What are you doing this evening?
Having ignored me for much of the summer, now that temperatures are dropping (not by much, but we’ll take it), Louis Catorze seems to have remembered that I exist.
So, hopefully, this evening I will be watching a horror film with him on my lap.
Here he is, pictured from below, pretending to be asleep on me, but secretly planning more bullshittery:
For more Catorzian capers, please visit http://louiscatorze.com
What personality trait in people raises a red flag with you?
Psychopathy and narcissism aren’t exactly brilliant traits. Why, then, do we tolerate them from cats?
For more Catorzian capers, please visit http://louiscatorze.com
The mousey saga at my sister’s house has come to an end, although neither Otis nor Roux did a single thing to bring about this resolution.
The humans kept a bucket in the living room, with the intention of using it to catch the mouse in the unlikely event of seeing it scurrying around. Yes, I realise the absurdity of having two hunting cats in the household yet having to use a bucket to catch mice yourself, yet that was where we were at the time. In fact, we’ve been there many times, with many cats. It’s BEYOND idiotic.
Anyway, one morning the humans just found the mouse, dead, in the bucket. No explanation, no signs of feline involvement, just that. Nobody has the slightest idea what happened.
So the house is, once again, sans souris. However, since Otis and Roux are the king and queen of bringing in beasties and setting them free in various parts of the house, how long will this last?
For more Catorzian capers, please visit http://louiscatorze.com
The males of this household seem to be on sort of synchronised bullshittery mission at the moment. And I could really do without it.
Cat Daddy let Louis Catorze out at The Front again the other night. Luckily, this time, I had managed to catch Catorze and administer his thyroid medication beforehand, so it wasn’t quite the same desperate situation as it was a few nights ago. However, I didn’t want him out there all night, so Cat Daddy was under strict instructions to call him back in again before going to bed.
What happened next is going to come as absolutely no surprise whatsoever.
At 00:40 I was awakened by the sound of faraway yet loud-enough screaming coming through the open window. I came downstairs to find Cat Daddy fast asleep on the sofa, and Catorze still outside at The Front, screaming absolute bloody murder.
After letting him in, I went back up to bed. Cat Daddy woke up hours later, still on the sofa, to discover Catorze asleep on his lap. And, after reading my curt, to-the-point WhatsApp message saying, “Louis is in”, he guessed that he’d massively dropped the ball.
It turned out that Cat Daddy had gone out three times to call the little sod in, but Catorze, who used to be quite responsive when called, has now figured out that, if he doesn’t respond, nobody can make him. So he just ignored Cat Daddy until he was ready to come in, and that’s when he started screaming. I don’t know how long he had been screaming by the time I heard him at 00:40 and, frankly, I daren’t think about it. I’m just relieved that at least one set of neighbours was away at the time.
Anyway, Catorze’s jaunts out at The Front have been banned indefinitely, and Cat Daddy, who is no longer speaking to Catorze on account of his disobedience, isn’t disputing this.
Does this mean that we’ll have some calm and order here at Le Château, just for once?
For more Catorzian capers, please visit http://louiscatorze.com
My sister and her family have been exiled from their own living room for several days now, due to an impinging mouse. The situation has not moved forward in the slightest since I posted about it last week.
Louis Catorze’s cat-cousins Otis and Roux have failed to catch the mouse. Or, rather, Roux DID catch the mouse – twice, in fact – but dropped it again, leaving it free to scurry off into the unknown. As my sister put it, “Roux is only good at locating them. No point expecting her to get rid of them.”
Oh dear.
Otis, despite this whole problem being his fault, has done even less to try to resolve things, so the humans have been very much on their own. At one point they succeeded in coaxing the mouse three-quarters of the way into a humane trap but, regretfully, it realised what was going on, reversed out and, once again, scurried off into the unknown.
So it looks as if the family will be stuck with their new housemate for some time. I think they’re going to need more marshmallows.
