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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.

  • Les poils emmêlés

    Not long after the Louis Catorze’s vet appointment, during which we didn’t mention the mats on account of them having long gone, I discovered these:

    His evil eye is on the other side.

    These quite literally sprang up overnight and, during the few days leading up to me spotting these, he showed no indication of struggling to groom or any such thing. Clearly it was time to deploy the Dematting Rake again … and, naturellement, that was when Catorze decided that he was going to lie on that side of his body (his right) forever more.

    Usually he favours lying on his right side around 70% of the time, so getting to these mats was always going to be a challenge. However, when I really, really needed him to lie on his left side, he firmly decided that he wasn’t going to do it, ever again.

    Cat Daddy refuses to believe that one cannot flip a cat who doesn’t want to be flipped, and thinks it’s just me being pathetic. Not long ago, when he was brushing Catorze on his lap, he tapped the royal rump with the brush, gently said, “Come on, Louis, let’s flip you” and the bastard cat happily obliged, purring away. When I try it, the little sod turns himself into a dead weight and gives me a new type of scowly meow which I’ve never heard before and which has been invented just for this purpose (more about that another time).

    After several days of sitting pointlessly with the Rake at my side, at long last I had a result when the little sod suddenly acquiesced and lay on his left side, matted side up.

    The mats were gone. Nothing, niente, nichts and nada.

    No doubt evil Catorze wants me to be left wondering if I had dreamed the whole episode, so merci à Dieu for photographic evidence. That said, somehow it still feels as if he has won this battle.

    Bastard cat.

  • Quand le chat n’est pas là, les souris dansent

    Cat Daddy is away on holiday with his cycling buddies, so it’s only me and Louis Catorze at Le Château.

    This was Cat Daddy’s view the other day:

    Taking in the stunning scenery.

    And this was mine:

    Watching a French supernatural drama whilst trapped under a French vampire cat.

    As if it’s not bad enough being home alone with a black vampire cat whose body is adorned with an evil eye, the little sod is doing everything to make this as unsettling an experience as possible: stomping up and down on the floorboards in the dead of night, doing parkour around the house, knocking things over, making paper-rustling sounds in rooms that I didn’t even think had paper in them, and so on. Whereas he used to lie quietly at the foot of the bed, he now bounces across my belly repeatedly before eventually settling, wide-eyed and purring, next to me, slapping my arm with his tail.

    No doubt he will morph back into an affectionate little kitten the minute Cat Daddy returns and, when I report the mayhem and mischief that took place during his absence, I won’t be believed.

    Soaking up the moonlight during one of many escapes out at The Front.

    The last thing Cat Daddy said to me before setting off was, “I bet you’ll waste the entire time watching horror films and drinking tea with HIM on your lap.”

    Erm, ok, so that is, indeed, how I have spent much of my week – at least, the part of it that’s NOT spent being scared witless. But in no way do I consider it wasted time. Wasted time is when you the return for your efforts doesn’t justify the time spent. Time spent drinking good tea and watching good (or bad) horror with a cat on your lap is time very well spent indeed. And I’d do it every single day for the rest of my life, if I could.

    All I need to make this perfect is for cats to be able to go to the kitchen and put the kettle on. I bet they could if they wanted to. They just don’t want to.

    The little sod found this part especially engaging.

  • La sirène d’alerte aérienne

    One of the good things about having a black cat is that, if they’re raising hell in public, you can always pretend it must be some other cat. I have had to do this around 8,073 times (each) with Louis Catorze and his big brother, Luther, so I’m used to it by now.

    However, it’s rather difficult to deny it in the following circumstances:

    1. The hell is raised in broad daylight.

    2. The hell is raised in an elevated area surrounded by multiple houses.

    3. The hell is raised in the early hours of the morning, when everything is quiet, so people are likely to hear it and investigate.

    5. Your cat is unusually small, so onlookers know instantly that he’s yours.

    6. Another cat is with him, so the sense of scale makes it even more evident that the small black hellraiser is your cat.

    7. Your cat still has the Eye of Sauron on his body from a bald patch that just won’t go away, again making identification very easy. (He’s fine, by the way. The vet says steroids can delay hair regrowth, although we’re to book another appointment if it’s not improved in a couple of weeks.)

