brûle les doigts

    When Cat Daddy noticed the ferocity with which Louis Catorze pounced upon a newly-opened pack of Orijen, he suggested that we start buying the small packs instead of the fractionally less expensive medium-sized ones. I may have mentioned this previously on Le Blog, but I’m mentioning it again as I’m sure Cat Daddy will deny that it was his idea and start complaining about the cost again. (The smaller packs are 9p per kg more expensive than the medium-sized ones.)

    Last week it was time to re-order as Louis Catorze was on his last pack of Orijen. We had stopped our medium pack subscription with Petscorner.co.uk with the intention of restarting on the small pack but, when I tried to resume the subscription, I discovered that they were out of stock.

    Orijen’s main website was also all out although, annoyingly, they had supplies of the Orijen Six Fish for dogs. (Yes, I did compare the ingredients lists to see if there was a difference. And, yes, I did consider trying it to see if Catorze would notice, but I had grotesque visions of each pellet being the size of a brick and the silly sod overstretching his tiny jaws to eat them, like a snake swallowing a whole cow.)

    Merde.

    Eventually I managed to find the last five packs in the world at Mypetwarehouse.co.uk, so I ordered all five. Since then I have found a few more places that stock the small pack, and I think the Orijen site may have replenished its stocks now, but my hopes of finding a reliable subscription service are dwindling. I want to be able to subscribe and then forget about it. I don’t want to have to order from a different place every time and pay delivery costs because they don’t have enough stock to enable me to meet the free delivery threshold. Yet this still beats the horror of leaving Catorze foodless and screaming.

    When I told Cat Daddy about this, he muttered something about Brexit, supply chains and some other thing that I don’t remember. He doesn’t stockpile – in fact, he thinks people who do stockpile are scaremongering idiots – yet even he was encouraging me to buy every single pack of Orijen Six Fish Cat (and Dog, if I had to) that I could lay my hands on.

    More Orijen than he can handle.

    It shouldn’t be this complicated, should it? But then “complicated” is what Catorze is and does.

    Cat Daddy took these pictures during an especially rambunctious Boys’ Club and, throughout the session, he was telling Catorze what an emotional and financial drain he is and how unhelpful this is when the country is gripped by what we keep calling a Cost of Living Crisis (but, in fact, is really a Cost of Voting for the Wrong Party and Having Them Do Us Over Crisis). Luckily Catorze didn’t understand and, even if he did, he wouldn’t have given a merde.

    One of the last alfresco Boys’ Clubs of the summer.
    It was quite the session.

  • Mahomet ira à la montagne

    Cat Daddy’s friend Mike – one of the boys from the notorious Friday night Zoom call – has given us some home-grown pumpkins. Some are tiny ghost pumpkins that fit into the palm of my hand. The the others are the familiar, traditional orange ones, and so ridiculously heavy that I can’t lift them.

    If I am to achieve the Herculean feat that is a faintly passable Official Hallowe’en Portrait for Louis Catorze, I am going to have to do one of the following:

    ⁃ Rely on him to come to wherever the big pumpkins may be, rather than carrying them to him when he happens to be in an appropriate place/pose.

    ⁃ Use the small ones (taking them to him), which will make the little sod look comically gigantic.

    One of those is far more likely to yield results than the other. Although I use the word “results” somewhat loosely.

    For the moment, the big pumpkins are sitting on the outdoor sofa until I figure out how on earth I can not only get Catorze to them, but make him pose beautifully. I’m going to need a little luck, and a LOT of time.

    Like a hot stone massage, except … neither hot, nor a stone. Nor even a massage.
    Oh dear God, no.

  • Le mannequin de haute-couture

    After Louis Catorze’s success in modelling for the Christmas collection, Puppy Mamma decided to use him again as her photographic muse, for the launch of her 2022 autumn collection.

    I did warn her that lightning didn’t strike twice where Catorze was concerned – unless, of course, it was the bad kind of lightning. But, having tried her luck once with him, with great results, Puppy Mamma couldn’t resist another go.

    On the morning of the shoot, Cat Daddy decided to scatter stinky compost juice all over the garden. I know. I was doing my step workout outdoors at the time, so this wasn’t great timing. And, worse yet, I had the bifold doors open because I was listening out for the postman, and the gut-wrenching stink floated into the house and clung to every surface and every space.

