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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 Grand Changement de Nourriture (Plan C Partie 1)

    When Louis Catorze decided that he didn’t want to eat Canagan anymore, despite the fact that he’d eaten it perfectly happily for TWO WHOLE WEEKS BEFOREHAND, Cat Daddy and I decided it was time to deploy the Orijen. This was not a decision that we took lightly, given that it would send us spiralling into debt*, but we didn’t know what else to do.

    *Here is a comparison, using a dry food pack of around 1.5-1.8kg as a guide:

    ⁃ Supermarket or commercial brands: approx. £2-3 per kg

    ⁃ Mid-range but still perfectly decent brands: approx. £7-10 per kg

    ⁃ Posh brands: approx. £12 per kg

    ⁃ Orijen Six Fish: £16.66 per kg, +£2 for the Regional Red (red meat) variant, +£4 for the Tundra (game) variant

    I could get better value from the massive 5.4kg pack but we don’t have room to store it, and I refuse to buy a bag of cat food that weighs more than my cat. Plus, if anything were to GUARANTEE our mutual friend ceasing to like it, it would be the purchase of a huge pack costing this much:

    Good grief.

    Anyway … very tentatively, we gave Catorze a dessertspoonful of Orijen without his old food, and we barely drew breath as he approached it.

    SAINT JÉSUS: HE ATE IT.

    Then he ate another portion. Then he ate two more normal-sized portions. And when Cat Daddy came home from the pub later, Catorze did such a screamy, starey number on him that he drunk-served him a fifth – and most likely enormous – portion.

    Cat Daddy’s Helpful Comment of the Day, sent by drunken text that night: “I told you he knew there was better food around. He’s just polished off a whole bowl like some craved [sic] animal who’s never eaten before.”

    Be warned, Chat Noir owners: their power is growing. We thought it only happened in October, but it’s started early. Until now, never would I have believed in mind control so intense that it could compel me to buy the most expensive cat food in existence, to pray for said Chat Noir to love it AND to feel pure joy when he did. Catorze is Charles Manson in feline form.

    Mind you, by that point I was so worn down by this whole sorry saga that I would have been grateful if he’d eaten asbestos and drain unblocker. And they would have been cheaper.

    Smug little sod.

  • Aucune limite à son pouvoir

    I have bought myself an electric bike, nicknamed the Millennial Falcon, and it’s the best thing ever.

    Since most of my possible routes into work are now blocked off with those massive plant troughs in the middle of the road, I needed an alternative to the car. My commute is now fifteen minutes each way, as opposed to anything from twenty minutes to an hour by car.

    I am quite a wobbly, nervous cyclist, so Cat Daddy has arranged for his friend Gerard – a qualified cycling coach – to give me some lessons. Gerard is very nice but I don’t really want lessons because I hate people looking at me when I cycle. I always make sure I get to school long before the kids, and leave after them, for this very reason. But Cat Daddy has gone ahead and booked the lessons anyway, so I don’t have a choice.

    Cat Daddy’s Helpful Comment of the Day: “It’ll be fine*. Gerard does this for a living, and he will have seen plenty of people who are as bad as you.”

    Me: “…”

    Him: “Well, ok, maybe not QUITE as bad as you.”

    Me: “…”

    Him: “Anyway, he likes a challenge.”

    *Non-Brits: when a British person says “It’ll be fine”, you should be very concerned indeed. If they say “I’m sure it’ll be fine”, expect the apocalypse.

    When I used to drive home from work, Louis Catorze would always be aware of my arrival long before Cat Daddy heard me, and I imagined this to be because he knew the sound of the car. After switching to the bike, I didn’t think this would happen anymore, since nobody really talks about cats knowing the sound of bikes, nor am I even sure if my bike has a sound as such. But perhaps I had underestimated the little sod and his creepy kitty sixth sense because, when I arrive home, he never fails to greet me at the door. (Unless Boys’ Club is in full swing, in which case he doesn’t bother.)

