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Je crie, donc je suis

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Sa Majesté Louis Catorze, Le Roi Soleil, supreme ruler of Le Château, sworn enemy of canine foe and scourge of Ocado delivery drivers.

  • 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.

  • Le bol d’abondance

    We are so lucky to have such wonderful friends: Louis Catorze’s ami, Sammypuss, has very kindly sent the little sod another bowl to replace the evil black saucer. So Le Grand Changement can now continue with two bowls that Catorze likes, rather than with one that he likes and one that he hates.

    I spent ages trying to find another matching bowl by myself, but I was only able to find it in two places: one was eBay, priced at £16 for the bowl and £20 for delivery – and it was just a single item, so I couldn’t buy multiple bowls to get full value for money from the delivery charge – and the other was some place that I can’t even remember anymore, priced at £200 for a set of twelve. Neither option appealed, and luckily Sammypuss was kind enough to lend a hand to his troubled comrade, with the help of his amazing Cat Daddy, Alex.

    Cat Daddy’s Helpful Comment of the Day: “But he used to eat perfectly happily from that black saucer.” That was YEARS ago. We cannot reasonably expect a cat as silly as Catorze not only to recall what he did in 2016 (or whenever it was), but also to repeat it when we want him to.

    Anyway, removing Satan’s saucer from the equation surely cannot do any harm? Sincèrement merci, Sammypuss et Alex.

    Sammypuss the saviour.

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

    According to the PDSA, the cat must have “happily eaten the new food for at least three days” before moving onto the next stage involving increasing the amount of new food and decreasing the old.

    I assume by this that Catorze needs to have eaten most, or all, of the Thrive served over a three-day period. Cat Daddy, however, thinks it just means SOME consumption on each of the three days. My sister says “Whatever is normal for your cat” which could mean anything or nothing, since Catorze wouldn’t know “normal” if it kicked him up the arse.

    As we didn’t seem to be making progress with Plan A, I decided to make arrangements for Plan B. And, whilst purchasing Plan B, I took the liberty of also acquiring the wherewithal for Plan C, after a MONUMENTAL search to find one website that sold both. Trust me, this took some doing, given Sa Maj’s very exacting requirements.

    Cat Daddy said I should have waited until seeing the results of Plan A before investing the kingly sums of £5.99 and £6.99 respectively in Plans B and C. However, had I done that, as well as paying twice for delivery, we would have been rapidly running down our last pack of Lily’s Kitchen Marvellously Mature – of which there were precious few left in the world the last time I dared to look – in the time it took for each Plan to arrive.

    Anyway, within hours of me placing the order for Plans B and C, naturellement Catorze decided that he would comply with Plan A after all.

    Plan B and Plan C will arrive tomorrow and, most likely, will just sit uselessly in Catorze’s food cupboard. That said, we know full well, don’t we, that the minute we donate them to nicer less fortunate cats elsewhere, Catorze will stage a brand new French Revolution and stop complying with Plan A.

    And, to add to our woes, the little sod’s skin is looking worse than ever, so he was back to the maximum dose of two steroid pills per day as from yesterday. We don’t know how this could have happened. We have been doing EVERYTHING right.

    I know, it’s exhausting to read all this. Imagine how we feel having to live with it.

    Incidentally, I’m still not drinking; after the success of Dry February and Dry March, I’ve decided to try for Dry April, too. I’m not sure whether a couple of bottles of Crémant would make this situation worse … or much, much better.

    Enjoying his kingdom whilst we scrabble around like idiots trying to feed and heal him.

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

    Although we are not Christians, Cat Daddy and I are praying for an Easter miracle: I have decided to bring forward Le Grand Changement since I am home to monitor the proceedings properly. Cat Daddy is, of course, home all the time, but this is a situation that requires the organised, responsible human, not the naughty one.

    Plus, after reading the PDSA link properly (see previous post), I realise that it’s a two-week process from start to finish. Since we’re down to our last pack of Lily’s Kitchen, this gives us very little wriggle room should our mutual friend appear to cooperate throughout and then inexplicably change his mind on Day 14.

    The PDSA tell us to place a normal serving of old food alongside a very small serving of new food, each in a separate bowl (see below). After the débâcle when I broke Catorze’s favourite one, I wasn’t going to confuse the daft sausage by introducing yet ANOTHER plate in the space of a few weeks, so I thought I might try, instead, to harness his dislike of the black saucer and use it to push him towards the new food.

    Anyway, here are the two plates pictured at 7am on the first day:

    Sammypuss bowl: Thrive (top) and Pill Pocket (bottom). Satan’s saucer: Lily’s Kitchen Marvellously Mature.

