We have had another Code Orange emergency at Le Château, involving unidentified crud stuck on Louis Catorze’s fur.
As ever, we went first of all for the “He’ll groom it off when he’s ready” approach: nope.
We then decided to try to pluck it off as he pitter-pattered past but he kept doing that creepy Terminator thing, turning his body to liquid and sucking in his flesh just out of our reach so we ended up just grabbing at air (see below). So: nope.
Taken from Imgur.com
Following that, my sister and her husband tried to do their civic duty with one of them picking up Catorze and the other attempting to clean off the crud with a baby wipe. This was when they made the horrifying discovery that the crud was not cleanable. Whatever it was had somehow bypassed his black top layer fur, stuck fast to his grey under-fur and hardened to a crisp.
Anyway, it was still there the next day. However, terrifyingly, the day after it was gone. We are just getting on with life and trying not to think too hard about the fact that it’s most likely disintegrated in our bed.
My sister and her family (husband, boys aged nine and seven, and a girl of ten months) came to visit at the weekend.
Louis Catorze enjoys having visitors but he especially likes children and is very patient with them, allowing them to pick him up and manhandle him. If children stay overnight, Catorze often sleeps at their feet like a little guardian daemon keeping watch, and we have complete confidence leaving him with them (older ones, rather than babies).
Although Sa Maj is the devil himself, his evil seems to be reserved for mind-bending psychological games with me rather than meanness towards children. He has an inner code of conduct decreeing that he shall be as sweet as candy towards guests, particularly kids, and I try to ignore the fact that the main aim of this is to make me look stupid when I complain about how horrid he is.
My baby niece loves cats. She has a special shriek of delight reserved for her own cat, King Ghidorah, and she looks for him around the room when she hears his name. I played her some of the 8,094 cat videos on my phone and, interestingly, whilst she watched and listened, transfixed, to Catorze’s ear-bleeding screaming, she showed a clear preference for the more melodic, dainty meowing of Cocoa the babysit cat.
My sister tactfully suggested that perhaps the painful, grating sound of Catorze’s voice “wasn’t quite as recognisable as that of a cat”. We know. Try living with it.
Sa Maj’s presence was a little more scarce during this most recent visit. He was happy with the boys (see below) and even spent some time hanging out in their room, giving them a real fright then they thought that black lump on the bed was one of their towels.
Reserved but comfortable.
He was a little less sure of the youngest, having not seen a baby in a while:
Sa Maj says, “Bof.”
However, Blue the Smoke Bengal was much more obliging, leaning right in and rubbing his face against her:
Smiles all round.
Here are the kids with their feline brother King Ghidorah:
Happy tail.Reading time for the boys.Happy tail once again.
Mesdames et Messieurs, this is Disco, the new addition to the Dog Family’s household:
Sweet boy.
He is every bit as cuddly as he looks. And, when we got home from meeting him, Louis Catorze sniffed me and gave the same look that he gives when things smell vetty: https://louiscatorze.com/2021/04/20/lalpha-et-lomega/
Naturellement the Dog Family are overjoyed to have Disco join them, especially Dog Sister who finally gets to be a BIG sister. We used to tease her about having to respect her elders and do what they say (because Oscar was older). However, she remains younger than Catorze so there is still some mileage in that.
Curiously, the day before Disco’s arrival, it was as if the feline contingent knew something was afoot. Donnie swung by after several days’ absence to make an urgent and loud announcement to Catorze, after which the chats noirs held an emergency COBRA* meeting in Le Jardin.
*Cats On Bumper Red Alert
“The age of a new foe is nigh, mon gars. We must assemble our armée.”
On Disco Day itself, Sa Maj popped next door to, erm, welcome his new neighbour. We didn’t witness the encounter for ourselves, but we had to stand there squirming with shame whilst the Dog Family – who DID witness it – told us all about it.
Not only were there raised hackles and glaring on Catorze’s part, but there was also a demonic Hallowe’en-cat yowl (not very gentlemanly given that he was the one who was trespassing). Then the Dog Family watched him snake along the fence into our garden and come in through the newly-secured and impinger-impenetrable Sureflap, so I couldn’t even pretend that it might have been Donnie.
Oh dear.
I hope that, once Disco has settled in, he and Catorze might eventually become friends. But I fear that Oscar may have left Roi-specific instructions on invisible Post-It notes for his little brother, saying, “Bark first, ask questions later.”