    Here he is, pictured mid-shake and, therefore, not looking too brilliant. But at least the Millennial Falcon looks good.

    He is as handsome as he is clever.

  • Où qu’on se trouve, on reste à jamais français à l’âme

    Thank you to everyone who kindly sent birthday wishes to Louis Catorze. He had a marvellous day. I even broke my 3-month dryness to partake in a Louis XIV cocktail*, but I am now back to teetotal ways to see if I can manage another month.

    *I’m not joking. The recipe is here if you’d like to try: https://ttliquor.co.uk/how-to/make-a-louis-xiv-cocktail-recipe/
    An actual photograph of Le Roi on his special day. (Thank you, Cathie and Scott, for his card!)

    In other, shocking news, the little sod has eaten a piece of the Reflets de France tuna rillettes that I dropped onto the floor, after spending several minutes going CRAZY wondering where the appetising smell was coming from. And, when I gave him another tiny scraping to see if the first time had been an accident/a fluke/a figment of my imagination, he ate that, too.

    Oui, Mesdames et Messieurs: the cat who doesn’t like food has consumed food. I wish it could have been his own food, rather than MY food, but tant pis. And I have offered Sa Maj actual tuna in the past, which has been promptly rejected, yet it seems he’s happy to eat it in Frenchified form, proving that you can take the Sun King out of France, but you can’t take France out of the Sun King.

    Cat Daddy’s Helpful Comment of the Day: “You shouldn’t have done that. Now he won’t eat ANY OTHER FOOD, EVER AGAIN.” Erm, I think that ship has very much left the port, but your comment has been noted.

    Anyway, since tuna rillettes have been rarer than golden goose eggs since Brexit stuffed things up, i am down to my last few jars and I have no idea when I will be able to reorder. So I don’t especially want to share at the moment, especially not with this ungrateful, entitled little sod, not even on his birthday weekend.

    Here is Sa Maj, hoping I might change my mind:

    Get your own food.

  • Louis, be good; une chanson pour fêter les 11 ans du Roi Soleil

    Deep down in sunny Brentford to the north of Kew
Not far from the M4 and the B452
There stands a fine Château made of brick and wood
Where lives a small black cat who’s up to no good
He always does the opposite of what we say
We tell him “No” but then he does it anyway

No, no!
No, Louis, no, no!
No, Louis, no, no!
No, Louis, no, no!
No, Louis, no, no!
Louis, be good!

This kitty’s super-creepy; he’s got vampire teeth
The canines are much bigger than the ones beneath
He goes to other gardens and he raises hell
Annoying all the foxes and the squirrels as well
He is a total psycho and a massive pain
That’s why you’ll hear us yelling this again and again

No, no!
No, Louis, no, no!
No, Louis, no, no!
No, Louis, no, no!
No, Louis, no, no!
Louis, be good!

Cat Daddy tells him “Someday I will kick your arse
Unless you start behaving with a bit more class”
Yet many people visit him from miles around 
They get here just by following the screaming sound
Maybe someday, instead of being a shite
He’ll say "I will be good tonight"

No, no! 
No, Louis, no!
No, no, no, Louis, no!
No, no, no, Louis, no!
No, no, no, Louis, no, no! 
Louis, be good!
    Happy 11th birthday, little sod.

  • À mi-chemin vers l’Halloween

    Louis Catorze will be 11 years old on Friday. An 11th birthday doesn’t have quite the same satisfying roundness as a 10th birthday, but nevertheless it’s a big deal.

    If 30th April were truly the day that he was born, Catorze would be a Taurus. I don’t believe in star signs, but I still enjoy reading about them and giggling at the disparity between what I am and what I’m supposed to be. I am a Libra, and we are said to be obsessed with physical appearance (nope), adept in social situations (hell, nope) and lovers of high art and intellectualism (I don’t think anyone has ever accused Le Blog of being either of those).