    Still staring creepily even when his back is turned.

    A few days ago, we had each and every one of the above factors working against us.

    When I was getting ready to go to work a couple of mornings ago, I heard the familiar sound of a parakeet shrieking. Somehow you can tell when it’s an altercation as opposed to just generic shrieking and this was, without a doubt, an altercation. I looked out, fully expecting Catorze but, to my surprise, he was accompanied by Beefy Tabby Tigger, a local unneutered male whom everyone hates but who, bizarrely, gets along very well with Catorze. The two of them were hanging out on top of our trellis and next door’s shed, and a parakeet, perched atop the telegraph wires above them, was hollering its lungs out.

    Naturellement, as soon as he saw me, Catorze decided to flee from the scene of the crime. I wasn’t quick enough to photograph him on the trellis but here he is, absconding, with Tigger and the shrieking parakeet looking on:

    What the actual HECK?

    I imagine that the parakeet was either warning its buddies of not one but TWO predators below, of which one appeared to have a third eye. Or maybe it was shrieking at them to go away so that it could swoop down and steal some of the food that Cat Daddy puts out for the goldfinches. Either way, it was loud enough for me to go and look. And so, I imagine, did all our neighbours. (Sorry, if any of you are reading this.)

    How does an ageing cat have the time or the inclination for any of this nonsense? I can’t figure it/him out, nor do I think I ever will.

  • Une mouche dans la soupe

    Louis Catorze has a complicated and bizarre water drinking ritual, which is as follows:

    1. Approach drinking station and position himself appropriately, usually – although not always – with his back to the wall and facing outwards, to avoid stealth attacks from unknown enemies.

    2. Sniff water to ensure that it isn’t poisoned.

    3. Look around to make sure nobody is about to steal water.

    4. Drink.

    5. Sit for a few more minutes.

    6. Make a couple of fake-puke sounds to scare us.

    7. Drink some more.

    8. Leave drinking station.

    The whole thing usually takes about twenty minutes and is quite comical to watch, if you can be bothered.

    However, yesterday morning I noticed that Catorze had completed steps 1 to 3 and was just sitting there. I glanced over to check that he had sufficient water, which he did. But then a further fifteen minutes elapsed and he still hadn’t drunk. This was somewhat unusual.

    I decided to get up and check that there was nothing wrong with his water. It was then that I saw a big fat fly floating in it.

    Now, Catorze is an avid hunter of flies. I have even seen him swipe them in mid-flight like King Kong with those planes or helicopters or whatever they were and, once they are mortally wounded, he snaps his jaws around them before they even hit the ground. Perhaps the problem was the fly being dead, therefore making the water gross and contaminated, yet I have also seen him drink from the ancient watering can which was here when we moved in. This predates time itself and contains untold horrors that I daren’t even attempt to discover (and I am pretty sure he doesn’t know what’s in that water, either, given that it’s dark when he sticks his head in).

    So, clean water containing one fly: NON.

    Stagnant, old rainwater containing stuff he can’t even see, most likely including 8,972 flies: OUAIS.

    It’s good to know where Catorze’s line is. Even though it’s weird.

    An old photo of the little sod tucking in.
    A more recent photo, supping free-range water at his outdoor pub.

  • Les pantoufles de Cendrillon

    Kurt Zouma has been sentenced to 180 hours of community service and been banned from keeping animals for five years. As he left court, he was greeted by this:

    Photo from dailystar.co.uk (SORRY).

    No, this isn’t me. (Only because I didn’t think of it.)

    We don’t yet know what the community service will be, but I hope it will involve cleaning animal excrement of some sort. Alternatively, he should be made to wear these for the whole of the new football season, on and off the pitch:

    Photos taken from adidas.co.uk.
    Reminds me of absolutely nobody in particular.

    These shoes have been inspired by Snowball II from The Simpsons. But, since Snowball II happens to be a black cat with vampire teeth, we’ll claim it and happily pretend that Louis Catorze is Adidas’ muse.