Not long ago, I picked up Louis Catorze’s bowl to wash it and found two pills underneath it. The little bastard had eaten off the Pill Pocket casing, then somehow hidden the pill. Twice.
And remember when he liked his Omega 3 vol-au-vents? Yeah, well, now he doesn’t. And, as per his usual méthode de travail, he decided this right after I bought further supplies of Pill Pockets.
This meant that I had to find another way of getting the Omega 3 into him. It’s too big a capsule to Greco, and I didn’t dare squeeze it onto his food for fear of giving him another excuse to go on hunger strike.
I then had the idea of, erm, squeezing it onto his body and letting him groom it off. The only problem was that, should he fail to groom and just let it air-dry on himself, I would be left with a greasy, fishy, screaming furbag pitter-pattering around and rubbing disgusting oil everywhere. But it had to be worth a go since the Omega 3 made a huge difference to the little sod’s yucky fur after just a week of use.
Anyway, this was the sequence of events that followed:
1. Pierce hole in capsule and sit on sofa with holey capsule just within reach.
2. Target sits on my lap.
3. Squeeze contents of holey capsule onto my finger, ready to rub onto Target’s body.
4. Target scarpers, leaving me with gross, fishy gel on finger.
5. Wait for Target to return and, as I do so, fishy gel starts to melt on my finger. There are no non-porous items within reach onto which I can temporarily scrape fishy gel, other than my pot of lip balm (SORRY to Cocoa the babysit cat’s folks, who gave me said lip balm).
Nothing sweet about this.
6. Target appears to realise that something is up and doesn’t return to my lap.
7. I pick up lip balm, casually walk towards him then pounce, rubbing the pot against his arm and transferring the fishy gel onto him in one smooth movement. Am probably prouder of this than is normal/appropriate.
8. Target is perturbed by what’s just happened and doesn’t know what to do. He remains frozen for a few seconds.
9. Target scarpers.
10. Target returns and grooms off the fishy gel. I HAVE SUCCEEDED IN MY MISSION. (Well, it was about time. My missions can’t just go on failing forever, right?)
Anyway, since we now have 639 packets of Pill Pockets, the little sod has been able to send some to his buddy Dexter (below) in India, who is being a bit of a shite about taking his medication.
“Nah … not gonna eat that.”
And Cat Daddy was highly amused to discover where the most recent Pill Pocket shipment had passed through before coming here:
Oh Donnie boy, the vet, the vet is calling To neuter you, so you’ll no longer roam. The moment’s come; it’s time for your de-balling. It’s best for you that you stick close to home.
Though come ye back when you cannot make babies; From empty sacks your seed you will not sow. You and Le Roi could still stay buddies maybe But Donnie boy, oh Donnie boy, your balls must go.
Sadly it didn’t work out for the Black Cats in the League 1 play-offs, but Cat Daddy and I were lucky enough to score tickets for the Brentford-Swansea Championship play-off final in Wembley … and we won!
In other news: I have had my first session with Cat Daddy’s cycling friend, Gerard, and it was actually more fun than I’d imagined (although my expectations were quite low).
Gerard came to the house at 10am and, as I was wheeling out the Millennial Falcon, Louis Catorze emerged, screaming, from That Neighbour’s garden. (We had no idea what he was doing there. And, no, we didn’t even know he was out at The Front.)
He was thrilled to meet a new man and hurled himself at Gerard, who stroked him and commented on his soft fur. Absolutely nobody has said this before, EVER, and it was such a departure from the usual assumptions (that he’s a stray, that he’s 102 years old, that he’s suffering from some wasting disease and doesn’t have long to live, or possibly all three) that I didn’t know how to respond. Then, as Gerard was adjusting the saddle on my bike, the screaming restarted.
Me: “I’m going to have to let him into the house.”
Catorze: “Mwahhhhhhh!”
Gerard: “Nah, he’s fine.”
Catorze: “Mwahhhhhhh!”
Me: “You don’t understand: I don’t want him disturbing our neighbour. He does it all the time.”
Catorze: “Mwahhhhhhh!”
Gerard: “Your neighbour just needs to ignore it and tune out. I have.”
Catorze: “Mwahhhhhhh!”
Me: “…”
Anyway, adjusting the saddle took longer than expected. All the while Catorze remained on full volume, screaming his lungs out, whilst I shuffled and winced awkwardly. Cat Daddy must have heard him from indoors – he can’t possibly NOT have heard him – and was probably hooting with laughter, but had clearly decided that it was my problem and not his.