    That said, Cat Daddy is a Cancer, which makes him moody and high-maintenance. Ahem.

    Anyway, I have a book called “The Enchanted Cat” (https://www.waterstones.com/book/the-enchanted-cat/ellen-dugan/9780738707693) which a friend sent to me years ago. Now, please hear me out. This is what it says about the Taurus cat:

    ⁃ Laid-back and peaceful: nope and nope

    ⁃ Shy with strangers: HELL, nope

    ⁃ Upset by change: depends what it is, e.g. us going on holiday and leaving him with a chat-sitteur for two weeks = not a big deal and actually great fun, whereas a new food bowl = Armageddon

    ⁃ Loyal and generous: nope and nope

    ⁃ A hearty appetite: nope

    ⁃ Has one favoured sleeping spot: nope

    However, the Gemini cat is, apparently, as follows:

    ⁃ Very social: check

    ⁃ Demands attention and loves being spoken to: check and check

    ⁃ Kittenish behaviour throughout their life: check

    ⁃ Very vocal, with quite the repertoire of sounds: HELL, check

    ⁃ Loves to keep its humans on their toes: no further questions, Your Honour

    Assuming this to be correct, and I realise that it’s a bit of a reach, it seems far more likely that Catorze is a Gemini (21st May to 21st June).

    That said, 30th April – Beltane Eve – marks the halfway point to Hallowe’en and this date is still historically associated with magic, witches and otherworldly creepiness (see link: https://halloweendailynews.com/2017/04/walpurgis-night-halfway-to-halloween/ ). A 31st October birthday would, perhaps, be more fitting for a black cat with vampire teeth, but the second creepiest date on the calendar happens to be the date given on his paperwork, so it will do nicely.

    The dark gatekeeper to the Zone Libre says “Non” to whatever it is that you’re asking.

  • La mort du Plan B

    Le Grand Changement’s twists and turns are more dramatic than an episode of Line of Duty, and I cannot believe I am having to write this.

    After a thoroughly successful Grand Changement (or so I stupidly thought), Louis Catorze has decided that he no longer wants to eat Canagan. And, naturellement, he made this decision AFTER we subscribed to six-weekly deliveries of Canagan at £35 a pop, the first of which is already here.

    We initially put this down to temporary Summer Unhungries, but then he did the same thing again the following day. And, at the end of that second day, when I finally gave into the screaming and served a portion of his old food, he ate it.

    This is worse than having the opposition score a 94th-minute winner in football. This is more like having them score long after the full-time whistle and the referee deciding to allow it.

    Whilst it probably sounds comical that he’s so contrary, the reality of a cat who chooses starvation over new food is hugely stressful. We are utterly dismayed and mystified by this/him. We did not deviate from the instructions in the slightest – apart from using just one bowl when we saw how much the little sod was perturbed by two bowls, and apart from that one time early into the programme when Cat Daddy drunk-fed him Canagan on its own, WHICH HE ATE. So we can’t understand why this hasn’t worked.

    Cat Daddy’s Helpful Comment of the Day: “Maybe he knows you’ve got more expensive food [the Plan C Orijen] for him, and he’s holding out for that?”

    Me: “Sorry … what?”

    Cat Daddy: “Maybe he’s just sensing it from you. Maybe you’re giving off vibes.”

    Me: “Giving off … BETTER FOOD VIBES?”

    Cat Daddy: “Yes. I mean, wouldn’t you do the same thing? Wouldn’t you stop eating boring old cod roe if you knew someone was hoarding caviar?”

    [Silence, tumbleweed, crickets.]

    We have no option but to unleash the money-vaporising, poverty-trapping weapon of mass destruction that is Orijen. And we are giving serious consideration to serving it alone, without the Lily’s Kitchen; it seems to be that, if Catorze can still see and smell his old food in the bowl, he will eat whatever is with it … but when the old food is taken away, however snail-slow the transition, he’s no longer interested. So we may bin the gradual changeover and find a food that he likes enough to eat on its own.