    Aren’t the shoes splendid? The only problem is that they don’t make them in adult sizes so, since I can neither wear them myself nor buy them for Kurt Zouma, I shall, instead, have to choose the least resistant of my nieces and nephews to be the wearer.

    This is how much I fancy my chances, with 0 meaning utter compliance and 10 representing an unyieldingness harder than diamond:

    Mr Mint Green: 8; Miss Floral, at the back: a solid 12, on a good day; Miss Turquoise: 1; Mr Dark Blue: 4; Tiny Miss at the front: 0 before she learned how to take off her own shoes, closer to 6 now

  • Vive la Roipublique

    Merde, merde and thrice merde: my alternative bunting didn’t arrive, despite me paying an eye-stingingly expensive delivery charge to have it in time for the weekend. So I guess it will have to wait until the next noteworthy royal event, and luckily it’s the kind of timeless design that will keep.

    Cat Daddy: “Is it the kind of thing that’ll draw attention to our house?”

    You could say that, yes.

    At least the platinum jubilee is over now, although its efforts to drive me insane worked a treat. Last week I was so far gone that I swore I could see Boris Johnson’s face in Louis Catorze’s bald patch. You can see it too, right?

    A nasty, unsightly blight which we hope will be gone soon.

    Cat Daddy thinks the bald patch is expanding, yet I think we’ve had some regrowth since the above photo was taken. I don’t really care which of us is right because the most important thing is that it doesn’t look like Boris Johnson anymore. It now looks like Ghostface from Scream or Edward Scissorhands, depending on the angle and the light, but either of those would be far preferable to Boris Johnson.

    In any case, it’s still not bothering Catorze. And I’m happy to just leave it for now, but I’m ready to whisk him back to the vet should I spot any cuts, soreness or changes of temperament/habit.

    Parmi les autres nouvelles, we were given a flower bouquet recently which contained evil lilies. Lilies are highly toxic to cats so, if we ever receive them, we gently fish them out of the bouquet and dispose of them, leaving the cat-harmless flowers in place. On this occasion, Cat Daddy put them into the garden waste recycling bag in an unobtrusive corner of the garden, far from inquisitive Catorzian paws.

    Naturellement, despite never usually venturing into this part of the garden, Catorze suddenly decided that the green waste recycling bag was the most interesting and attractive item in the world. Luckily we were able to whisk him to safety and Cat Daddy rearranged the bag, rolling it tightly like a Swiss roll* and placing a few bricks on top to seal in the contagion until the next collection (although no British person has the faintest idea when this will be, since the double bank holiday has stuffed up our bin days).

    *Younger followers: don’t bother asking your Swiss friends. Ask your older relatives who lived in the U.K. during the 70s or 80s.

    I had hoped that, in his advanced years, Sa Maj might show SOME sign of stopping all his nonsense. But it’s no real surprise that he hasn’t.

    We have no idea what this was about.

  • Le jubilé de platine

    Today marks the Queen’s platinum jubilee and, apparently, there are around sixteen thousand street parties being held around the U.K. this weekend. Neither Cat Daddy nor I are royalists and we find it all rather grotesque and distasteful, so we won’t be joining in any celebrations. Also, since we are already being bled dry to fund the luxurious lifestyle of a certain member of the French aristocracy, we have neither the time nor the wherewithal to fuss over another monarch.

    My friend Lizzi sent me this a few days ago (see below). At first I thought it was a meme, but it’s actually more like a reminder. A Polite Reminder*, in fact, politely reminding us that, if we aren’t already providing our feline overlords with royal feasts, tributes, castles and thrones, we flippin’ well ought to:

    It’s a full house for Sa Maj.

    *Non-Brits, ask your British friends and they will tell you that a Polite Reminder is the opposite of what it appears to be. Polite Reminders also vary in their level of politeness, for instance the one above is moderate, but we have a far less polite Polite Reminder affixed with Blu Tac above the sink at work, typed in Comic Sans font with the message: “POLITE REMINDER: STOP LEAVING DIRTY MUGS AND PLATES IN THE SINK!!!!!!!!”