    When Puppy Mamma arrived, the whole house still reeked and Catorze, presumably unable to stand the stench, was asleep in the attic bedroom. I suggested that we take the props to him rather than vice versa, mainly because I knew that upstairs would smell better. However, Puppy Mamma had her heart set on photographing Catorze in the hearth and, after arranging the props in an artful fashion, she said, “It would be great if we could get Louis to sit right there, in the middle.”

    Hmmm. This would have been impossible even if he were in a good mood. But after being rudely awoken from his slumber and dragged into a room stinking of rot? Non, non and thrice non.

    Or so I thought.

    Oh. Mon. Dieu. The little sod was flawless, and Puppy Mamma was able to take some of the best pictures I have ever seen of him. As a result I am feeling much more confident of achieving a passable Official 2022 Hallowe’en Portrait (although I may have to ask Puppy Mamma to do it). Cat Daddy is super-proud of his spooky boy, although he would punch himself in both eyes before he ever admitted it.

    If you are anything like me and you start thinking about the next Hallowe’en before the pumpkins from the last one have even made it to the compost heap, you will have organised yourself a long time ago. However, if you are a normal person, please have a look here at Puppy Mamma’s handmade seasonal decorations. And below is Le Roi‘s best picture from the photo shoot.

    Cat Daddy: “He never poses like this for you. In fact, your photos of him are always the worst.” Thanks for that.

    Tip: to make the model more compliant, dust the props liberally with catnip. (I’m not joking. You can even see the bits on the floor.)

  • L’œil maudit (Partie 3)

    October is upon us. And, would you believe, Louis Catorze’s evil eye has vanished into the swirling mists of autumn, as swiftly as it came.

    I can’t explain it, but I suspect that what prompted the disappearance was me making an appointment with the vet for Catorze’s steroid shot, and planning to discuss the bald patch at the same time. I have plenty of pictures of it, of course, but they’re not much use to the vet. At least the appointment was relatively straightforward, though. Apart from the heavy rain, the long wait and the other two cats in the waiting room whom Catorze managed to rouse into song.

    Here is what’s left of the area where the eye used to be:

    I spy, with my little … oh wait, where is it?

    Now that the appointment is over, and now that I have mentioned all this online, no doubt it will return, only to disappear again when I make the next vet appointment.

    I am relieved because I didn’t want Catorze to start over-grooming the area, plus it was weird as hell. But, at the same time, part of me is disappointed that it won’t be here for Hallowe’en. I was quite looking forward to showing my black vampire cat with an evil eye to the trick-or-treating kids and watching them flee in terror.

    Catorze may now look 1% less creepy than he did before, but I’m sure he will make up for that in other ways. I daren’t even think about what these could be.

    Oh dear God.

  • Le long monsieur aux longues jambes

    *WARNING: SPIDER IMAGERY AND DISCUSSION*

    Summer is over, and spider season is here. And there is a spider in the bathroom whom I have named, erm, Peter Crouch.

    Hello, mate.

    He lives behind the toilet and usually keeps to himself but, every now and again, he scuttles out when I flush, as if perturbed by the noise. I don’t really mind him being there but I wouldn’t want him hiding in a toilet roll and then being scooped up and shoved somewhere unmentionable.

    Louis Catorze eats bugs, which is a wonderful thing. However, he is highly selective about the ones he eats. If it’s one that is far away and minding its own business and, in fact, you didn’t even know it was there, oui. If it’s right in his face, then it’s a firm NON.

    I don’t know if this is a near/far-sightedness problem, or whether it’s just him being an arse. Most likely it’s a bit of each.

    Last night I tried to encourage him into the bathroom to help me out with Peter. Naturellement he wasn’t playing ball, despite the fact that he has been happy to interrupt me in there at various inappropriate moments when I HAVEN’T wanted his company. Eventually I had to grab him and place him next to Peter, but he couldn’t see him and just randomly sniffed around, whining.

    I placed him back there again, this time with his face close to Peter. Nope.

    I placed him back there again, this time with his whiskers ACTUALLY TOUCHING ONE OF PETER’S LONG LEGS. Still a nope.