    This defies all advice out there, due to the risk of puking and stomach upsets. But, let’s face it: dutifully following advice to the letter has achieved nothing so far.

    No, you go ahead and relax. Don’t mind us, wasting time and money and losing sleep because of you.

  • Un ami, c’est un autre moi

    Louis Catorze has a friend!

    The very confident, never-seen-before gentleman pictured below (at least we THINK it’s a gentleman; I’ve never seen a female cat with such long limbs) wandered through Le Jardin the other day. Cat Daddy took 873 photos and videos when he was supposed to be watching the football, proving that he is as big a cat freak as me.

    Check out that collar silverware.

    Cat Daddy was disappointed that Catorze didn’t fight off the interloper; he seems to want his boy to be the hard-as-steel neighbourhood kingpin rather than the cordial host. But, since this cat – whom I have decided to name Donnie* – appeared to come in peace, he was welcome. Sa Maj didn’t mind him hanging around, and clearly the feeling was mutual as Donnie was back the next night (bizarrely, with Blue the Smoke Bengal in tow) and the night after that.

    *Because he’s the new kid on the block. Younger followers: ask your mums.

    On the third night, when he came calling at the Sureflap, Catorze chirped back, then went out, and the pair of them wandered off into the Zone Libre together.

    Lots of pleasant trilling from both parties.
    That’s a happy tail from Catorze, right?

    Whilst cat friends in the garden are rather nice, having them coming into the house is another matter entirely. And, regretfully, when the Sureflap started malfunctioning and/or Catorze started to forget how to come in (we don’t know which one it was), we took out the batteries and we still haven’t fixed it. I KNOW, I KNOW. We forgot about it for a long time, then on the odd occasion we would remember again but, since we hadn’t had any trespassers, we weren’t in any hurry to do anything about it. So we probably need to get onto this pretty sharpish.

    For the reason given above, we’re not sure if it’s a good idea to encourage Donnie. We don’t wish to hurt the feelings of Catorze’s only friend and it’s not in our nature to be indifferent towards cats, but we we know what selfish users they are; if we are so much as moderately civil towards them, they take advantage. Our street already has quite enough feline impinging taking place – Catorze goes into That Neighbour’s House, Blue the Smoke Bengal goes into the Dog Family’s house, Catus Interruptus goes into Cocoa the babysit cat’s house – and we don’t want any more.

    Anyway, this weekend seems as good a time as any to secure the perimeters of Le Château, monitor the comings and goings and rescue the Sun King should he get stuck. After the stress of Le Grand Changement I was looking forward to a bit of a break from cat nonsense, but I guess it’s an almighty “Non” to that.

  • Le Grand Changement de Nourriture (Plan B Partie 4)

    Oh dear. It was all going so well.

    After successful completion of Phases 1 and 2, we had just started the third and final part – mainly new food alongside a tiny amount of old – when Louis Catorze decided to throw some last-minute bâtons in the roues by switching from BST (British Summer Time) to CST (Catorzian Summer Time).

    If you have a cat, you will be aware that they have a Summer Time Mode: eating less, sleeping less, constantly being outside, and so on. This tends to start in late spring – although never at the same time every year, just to be extra unhelpful – and, usually, it’s not a problem.

    However, I really could have done without it happening during Le Grand Changement; when I see food still in his plate, I have no idea whether this is because he no longer likes it, or it’s gone a little stale, or he has a touch of the Summer Unhungries, or he’s been having such a good time gadding about in the Zone Libre that he just forgot about eating. It could be any, or all, or none of the above.

    Catorze usually eats his first meal of the day at 7am; however, now he isn’t hungry until 5pm or later. It’s impossible to second-guess how much he wants to eat and when; and, although it’s not the end of the world if his food sits around for ages before being eaten, it’s still quite annoying. (Do I count it as an uneaten/rejected portion, or not?) And, if he chooses to ignore his pills – as seems to be the case at the moment, right after I told one of his followers how lucky I am that he happily eats them – it then puts me under pressure to Greco him to even out the space between doses.