    Just like the Queen, Louis Catorze has multiple celebratory days which are all about him. In fact, he has more: 30th April (his birthday), the summer solstice (simply because he’s the Sun King), 14th July (la Fête Nationale, which is entirely the opposite of a salute to the monarchy but he’s claiming it anyway), 20th July (his moving-in day aka the Ascension to the Throne), 17th August (Black Cat Appreciation Day), 27th October (National Black Cat Day) and 31st October (Hallowe’en). However, this is by no means an exhaustive list and Catorze reserves the right to assert ownership of further days, as and when they take his fancy. In fact, when he sees the jubilee party taking place tomorrow afternoon in the park over the road, he will naturally assume that it’s all for him, whether we go or not.

    Anyway, whilst the rest of TW8 celebrates the Queen, we will be celebrating the Sun King, and I’ve even bought my own, erm, alternative bunting for the occasion. I haven’t told Cat Daddy about it yet but, by the time this weekend is over, the whole street will know about it.

    “Polite reminder: feed moi.”

  • Tant de peur et de doute pour une si petite chose

    The vet told us that Louis Catorze’s bald patch was growing back, but I am not convinced. The more I stare at it, the more it starts to look like the Eye of Sauron from Lord of the Rings:

    Catorze’s bald patch is the one on the right.

    Many friends have asked whether the little sod is over-grooming it and, although he is fastidiously clean in general, we haven’t noticed him paying more attention to the bald patch than to the rest of his body. In fact, I only think I’ve seen him grooming it once or twice. The skin is neither broken nor irritated, and it doesn’t appear to be bothering him in the slightest. Yet the area seems to be widening in size, whilst also filling in from the middle.

    Can hair thin out and regrow at the same time? I’m pretty sure this defies all laws of Physics but, since we are dealing with an animal who can teleport, the notion of some anomalous time and space warp appearing on his body is not entirely ridiculous.

    I have no idea at what point to take Sa Maj back to the vet again, but I really hope this clears up before we go on holiday in July (and I’m sure our chat-sitteur does, too). In the meantime, should I put sun block on the bald patch when he ventures out? And, before you ask, yes, the silly sod absolutely will sunbathe with that side facing upwards and, yes, he will decide to do it on the hottest day of the year, when there is no cloud cover and when the vet surgery is shut.

    Shady … for now.

  • Aider les gens à se sentir mieux

    Louis Catorze’s post-steroid screaming is just beyond a joke.

    Yesterday morning I had to get up at 5:50 (!) to give Cat Daddy a lift to the starting point of his charity cycling event*. I often struggle to sleep anyway but, when I know I have to get up early the next morning, I never sleep well because I worry about missing my alarm. However, it seems that I needn’t have worried because Catorze was at hand to make sure I woke up. Having someone – even if that someone is 3.27kg – stand on your chest and howl like a baying wolf is an unsurprisingly effective alarm. Especially when it happens AN HOUR BEFORE YOUR INTENDED WAKE-UP TIME.

    Yes, he did this at 4:50am. Bastard, bastard cat.

    In other black cat-related news, Ian Fenn is suing Sainsbury’s supermarket for not allowing his therapy cat, Chloe, to accompany him into the store. Ian, from London, has autism, and having Chloe with him helps him to deal with the sensory overload that comes with shopping trips.

    Photo from telegraph.co.uk.

    Catorze has mixed feelings about this.

    Naturellement he is outraged that anyone would ban one of his comrades from anywhere, especially since Sainsbury’s does permit assistance dogs. However, the idea of any cat, especially a Chat Noir, having to WORK for a living is simply preposterous to him.

    The spokespeople from Sainsbury’s argue that cats present more of a food hygiene issue than dogs. Now, although I would rather not have any animal pitter-pattering over my Pont l’Évêque in the cheese aisle, if I had to choose I would opt for a cat over a dog. Even the cruddiest cat in the world would have smaller paws and less slobber than any dog and would therefore be less contaminating, non? The supermarket is also concerned that allowing one cat in would open the floodgates to “other, more unruly cats causing havoc”, but I can’t think of any such cats who would OH NEVER MIND.