    Me: “You’re just not going to do this, are you?”

    Catorze: “Mwah!”

    I am now going to have to ask Cat Daddy to rehome Peter, which he will do but he will resent it every step of the way as he sees this kind of thing as very much Catorze’s job. He is already piqued at the fact that he has to chase away the squirrels and the parakeets, so this request is not going to go down well.

    EDIT: Cat Daddy dealt with Peter but, the next day, there was a startlingly similar spider in the bath. Did Peter come back, or have we cruelly separated a spider couple?

    Pretending to be on Bug Watch but, in reality, doing absolutely nothing.

  • L’œil maudit (Partie 2)

    Autumn is here, which means it’s time to swap Louis Catorze’s spring-summer bed for his autumn-winter one. Daughter Next Door very kindly took on this task when she and her family visited the other day – she takes her Catorzian duties very seriously indeed – and, after first sniffing the bed as if it were some alien spacecraft, Louis Catorze is now in:

    Elvis is in the building.

    Regretfully, this means that I see less of him at night because he likes to spend time in here. But I’m less likely to be woken by purring, screaming and/or stupid gadding about. And it means that his evil eye is hidden from view, which is just as well because – Saint Jésus et tous ses anges – it’s mutating.

    I knew this would happen.

    There are now the beginnings of a pupil and, even worse, it’s looking at me right now:

    Ugh.
    Gahhhhh!

    Obviously this is wonderful news for our October visitors, of whom there are MANY this year; people are going to be visiting us Catorze every weekend bar one, plus during the half term break. If you’re the sort of person who arranges to visit a black vampire cat in October, having him inexplicably grow an evil eye is a bonus.

    However, if you’re the one who has to share a house with him all year round, it’s frightening. And having such a distinguishing mark means that we won’t be able to trot out the “It must have been some other black cat” excuse, the next time he causes trouble in the neighbourhood.

    If the eye continues to evolve, crucifixes and holy water won’t be enough; I think we’ll need an exorcist. The only problem is, they all know of Catorze and none of them are prepared to come here, especially during the time of year when his evil powers are in ascendancy …

    Cat without a face … although he has an eye on his body so it doesn’t really matter.

  • Une demeure d’or et de pluie

    Cat Daddy: “Where’s that cat when we need him?”

    Autumn is coming, and Le Roi is getting fat. Well, not FAT fat, and certainly not as fat as the squirrel above, but he has an especially meaty, furry look about him. He has never been a cat who chubbed up much during the colder months but, maybe, now that he’s a senior gentleman*, he has decided to start.

    *Cat Daddy: “He’s a manky old man.” I refrained from mentioning that, if we convert human years to cat years, Catorze is only a year older than him.

    Who ate all the Orijen?

    The little sod seems not to realise it’s the day of the autumn equinox, and is still firmly in summer mode. He’s constantly out. And not only does he conduct ICB to the east of us, in the direction of where Twiggy the greyhound lives, but he has also been heading westwards to Blue the Smoke Bengal’s place. Sometimes Blue’s mamma chats to him, and he chats back.

    As summer gives way to autumn, Catorze continues to live his best life. Here he is, enjoying one of the last few September sunsets from Blue’s shed roof:

    Happy Roi.

  • Les merveilles de la cire

    On Monday morning, the beautician came over for a mammoth waxing session. Not the most seemly activity for a day of sombre reflection, perhaps, but quite enough people have lost money due to events being cancelled (bar staff and so on). Monday is the beautician’s day off and our appointments are always on a Monday so, provided she was happy to do battle with the transport, I was happy for her to come.

    She was due to arrive at 9:30am. However, because of the travel disruption caused by the funeral, she was forty minutes late. And, as bad luck would have it, she happened to finish waxing my legs and begin on, erm, other areas just as the service started. Had everything run on time, she would have finished and been out of the door well before this point.

    Obviously I wasn’t watching the service in the same room; that would have been weird. But I could hear the strains of dour choral music drifting in from the attic bedroom, where Cat Daddy was watching. And it was still weird.