    Cat Daddy has not been helping matters by keeping Catorze up late during gin-fuelled Boys’ Club sessions, stuffing up the little sod’s body clock even further. And I suspect there may be drunken midnight feeding going on, although I can’t prove it (and Cat Daddy says he can’t remember).

    Anyway, Plan C – Orijen Six Fish – is on standby, just in case. At a heart-stopping £29.99 for 1.8kg it’s the priciest of the bunch, so I really don’t want to deploy this unless there’s some dire emergency (Canagan factory blowing up, Scotland gaining independence and no longer being able to export salmon to us, that kind of thing). Even my sister, who hardly ever swears, used an unrepeatable expletive when she saw how much Orijen costs.

    Please keep your fingers crossed that Catorze doesn’t score a stoppage time winner by doing something else idiotic on the last day.

    Don’t make us do this.

  • L’alpha et l’oméga

    Louis Catorze’s skin has been looking scaly and dandruffy lately, so the vet recommended an Omega 3 supplement called Nutramega. I was sure Cat Daddy would disapprove but, when he saw the information leaflet, he asked me why on earth we hadn’t bought them before.

    To be honest, I don’t really know why. Over the years there have been so many things going on with Catorze – the worst being tail-chewing to the point of drawing blood, requiring through-the-night attention – that, perhaps, a glossy coat seemed a luxury rather than a priority. Plus the thought of adding another pill to his arsenal of medication didn’t appeal, especially as he is so awful at taking them. But at least we have them now, and we are determined to give them a shot.

    The supplements, although not huge, are too big to encase inside a Pill Pocket for tiny Catorze. So I have to make a hole with a cocktail stick (younger followers: ask your parents), squeeze half of the fishy, gel-like contents into the well of a Pill Pocket, like a vol-au-vent (younger followers: ask your grandparents) and reserve the part-squeezed capsule to do the same thing again the next day.

    The vet knows what Catorze is like so, initially, I bought ten days’ supply as an experiment. Having seen his reaction to two bowls, I needed to be sure that he wouldn’t go bonkers at the sight of two Pill Pockets, too. But – MERCI À DIEU – he ate them. This is right up there with stigmata and weeping statues in terms of miracles.

    Cat Daddy, in a deadpan voice and without looking up from his gardening catalogue: “Amazing.”

    I now have to open FIVE packs for him every day, the others being the Pill Pockets, the Prednisolone pills and, of course, the two different foods. But, despite everything, the little sod is worth it.

    In this photo he has just discovered that the Nutramega information leaflet smells of vet:

    Not impressed.

  • C’était une journée d’avril froide et claire …

    The pubs are now open, although I have to be honest: whilst outdoor dining in April seemed like a nice idea once upon a time, the reality is pretty grim. I have had a couple of outdoor meet-ups so far, and it’s just too cold. And, when I’ve suggested to the other person that we wait until we’re allowed indoors before we meet again, they have agreed without hesitation.

    Cat Daddy and his boozy pub mates are still doing their Friday Zoom evenings, and they are very likely to continue even when restrictions are lifted. Louis Catorze attends the meetings every week without fail, sometimes screaming, sometimes just sitting on his papa’s lap and happily absorbing the male voices. The last time they met, the talk was mostly about vaccines and who has had which one. (Tim has had the Pfizer and the others have all had the AstraZeneca, thank you for asking.)

    The group has recently decided to form a gentlemen’s book club, and Cat Daddy has been re-reading his favourite novel of all time – Nineteen Eighty-Four – in preparation for the next meeting. Or, rather, he has been TRYING to re-read it, but unfortunately it’s a firm “Non” from Catorze; the minute Cat Daddy sits down with his book, Le Roi is in his face, screaming, staring creepily and demanding attention. Both Cat Daddy and I had hoped that, since I’m home for the holidays, perhaps the little sod might want to spend some time with me instead, but apparently it’s a “Non” to that, too.