For more Catorzian capers, please visit http://louiscatorze.com
What brings a tear of joy to your eye?
Here in the UK, autumn is coming early.
Falling leaves and ripening berries are usually among the joys of September but, this year, because of our apocalyptically dry summer, we started seeing them as early as mid-August. I don’t want to like this, because I know that it’s bad news and an indication that the planet is doomed. Nevertheless, the sight of these first whispers of my favourite season somehow comforts my soul.
Soon there will be trees ablaze with colour, misty mornings, spice-scented candles (well, not in this house, because a certain someone’s sensitive skin means we’re not allowed), hearty autumn recipes and, best of all, cuddling cats.
I like the last one best of all.
During the summer, I rarely see Louise Catorze. He loves the warmer months so much that he is constantly out, all day and all night, only coming indoors to eat and drink water (and, sometimes, not even bothering to do that). The cooler mornings and evenings mean that he spends more time on my lap. I know that he’s only doing this because he’s cold, but I don’t care. I’ll take it.
Inexplicably, after spending the summer looking like he’d just been dug up from an ancient tomb, his fur is now Vantablack and plushy, and he has an alertness in his eyes that he didn’t have before. He actually looks younger and better than he did two months ago, as if some hidden force is feeding him life.
Equally inexplicably, he appeared to gain his winter coat at the end of last month. Yes, in August. No, it’s not normal.
Cat Daddy: “You’re getting meatier, Louis! What’s happened?”
We don’t know. Nobody does.
As one of my blog followers once said, someone somewhere has a painting of him in their attic. And they’re right. I can’t prove it, but I know it.
For more Catorzian capers, please visit http://louiscatorze.com
Cat Daddy and I sat down to watch Brentford play Bournemouth a couple of nights ago. Because it was hot, we had the patio doors wide open and a mattress cover drying on the clothes horse outside.
From the corner of my eye, I saw the mattress cover move.
Then this happened. May I remind you all that Louise Catorze is an old man of fifteen. How is he finding the energy and the inclination to do this (whatever “this” may be)?
Cat Daddy, without looking away from the screen: “We spend a fortune on his food and medical care. That’s how.”
Anyway, towards the end of the tomfoolery, Brentford scored, which somewhat took away the pain of having cat hair all over our clean mattress cover. That said, if Brentford were to score every time Catorze arsed around, we would be top of the league in no time.
For more Catorzian capers, please visit http://louiscatorze.com
How are you feeling right now?
Honestly? I’m feeling quite relieved that someone else’s cats are bigger shites than mine. This doesn’t often happen so, please, just let me have my moment here.
My sister and her family have been cast out of their living room due to a feline/murine takeover. Louis Catorze’s cat-cousin Otis brought in a live, chonky mouse and released it into some unknown part of the living room, invisible to human eyes. The humans barricaded Otis and his sister, Roux, in the room, in the hope that the confinement would somehow force them to catch the mouse.
It didn’t.
Hours later, my sister opened the living room door to find no mouse, and the cats happily napping.
Otis and Roux clearly felt that their work started and ended with bringing the mouse indoors so, as soon as this was done, they clocked off and refused to engage in any further conversation about it.
Catorze may be a massive shite but, back in the day, when he have the inclination to hunt, at least he had the decency to finish the job (although we were ousted from our bedroom in order to achieve this).
The family WhatsApp discussion then turned to the best substances to place in a humane mouse trap, with peanut butter, jam, nuts, marshmallows (?) and cheese all being mooted. I don’t know whether my sister has tried them all but, if she doesn’t, it’s likely that she will end up with a new housemate.
In fact, she could very well try them all and STILL end up with a new (and even chonkier) housemate.
Mesdames et Messieurs, The Uprising has officially begun.
For more Catorzian capers, please visit http://louiscatorze.com
I am not impressed with the males of the household.
A couple of nights ago, despite my strict instructions not to do so, Cat Daddy let Louis Catorze out at The Front “because he loves it there, and it’s not fair not to let him enjoy his summer” (?).