    Obviously if everyone were to take animals to the supermarket, it would be carnage. But perhaps just a few would, dare I say it, be quite fun? And the more exotic and unusual, the better. Therapy peacocks, anyone?

    Catorze hopes that Ian wins his case. However, he also feels that Ian has a lot to learn, judging from the following statement about Chloe: “She brings structure to my life, she wakes me up in the morning, she tells me when to go to bed. It’s difficult to know how she feels about the relationship, but I feel that we’re a team now.”

    Mon gars, cats are not our teammates. We are their bitches.

    “The pathetic humans serve us, not vice versa. Ne l’oublions pas.”

    *Cat Daddy would like to thank everyone who sponsored him for the event, which he cycled in honour of Cat Granny.

  • Tout est bien qui finit bien

    We took Louis Catorze to the vet yesterday afternoon. Naturellement, when we tried to locate him half an hour before the appointment time, we found him right in the centre of some dense, inaccessible shrubbery in the garden, with the chances of a painless extraction being slim-to-zéro.

    We then resorted to our not-so-secret weapon: sending Cat Daddy to the end of the garden for some alone time and a nice quiet read.

    Bingo.

    Catorze was flushed out of his hiding place in an instant. And the predictable bothering of his papa that followed meant that the little sod was easily scooped up and shoved into his transportation pod when the time was right.

    Although we would rather not have to take him to the vet at all, there is some sort of perverse satisfaction in discussing multiple ailments/issues in one appointment. Part of it is the feeling of getting good value out of the service and, even better, it means we don’t have to endure the horror of having to take him twice in the same week. So it was very pleasing indeed to be able to collect his Broadline AND give him his steroid shot AND have his bald patch seen to, all at once. And, happily, as the bald patch is now growing back, there is no cause for concern and we have been advised to just leave it. This makes me very happy indeed, as I really didn’t want to have to deploy Le Cône.

    As ever, Catorze doesn’t appear to care about any of this. He’s eating, drinking, screaming and playing – in fact, a few days before the vet appointment, he brought a rubber band to our bed from some unknown location and spent the night ricocheting it, and himself, all over me from dusk till dawn.

    So he’s doing just fine. Our little old boy is living the life of a king.

    “Don’t mind moi.”

  • Le petit déjeuner au lit

    Three days after our friends’ visit, Louis Catorze’s dandruff miraculously vanished. His fur is now glossy and beautiful, without a single pesky white flake in sight. Although I cannot prove it, I know he has done this on purpose.

    My friend Lizzi: “I told you he’d do this! But he’s pulled it off even sooner than I thought.”

    Whatever. You’re not helping.

    In other, equally odd news, it seems Catorze is enjoying his Orijen so much that he’s been bringing it up to bed. Oui, Mesdames et Messieurs. When changing the sheets the other day, I found this underneath the covers, at the pillow end:

    Right. I see.

    I was actually relieved to discover that it was Orijen and not some other heinous substance. But how did it get there?

    Theory 1: It was caught on Catorze’s paw. But how did it stick? How did it not fall off on the way upstairs?

    Theory 2: It was caught on my clothing. Again, how did it stick?

    Theory 3: Catorze brought it in his mouth to save for later. Frankly this is the weirdest idea of them all, as it takes far more effort to bring one piece all the way upstairs than to just eat it from his bowl, but I wouldn’t put it past him. After all, this is the same individual who thought to drop a slug onto my pillow in the middle of the night.

    Are there other treasures being squirrelled away in there? (And do I want to know what they are?)

    Une chasse de trésor.

  • Les pellicules infernales

    We have had quite the weekend at Le Château, with the following events taking place:

    1. End-of-the-football-season festivities (although Louis Catorze doesn’t regard this as a celebratory moment as it means fewer men will be visiting us for the next eleven weeks).

    2. The Black Cats won the League One play-off finals and will be promoted to the Championship tier next season.

    Naturellement Catorze thought this would be an excellent time to churn out as much dandruff as possible, specifically when friends were due to visit on the day of the Black Cats’ match. After the oatmeal incident I wasn’t going to go down THAT route again so, instead, I just spent the entire morning brushing him to try to remove the worst of the dandruff. It didn’t work. All I managed to do was stir up more.