    If Cat Daddy takes his book outside, Catorze follows him. It’s almost like the constant surveillance described in Nineteen Eighty-Four itself, and I imagine that, had the Thought Police used Catorzian pestering as an enhanced interrogation technique, they would have succeeded in getting anyone to confess to anything. In fact, I can see “Catorzian” being used in the future in the same context as Orwellian, dystopian and all the other undesirable -ians.

    This is what it’s like when Big Brother is, quite literally, watching you:

    He wants to be loved AND understood. One out of two isn’t bad.
    The best books are those that tell you what you know already.

  • Le Grand Changement de Nourriture (Plan B Partie 3)

    Merci à Dieu et à tous ses anges: Louis Catorze is eating food. And it’s food that I want him to eat, not some heinous, cheap, 90%-sawdust rubbish that he’s chosen just to spite me.

    It’s been a couple of days since we started putting half a portion each of new and old food into his bowl – sometimes with the halves top and bottom with a horizontal split, like the Earth’s hemispheres, sometimes with a vertical split and the halves left and right, and sometimes in a pleasing yin-yang formation, just for fun – and he has eaten every portion served. And, the other day, when Cat Daddy was drunk and accidentally served him the new food on its own, he ate that, too.

    I cannot even BEGIN to articulate how happy this makes me. Unless you have been through it, you will never understand how stressful it is when a cat won’t eat, especially when they’re not even ill (which can be cured) but just being a shite (which can’t). And it’s even worse when you have helpful folk on the sidelines saying things like “He’ll get hungry enough eventually”* and “I don’t see why you can’t just keep giving him his old food”**.

    *No, he won’t.

    **Which part of “His old food is discontinued” don’t you understand?

    I appreciate that some cats will eat absolutely anything put in front of them. If you have one of those, lucky you. We don’t.

    The two foods are still served in distinct piles, and I haven’t dared to mix them because this failed the last time, after weeks of us believing it to be going fine. I don’t want the little sod suddenly realising on Day 14 that there is a new food in his bowl and then being difficult. So, after every meal, I go to his plate and re-sort any mixed bits into separate piles again. Yes, it must seem somewhat over the top. But I would rather do this than have Catorze abort the mission at the eleventh hour, and then we would have to start this tedious process ALL OVER AGAIN.

    Anyway, Catorze remains utterly unconcerned by the trouble he has been causing. Here he is, having just, erm, ripped a page out of Cat Daddy’s old road atlas and fashioned it into a pillow for himself:

    Erm …
    Why?

  • Le banquet britannique

    However purgatorial Le Grand Changement may be, at least Louis Catorze doesn’t know about THIS (see link):

    https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/weird-news/worlds-most-expensive-cat-food-9228686

    A 2kg bag of this food, called British Banquet and containing caviar and lobster, would set you back a cool £249.99 (two hundred and forty-nine pounds and ninety-nine pence).

    However, according to the manufacturer’s website – where I browsed just out of curiosity, I might add, and not because I was giving this food any genuine consideration – British Banquet was only available briefly during 2016 as a limited-edition product. They now only stock their standard range, still très fancy by most people’s standards and something I am not ruling out should I require a Plan D.

    Now, anyone who has ever met a cat will know that, if they taste something new and wonderful, they reject their boring, everyday food. In fact, even if they DON’T taste something new and wonderful, some of them still reject their boring, everyday food, just for fun, then decide to like it again after we’ve spent a fortune on other food. I cannot imagine any cat sampling British Banquet and then settling for some inferior substitution afterwards, so what did people do after the production run came to an end? Rich, hunger-striking British kitties must have gone through cycle after cycle of Grand(s) Changement(s) in 2017, with their frustrated humans crying into their Cristal and praying for the little sods to JUST EAT SOMETHING, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD.