(Cat Daddy used to say, “This might be his last summer” but, since Catorze has turned out to be more resilient than Michael Myers and could very well end up outliving the whole darned lot of us, he’s saying it much less often now.)
I don’t like Catorze being out at the front, for numerous reasons: he’s vulnerable to traffic and to marauding youths in the park, and he pisses off the neighbours by screaming outside their houses or creepy-staring through their windows, which upsets their dogs. Sometimes, Cat Daddy has forgotten that the little sod is out, so he’s been there all night. Cat Daddy knows all this. But he lets him out regardless.
Anyway, I needed to do Catorze’s thyroid medication, so I went out at The Front to call him in. Most of the time, he’s pretty responsive when he’s called. However, this time there was no sign of him although, annoyingly, I could hear him thrashing around and muttering obscenities in the undergrowth that divides our garden and that of Family Next Door. BASTARD CAT WAS TAUNTING ME.
I had no option but to take off the glove, ointment and all, and ask Cat Daddy to do it if and when Catorze returned. The next morning, I woke up to find Catorze indoors and the glove exactly where I had left it, on the kitchen worktop, with the drop of ointment still on its index finger.
I usually manage to medicate Catorze before breakfast but, that morning, I failed to Act Normal enough and he was instantly suspicious. I tried to grab him but he wriggled out of my grasp, escaped out of the cat flap and nobody has seen him since. He is shunning both food and water in favour of remaining hidden, and not even Cat Daddy going outside and pretending to water the plants was successful in flushing him out from his hiding place.
It’s been over twenty-four hours since Catorze’s last dose. I am dismayed beyond belief that an animal has managed to give us the slip.
*EDIT: we found the little weasel in the end, sleeping at the bottom of the garden. (Cat Daddy: “He’s enjoying the shade. He’s a smart cat.”) I had to rinse off the glove and apply a new dose of ointment as the old one had dried up and gone all manky, but I FINALLY GOT HIM.
For more Catorzian capers, please visit http://louiscatorze.com
Merde. I have sustained the most middle-class of all injuries: a cut finger, whilst opening a bottle of port to make Cat Daddy a cocktail.
(It was a Suburban, merci for asking: three parts whisky, one part each of rum and port, and a dash of Angostura bitters.)
The resulting sticking plaster has added a couple of seconds to administering Louis Catorze’s thyroid medication, because said finger no longer slides easily into the glove. It’s a bit of a squeeze, which means it takes longer.
Now, this may not sound like very much time but, just as in the timing of the 100m sprint in athletics, it all makes a difference. Even one extra second spent gloving up gives Catorze vital time to realise what’s about to happen, and to abscond. And we really don’t want this.
Please send my index finger your best wishes. We absolutely cannot let Catorze salvage any kind of victory from this.
For more Catorzian capers, please visit http://louiscatorze.com
Tell us about the last thing you got excited about.
Louis Catorze is an old man aged fifteen. We are starting to see that he’s slowing down physically – more laboured pitter-pattering, no more hunting (so far) – so you’d be forgiven for thinking that not much would cause him to even flick a whisker, let alone feel excitement. However, a few nights ago, one of his chat-sitteurs came for dinner with her parents and brother, and the little sod absolutely lost his shit.
Catorze loves visitors, and he especially loves this family, so we fully expected him to be the centre of attention that evening. We also expected him to be all over the male members of the party, which is standard Catorzian behaviour.
However, after never being a friend of the camera lens in all the time we’ve known him, it was something of a surprise to see him suddenly develop the posing skills and photogenic quality of peak Brigitte Bardot. And the chat-sitteur had brought along a nifty new camera, for the sole purpose of photographing Catorze.
I have probably managed to achieve a dozen or so passable shots of Sa Maj, in all the years that we’ve known him. The chat-sitteur probably took double that number of lovely photos that evening.