Me: “I’m sorry, I can’t take this anymore. I HAVE TO LET HIM BACK INTO THE HOUSE.”
Catorze: “Mwahhhhhhh!”
This time Gerard didn’t hesitate to agree.
He remarked that the screaming was “very effective” although this would suggest success in achieving some sort of goal, whereas we are yet to figure out the point of it all.
It would be good to be able to say “I won’t ever have to face Gerard again”, but he’s Cat Daddy’s friend AND I have a further two lessons booked with him, so the chances of that are slim-to-zéro.
Next time we’re meeting in the park. Let’s hope that Sa Maj doesn’t find a way of teleporting there.
After barely seeing any visiting cats at Le Château over the last six years, we are now inundated.
As well as Donnie, Blue the Smoke Bengal and beefy tabby Tigger, Cat Daddy recently spotted a large (although, to be fair, they’re all large compared to Louis Catorze) grey and white cat that we’d never seen before. We’ve named him Jaws because he has the grey upper and white underbelly colouring of a great white shark. And he’s probably not far off the same size, too.
Cat Daddy: “What the hell is going on? It’s Cat Alley around here these days. I reckon they’re coming for the drugs. Word must have spread that Louis has the best stash in the neighbourhood. He’s the Keith Richards of the cat world.”
In other news, I FINALLY DID IT: I sent photos to the phone number on Donnie’s collar tag, with a message saying, “If you’re wondering where your boy is, he’s here in [our street] having fun with our cat, Louis Catorze.” And his humans have replied.
Hilariously, they WERE wondering where their boy was, and it seems that there have been many moments when they’ve believed him to be somewhere in their own house or garden, but he’s actually been here. However, they are delighted to know that he has a safe place on his travels and a friend who looks out for him.
Donnie’s real name is Theodore, or Theo for short, although we can’t seem to stop calling him Donnie no matter how hard we try. And he’s even younger than we thought: just 10 months old. Quite why he would come all this way to seek out the company of an old man like Catorze is beyond me, but I rather like the idea of Le Roi teaching his little* apprentice the ways of the world or, at the very least, HIS world.
*Donnie is actually just a fraction larger than Catorze, but you know what I mean.
I even managed to broach the subject of, erm, les cerises noires, and it turns out that Donnie does, indeed, still have a full set. However, I think I’ve managed to assure his humans that it’s in his interests to have them taken off, and they seem to be tired of never knowing where on earth he is, so hopefully les cerises noires won’t be there for much longer.
I don’t know what kind of conversation is going on in this photo (not great quality because I took it through the patio doors) but I imagine it’s Phase 1 of their plan to kill us all and take over the world.
“La domination du monde requires clean paws. Keep washing, mon gars.”
Well, ok, we all knew, but it’s still very funny to watch.
As you may be aware, Louis Catorze was a regular catnip user during his time at the rescue (for medicinal purposes) and, every now and again, we let him indulge in the dried stuff. In fact, when I cleared out his medicine cupboard – whose contents looked more like police-seized contraband than pet supplies – I discovered TWO containers that I had believed to be empty or near-empty, but which still contained enough gear for a couple of good sessions.
Honestly, Officer, that stuff isn’t mine.
However, I had never seen Catorze with the fresh herb until Cat Daddy, Puppy Mamma and I went to the local flower market and came home with heaps of lovely new plants. Puppy Mamma bought some cat mint as a gift for Sooty and Sweep, her babysit cats, but, when she stopped by at our place for a cup of tea before going home, someone got to the cat mint first.
Cat Daddy and I had also bought some cat mint for Catorze. When presented with his own stash, he chewed it, then rolled around on the patio – not the way you’d imagine a cute little cat roll, but more like the terrifying death roll of a crocodile drowning its prey – eventually returning to Puppy Mamma’s bag, all psycho-eyed and stoned, having decided that forbidden herbs intended for others were more fun than his own.
Below is a photo of said bag invasion, although I wish that I’d videoed it instead of taking a static picture. Catorze’s scrabbling, my laughter and Puppy Mamma’s cries of “Noooo! My Turkish delights are in there!” would have added a certain something to the whole viewing experience.
Cat Daddy’s war against the wildlife is intensifying. Not content with issuing a fatwa on the squirrels, he is now after the birds. Or, to be precise, the large birds.