    Anyway, here is Catorze, not quite living the lifestyle of £249.99 food but still acting as if he were:

    La vie est belle.

  • Le Grand Changement de Nourriture (Plan B Partie 2)

    It pains me to admit this after Sammypuss and Alex were kind enough to send TWO bowls, but double-bowling just isn’t working out for Louis Catorze.

    He has no issue with the bowls themselves, but he is utterly flummoxed by the presence of two. Not only does this put him off eating the new food, but he is also unsure of his old, familiar food AND HIS PILLS. Anything that deters him from his pills has to be addressed, because we don’t want to have to add Grecoing to the list of Grand Changement problems.

    More worryingly, there has been some bizarre behaviour in response to the two bowls. As well as sitting and staring at them with the level of suspicion usually reserved for unexploded bombs, Sa Maj has been approaching them at a strange angle and eating with his body contorted awkwardly through the legs of the stool* that sits around/above his feeding station. This is something that we have never seen before, and watching it has been quite uncomfortable.

    *Incidentally, the stool is not the problem. He has always happily eaten underneath it – in fact, he has never NOT eaten underneath it.

    Cat Daddy’s Helpful Comment of the Day: “The PDSA are probably used to normal cats who do normal things. They won’t have come across one as weird as Louis.” Sadly, on this occasion, he may have a point.

    We then decided to take a risky deviation from the PDSA’s guidance, offering Catorze both his old food and the Plan B food in one bowl. If mixing makes a cat think their familiar food has been poisoned, perhaps a distinct pile of each one in the same bowl would demonstrate that, although they look and smell different, they are both edible? Well, it made perfect sense to me. Which most likely meant it wouldn’t make any sense to Catorze, but it had to be worth a go.

    I had some success with the first attempt, and he ate a small amount from each pile. Naturellement, after eating, there was some mixage between the two foods, so I pushed the pellets apart again to form two distinct piles. When I later refilled, once again he ate a little from each pile.

    Although this is HUGE progress, we still have some way to go; the next phase involves the bigger deal of 50-50 servings of each food, so it would be premature to celebrate now. Or, as Cat Daddy put it, “There’s still time for him to f*** it up.”

    The pubs are open again, as from today. I fear that, if I go into one, I may never come out again.

    Before eating: Lily’s Kitchen at the top, Canagan at the bottom (garnished with a Pill Pocket).
    After eating: Youpi!

  • Le Grand Changement de Nourriture (Plan B Partie 1)

    Plan A has come to an end, and it has been somewhat mixed. (Non-Brits: if your British friends ever use the adjective “mixed”, it’s bad news and you should make them some tea immediately.)

    We tried for almost a week for those three days of happy eating and, regretfully, what Catorze demonstrated was more like occasional, reluctant nibbling; of the dozen tasting menu portions served over the week, the little sod only ate two at the start and then no more.

    When Plan B arrived I hand-fed him a couple of pellets as an experiment, and he ate them. When I did the same thing with some Plan A pellets immediately afterwards, he refused. Which was pretty conclusive proof that he just DOESN’T LIKE PLAN A.

    At that point we decided to bin it and move to Plan B.

    Cat Daddy’s Helpful Comment of the Day, to Catorze: “Poor Louis. Life’s been hard for you, hasn’t it, with two bowls and two foods to choose from? It must be confusing for an old, thick boy like you.”

    Catorze: “Mwah.”

    Anyway, Plan B is Canagan Scottish Salmon, which claims to “excite even the fussiest of felines” (please, Goddess, let this be true). The recipe also calls itself “perfect for your feline friend”; obviously Catorze considers himself my imperial sovereign and commander rather than my friend, so we haven’t told him about that bit.

    I sense chaos, anarchy and more sleepless nights ahead. We will keep you informed of our progress (or lack thereof).

    Catorze’s ancestors ate this? I didn’t know they went for Scottish salmon in the land of fire and brimstone, but … ok.