These are the two that I like the best because, together, they show the two contrasting sides of Catorze: grizzled old vampire and eternally-youthful kitten. In fact, these could easily be two different cats:
For more Catorzian capers, please visit http://louiscatorze.com
I have just caught Louis Catorze chewing on the flip-top lid of a water bottle.
It’s not often that Cat Daddy and I buy single use water bottles, as we prefer refillable bottles, but I was caught out on a hot day when I’d forgotten to bring water, so I had to pop into Planet Organic and buy some.
We have often brought home half-drunk bottles of water, left them lying round, then finished drinking much later. And it pains me deeply to know that we could have been wrapping our chops around Catorzian spit at any, or all, of those times.
To all the cat people reading this and saying, “It’s only a bit of cat spit”, just stop it. Would you rather eat cat spit, or NOT eat cat spit?
Anyway, no, I did not give the water to Catorze; had I done so, he would have started refusing regular tap water and gone on thirst strike until I provided him with a regular supply Actiph alkaline ionised water at £1.49 for 600ml. The water was gifted to Cat Daddy’s tomato plants outside, and I thanked God and all his angels above that this wasn’t any worse: I once caught Catorze’s big brother Luther chewing on my electric toothbrush, in the place where I had left it charging up a zillion times before.
How many more ways can they create, to annoy the merde out of us? And, no, that wasn’t supposed to be a challenge.
For more Catorzian capers, please visit http://louiscatorze.com
We have two types of glove in our stash of Catorzian thyroid-medicating supplies: plastic ones and latex ones. I am in the habit of referring to them all as “plastic gloves” when describing administering the meds but, in fact, we have a mix of both.
Until now, I have only used the latex ones and, as you know, Louis Catorze said “Non” to the whole procedure. However, on the first and only day that I switched to a plastic glove, it was a clear “HELL, non”. Just when I thought that perhaps the little sod might be getting used to the whole process, he writhed and kicked more than ever before.
Oh dear.
This is a level of detail that I hadn’t quite anticipated. Who knew that the GLOVE MATERIAL would make a difference? But clearly something about the texture of the plastic, or perhaps the way it rustled, was objectionable to Catorze. And we can’t have that.
So, as from now, it will be latex gloves only, and the plastic ones will be used by Cat Daddy for his bike repairs, and by me for dyeing my hair.
It’s not the first time that the humans have had to make use of the cat’s cast-offs – after all, we’ve made meals before with fish that he has rejected. Nor will it be the last time. Such is life with cats.
For more Catorzian capers, please visit http://louiscatorze.com
What do you love about where you live?
There are many things that I love about Brentford. However, the best thing of all is the fact that you can ask for help anytime, and there are always people willing to offer it.
Not long ago, the post below appeared on one of our neighbourhood social media groups. Now, I have seen some weird cat posts in my time (in fact, I’m usually the one posting them). But this one really is something special:
Firstly, why would Coco insist specifically on bikini elastic, instead of just playing with any old random elastic? But then cats are like that. I happen to live with one who won’t eat jamón Serrano because it’s not as nice as jamón Ibérico, so I’m in no position to question their demands.
Also, Coco simply doesn’t look like an elderly cat in this photo, and that made me somewhat suspicious. I don’t know why anyone would use a photo of a random cat to try to elicit bikini elastic from people, but it’s probably still not the strangest thing that someone in my town has done.
I don’t wear bikinis so I wasn’t able to help this cat in need. However, Coco wasn’t short of respondents who were happy to donate theirs. One even offered to meet Coco’s human at Pets at Home to conduct the transaction, as if a pet-themed meeting point somehow made the whole thing less weird. (It doesn’t.)
I hope that Coco will be very happy with her new playthings. And, if you’re passing through TW8 and you happen to see people warily exchanging packages in dark alleyways, we can explain.
For more Catorzian capers, please visit http://louiscatorze.com
louiscatorze.com 