    There was absolutely no hope of my visitors failing to notice the dandruff; they have two black cats of their own so they know what normal ones are meant to look like. And, yes, we all know that Catorze is far from normal, but I didn’t think making him pretend for just one afternoon was such a big ask.

    Anyway, Sa Maj was a very convivial host, as ever, screaming for his guests’ attention during lunch and always positioning himself in the brightest sunlight for maximum visibility of his dandruff. Our friends hid their revulsion well, although Cat Daddy and I were inwardly wincing every time they stroked the little sod. Dandruff on cats isn’t nice. And dandruff on black cats looks especially awful.

    The next morning, the dandruff had vanished as suddenly and as inexplicably as it had appeared.

    I suppose I ought to mention this at the vet appointment later this week although, knowing Catorze, his bald patch will also disappear at the time of the appointment, only to magically reappear as soon as we get home, along with the dandruff and the mats.

    Bastard cat.

    A mixture of dandruff, plant matter, insect matter and other stuff that we daren’t even think about.

  • Un trou dans le noir

    Just as I was starting to think Louis Catorze didn’t have QUITE enough things wrong with him, the little sod decided to develop this inexplicable bald patch:

    What on earth …?

    For a while I ignored it, thinking perhaps I just hadn’t beaten the oatmeal out of him properly. But he is fastidiously clean, and there is no way he would have intentionally left crud on his person. Many cats have bald patches as a result of stress over-grooming but, despite the little sod’s numerous problems, he has never really done this kind of thing. Apart from, erm, that time in 2016-2017 when he had feline hyperesthesia and he chewed his tail to pieces.

    My theories are as follows:

    1. He caught himself on a sticking-out twig.

    2. He was a little over-zealous in grooming off whatever crud he’d rolled in (plant sap, snail juice, fox poo, take your pick).

    3. A parakeet finally had enough of his nonsense, flew down and pecked him. (Not content with fighting the pigeons and the squirrels, Cat Daddy has now also declared a fatwa on the parakeets and Catorze is valiantly and loyally fighting his papa’s corner.)

    I had planned to ask the vet about the bald patch when we went for Catorze’s steroid shot but, because the little sod had been doing so well health-wise, we haven’t been yet. But now I guess we don’t have any choice.

    So the agenda for our appointment is as follows:

    1. Steroid shot.

    2. Collect Broadline.

    3. Mats.

    4. Bald patch.

    No doubt there will be more items by the time the appointment takes place. And I have started building myself a fort to hide from the deluge of Unrepeatable Expletives. (From Cat Daddy, I mean, not from the vet.)

    Awaiting the next set of instructions from The Mothership.

  • Le livre rose

    Sometimes you have to ask the question, even if you already know the answer. This is one of those times.

    We don’t really need to think about this one.

    I snapped up the very last copy of this book from Amazon and, once again, I forgot that the order notifications go through to Cat Daddy’s phone. The conversation that ensued was quite interesting, but this is the abridged version:

    Him: “Why are you buying this? You hardly need a book to tell you if he’s gay or not.”

    Me: “…”

    Him: “And anyway, don’t you already have this book?”

    Me: “No, of course I don’t. Why would I buy two of the same book? That would be ridiculous.”

    Him: “I’m sure I’ve seen it in the house.”

    Me: “You must be thinking of, erm, ahem, my “Poetry for Cats” book which has very similar illustrations.”

    [Silence, tumbleweed, crickets]

    Anyway, after several weeks of no book, the supplier eventually contacted me to tell me it was out of stock and to refund my money. Then, last week, having been refunded, the book arrived … and, the same day, a friend revealed that she had also bought me a copy.

    So now I have two of the same book. Which is ridiculous.

    Interestingly, Louis Catorze has not (yet) displayed any of the criteria mentioned in the book. However, I think a reprint is due as the book fails to mention two huge Catorzian pink flags: hanging out with unneutered male cats (Ginger Impinger Dosti, Beefy Tabby Tigger and Donnie, to name but three) and aggressively demanding attention from human males, whether or not they want to give it.

    Here he is, scouring the horizon for more men:

    “Où sont les hommes?”