    Just as I thought it couldn’t be more awkward, Louis Catorze rocked up. However excruciating a situation, he can always be relied upon to make it worse. I had taken the precaution of closing the door, for fear of this very thing happening. However the beautician, upon hearing him screaming, was excited to see him. So she let him in, and I was too slow to stop her.

    “Hello, Lewis!” she said. Catorze mwahhed back. He then jumped onto the bed to oversee the proceedings.

    So there I was, on a day of national mourning, having hot wax slapped onto very delicate areas with funeral music accompaniment, whilst a screaming cat watched. Saint Jésus.

    After a few minutes, Catorze went upstairs to pester Cat Daddy, jumping onto the bed and pointing his rear end at the funeral cortège on the television screen. Yes, Cat Daddy did take pictures. No, I won’t be sharing them here, despite Cat Daddy daring me to do so.

    I am prepared to show this, though: a still from the video that I took for my friend to demonstrate Catorze’s shocking timing, and you will see him utterly entranced by the magic that is the bikini wax. I know. So much wrong in one picture but, trust me, it could be far worse:

    Yes, that’s my foot sticking out.

  • Dans des moments comme ceux-ci

    This fine gentleman is Mr Fu:

    How do you do, Mr Fu.?

    He is friends with Louis Catorze’s frère-from-another-mère, Antoine, and Antoine’s usurper stepbrother, Boots.

    Well, I say “friends” but, in actual fact, they’re only friends in the same way that Catorze is friends with Cocoa the babysit cat and his sister, Chanel. It’s the humans who are friends. The cats have never met and I’m pretty sure that, if they did, there would be carnage and bloodshed. But it’s nice to pretend, non?

    Most places in England, including vet practices, are closed today for the Queen’s funeral. (No doubt the corgis asked for this; I bet they’re overjoyed that their most hated place in the world is closed.) So, naturellement, Mr Fu thought this would be a good time to go out scrapping and end up with a fight wound that required medical treatment. A lump appeared on his head on Saturday afternoon and had deteriorated by the evening but, luckily, by that time, his humans had managed to bag one of the last available slots on Sunday.

    One prescription (Metacam and antibiotics) and one bill later, Mr Fu is doing fine. Pulling a stunt like this when the whole country is closed for the long weekend is beyond evil, yet also utterly typical of cats and what they do. I bet the little sod had been planning this for months.

    I wish there were an option for those of us with, erm, untrustworthy cats, which allowed us to book vet appointments for inconvenient times and cancel at the last minute in the unlikely event of the cats behaving themselves. It’s my birthday next month and the whole family are coming over for lunch, and I am giving serious consideration to booking such an appointment for Catorze. He doesn’t need the vet (at the moment). But it would be just like him to do something stupid on that day, leaving us scrabbling around for the last remaining appointment right in the middle of our main course. And, if you don’t believe Catorze would stoop that low, have a look here.

    So … do I book the appointment, with the fear that I might forget to cancel 24 hours beforehand and end up being charged and/or blacklisted as an infidel no-show? Or do I leave it and risk Catorze crawling in from the Zone Libre, bleeding from the eyeballs, drooling black vomit and dragging his lifeless back legs behind him, just as we are all leaving for the pub?

    I suspect that whatever we do will end up being the wrong thing. Bastard cats.

    Antoine: “Stupid humans!”
    Boots: “Pathetic humans!”
    Catorze: “Whatever. Couldn’t really give a merde.”

  • L’œil maudit

    Nooooooo. Oh. Mon. Dieu.

    Wouldn’t you just know it: after the fur initially grew back to the point of almost being normal again, Louis Catorze’s evil eye bald patch is now returning. Just in time for the spooky season.

    Black (white?) hole.

    At the moment it just looks like a hole. But, no doubt, it will mutate and evolve during the next few weeks, drawing strength from the unseen dark forces of the season. And, by the time Hallowe’en arrives it will be a fully formed eye, following me creepily around the room even when Catorze is asleep.

    I am not rushing him to the vet just yet because, at the moment, it doesn’t seem to be bothering the little sod. I hope it won’t get worse, though. The next month is such a busy one for me, and I really could do without having to daub medication onto a cat who doesn’t want to be daubed.

    Please send thoughts and prayers. Please also send crucifixes and holy water, if you have them.