Apparently, when he set up the bird feeder, he “only wanted small birds to use it”. In fact, its construction doesn’t permit large ones to feed, so I thought he would be satisfied with that. However, the messier of the smaller birds – starlings, I’m looking in your direction – drop bits below when feeding, and it is here that the larger ones take advantage. I don’t feel we should discriminate, especially as we can’t do anything about the extraneous matter that falls on the ground nor the undesirables that gather around it, but Cat Daddy disagrees. And he is cross with Louis Catorze for not doing his bit to deter said undesirables.
Cat Daddy is that grumpy old man that our parents warned us about, who sits by the window with a stick. Sometimes he runs out brandishing his stick, calling the pigeons rude names. And, occasionally, he watches Catorze out there and talks to him the way the Formula One teams talk to their drivers through their Bluetooth headsets, except that Catorze can’t hear him. (And even if he could, he would ignore.)
This is the sort of thing I hear on a daily basis:
Cat Daddy: “Fat bastard pigeon. Come on, Louis, do something! No, not the chaffinch! That’s one of the nice birds! Noooo, don’t go after the nice birds! God, what’s the point in having a f***ing cat?”
Cat Daddy’s most recent addition to the arsenal is this ugly green netting (see picture below), which he claims is to protect the strawberry plants but we all know that it’s to stop the larger birds from picking up scraps that fall beneath the feeder. He has also placed some bamboo canes there, all poking out at various sharp angles for extra menacingness.
This is all going a bit Mad Max. Even Catorze is genuinely fearful of how it will all end.
Louis Catorze’s friend Donnie now visits on a daily basis, often stopping by multiple times a day.
Cat Daddy and I are ok with this as long as Catorze remains happy to see his friend. We hope it won’t turn into something oppressive or threatening, and that Donnie won’t become that pleasant-but-too-needy friend who pops round unannounced and who doesn’t seem to know when to leave. (If you’ve ever had that friend, you will know how difficult it is to tell someone to get lost when they’re just being friendly and their only crime is no awareness of boundaries.)
It’s always the same routine when Donnie comes over: he sits outside the cat flap and screams, Catorze goes out to join him, then they either sit and stare at each other in our garden or they pitter-patter off into the Zone Libre. If Catorze isn’t available when he arrives, Donnie will sit outside and wait.
When you’re all set to go out on the town but your friend’s still getting ready.
The route from Donnie’s place to ours takes him through many gardens, over many fences and through the Zone Libre, which is Foxy Loxy’s domain. For the moment Catorze is always the one to host Donnie at Le Château but, should Donnie ever decide to return the gesture, I don’t like the thought of Catorze crossing the Zone Libre to get there. The foxes are becoming braver and more aggressive; Dog Mamma caught one cornering Blue the Smoke Bengal in her garden recently, and she had to intervene. I wouldn’t want Catorze or Donnie squaring up to a whole foxy gang in the inaccessible Zone Libre.
Sa Maj is an old boy and we imagined he would be taking it easy in his twilight years, not gallivanting around town with young whippersnappers like Donnie. But we’re glad he’s enjoying himself.
Good news: our new Sureflap has been installed. Bad news: I left Cat Daddy in charge of programming in Louis Catorze’s microchip, and it did not go well.
There was no real way of me monitoring the proceedings, with Raf the builder doing the job at 8am on a week day. But I didn’t think Cat Daddy would make QUITE the stuff-up of it that he did, manhandling a non-compliant and whiny Roi, stressing me out at work with messages telling me that the Sureflap still wasn’t letting him in, and so on. It’s just as well Sa Maj likes the garden, because he spent a hell of a lot of time in it that day.
Just as I was wondering whether we would have to take Catorze back to the vet to have his chip checked again, Cat Daddy confirmed that it had been “user error” and that he’d forgotten to press the memorising button before shoving Catorze through.
Anyway, Cat Daddy eventually managed to programme Catorze’s chip, and he did so without also programming those of Donnie, Blue the Smoke Bengal, beefy tabby Tigger and whoever else might feel like popping in, so Le Château‘s drawbridge is firmly up. And Catorze sought revenge on his papa for the whole sorry saga by squishing his newly-planted tarragon.
Cat Daddy: “He’s done this on purpose.” You think?
We have a lot of bracken in the garden, and we have always rather liked the look of it.
However, when it started to grow out of control, Cat Daddy decided to research the best way of keeping it in check. That’s when he discovered that virtually every horticultural website in creation seems to regard bracken as a hideous toxic invader and best destroyed. Absolutely none of them suggest cultivating it or even controlling it; the advice is pretty much “Cut it down, burn it and also burn the tools that you used to cut it down”.
Naturellement, the moment that Cat Daddy discovered this was also the very moment that Louis Catorze decided that bracken was his favourite thing in the world. And, no, he has shown no interest in it until now. Absolutely zero.
He’s also been scratching himself on the sharp branches of the planted-out Yule tree with the Blood-Letting Needles of Death. And this may just be a coincidence, but his skin is looking ropey, even though he usually starts to look BETTER around this time of year, so we have had to increase his steroid pills to two a day again.
Cat Daddy has already dug up and rehomed our distinctive, frilly daffodils, after learning of their toxicity to cats. But now it looks as if he has more digging to do.
Here is Catorze, resting against the worst thing in the garden and lying in the shade of the second worst thing in the garden:
Just making himself comfortable amidst all the poison and death.
Louis Catorze has now been eating Orijen Six Fish for a couple of weeks. I haven’t posted much about his daily progress because I haven’t dared to jinx it. But he’s eating it. And, luckily, despite disregarding all advice concerning gradually phasing in the new food, we don’t appear to have had any, erm, undesirable side effects of the digestive kind.
Since Le Grand Changement began, my conversations with Cat Daddy have consisted mainly of whether or not Louis Catorze has eaten and, if so, how much. Sometimes I have even asked Cat Daddy to send me photos of the little sod’s bowl during the day, so that I could compare them to the photos I’d taken earlier and see if he had eaten anything. I know. Truly living the dream.
Although he is happily eating, now that Catorze has acquired senior status he is becoming fussier and he no longer wishes to eat food that is even 0.001% stale (even though he’s the one who’s been leaving it to go stale in the first place). Refilling Catorze’s bowl little and often seems to resolve this and, since Cat Daddy is home all the time, he doesn’t mind doing it.
Cat Daddy’s Helpful Comment of the Day: “I do mind. I f***ing resent it.”
However, it might pose a problem if we have to go away and leave a chat-sitteur in charge of Sa Maj. My sister suggested an automated dispenser which releases one pellet every hour, and Cat Daddy and I are currently discussing whether it would be cheaper to ask someone to stop by sixteen times a day and serve a teaspoonful of food per visit, or sixteen people to each visit once a day and serve a teaspoonful of food.
Anyway, I am going to take a huge chance and tempt fate now, by bringing Le Grand Changement to a close and concluding that Orijen is Le Roi’s food of choice. “Cat puts humans through arduous food changeover and eventually chooses most spendy option” is a headline that will surprise absolutely nobody.
“I’ll have the most expensive dish on le menu, s’il vous plaît.”
Louis Catorze’s friend Donnie has been over again, several times, screaming his lungs out. Catorze was eating on one particular occasion, but took a break from his precious Orijen to go out and greet him.
Double trouble.
And, would you believe, Donnie has allowed me close enough to read his tag, which bears a very fancy full name plus a phone number and address. It’s hard to tell whether the name is that of the human or the cat, so for the moment I shall continue to call him Donnie. But I know exactly where his house is: all the way across the Zone Libre and not far from the pub.
It’s quite some way to be coming to see Sa Maj, and I am not sure quite what Donnie gets out of the arrangement since the two of them just sit and stare at each other. (Cat Daddy: “Is that what passes for fun in the cat world?”) However, Donnie was very glad of the Catorzian back-up when beefy tabby Tigger* rocked up the other day and interrupted the proceedings. Sa Maj, despite being half the size of Tigger, did the gentlemanly thing and saw him off whilst poor Donnie cowered, terrified, in the bushes. Cat Daddy was prouder than you can possibly imagine.
I am unsure whether Donnie still has his full lower portions or whether what I can see is, erm, just the empty purses after tipping out the loose change. But I don’t know how I can find out for sure, without either carrying out closer inspection of his rear end or going to his house and saying, “Good day! Can you spare a minute to talk about cats’ balls?”
Donnie now knows that the cat flap is there but still hasn’t come through, choosing to sit outside and scream for his copain instead. However, every day that goes by is a day closer to him figuring it out, and after that we will be truly sunk. I really, really need Raf the builder to come to our rescue.
louiscatorze.com 