    Catorze ate the pill quite early on, but barely touched either set of food until around 10pm, when he ate the lot. For his next two meals, however, he ate most of the Lily’s Kitchen and absolutely none of the Thrive. Apparently this kind of caper is normal for a new food trial, not that this helps us particularly.

    Cat Daddy: “He’s confused by the two plates. We should put the two foods onto one plate.”

    Me: “Not only did that not work last time, but we didn’t even realise it wasn’t working until weeks into it.”

    Cat Daddy: “Well, if he doesn’t eat, he’ll die. Tough shit.”

    Let’s hope it doesn’t come to this.

    Incidentally, I do have both a Plan B and a Plan C in mind should Plan A not work out, but I can see us running the whole alphabetic gauntlet and still getting nowhere.

  • La nouvelle nouvelle assiette (Partie 2)

    Merci à Dieu: the Easter holidays are here!

    As from last Saturday, Louis Catorze was switched down to the lowest dose of pills (one every other day). And, five days later, the silly sod scratched himself. So he is now back up to one pill per day.

    However, he is eating from the bowl gifted by his cher ami Sammypuss. This is good news. Cat Daddy, might I add, is not helping matters with remarks such as, “Poor boy. You’ve had to deal with so much since SOMEBODY broke your favourite bowl.” (Cat Daddy has broken 724 things in the house whereas I’ve only broken about three, but tant pis.)

    I have sought bowl-fussiness advice from a number of friends and the general theme of replies has been, “My cat only cares about the food and doesn’t give a hoot about what it’s served in.” With the exception of a few cats who aren’t keen on plastic bowls, absolutely none of my friends have had experience of a cat being so particular as to hesitate to eat their familiar food from a different vessel. This makes me very nervous indeed, because I had hoped to try out the PDSA’s idea of serving the old and the new food in two – TWO – separate bowls.

    Most advice regarding changing a cat’s food suggests mixing the old and the new together and progressively increasing the proportion of the latter, but this didn’t work the last time. However, the PDSA’s plan is different, the idea being “to introduce them to the idea that this strange new substance with a different smell and texture has something to do with food”:

    https://www.pdsa.org.uk/taking-care-of-your-pet/looking-after-your-pet/kittens-cats/changing-your-cats-food

    I can see the logic in that concept; perhaps Catorze didn’t eat the previous mixture because he didn’t understand why his familiar old food suddenly smelled different. I don’t like to think of him being SO stupid that he didn’t realise it was still edible but, regretfully, I think he actually is.

    However, my decision to try this out took place before the destruction of Catorze’s favourite bowl and the lawlessness that ensued. I now have to make the decision of whether to put his new food into his Sammypuss bowl and the old food into a(nother) different one, or vice versa. The first option makes by far the most sense, but then I am also trying to second-guess the most illogical and mercurial mind ever to exist.

    It’s utterly nonsensical that I even have to think about this, but then “utterly nonsensical” is exactly what he does.

    What’s with this reading matter? Is he planning to sue me for criminal damage?

  • En haut comme en bas

    The Smart Meter man came over on Monday. (Cat Daddy organised this; I don’t even know what a Smart Meter is.)

    Cat Daddy cleared out all our coats from the under-stairs cupboard, to give him space to work, and left them on one of the living room sofas. And, naturellement, Louis Catorze took the opportunity to do this, whatever “this” is:

    Yes, it was he who knocked those two jackets onto the floor.
    For goodness’ sake.

    He spent much of the morning, prior to our appointment, burrowing away like a little groundhog, disproving Jackson Galaxy’s* theory that cats are either tree dwellers or ground dwellers. Catorze, it seems, is both. Or perhaps, after deciding that he was the former, he simply forgot and then decided he was the latter. By the time this goes live, I imagine he will have forgotten that, too.

    *In case you don’t know him, he’s a celebrity cat freak who makes naughty cats behave. Yes, we have asked him to come and fix Catorze. However, after reading Le Blog, he stopped returning our emails.

    Anyway, here is the Sa Maj, having eventually made himself comfortable. At this point all we wanted was for him to stay here and let the Smart Meter man work in peace … (continued below) …

    Smart Meter man: say your prayers.

    He didn’t.

    He slept in his coat fortress for a good hour, then sprang back to life the second he heard the voice of the Smart Meter man. At the time of drafting this post the little sod was following him around, whining like a heartbroken dog.

    As ever, I’m shocked but not surprised.

  • La carte routière

    After part of the fence was painted, the solar-powered lights went back up again. And within just 24 (twenty-four) hours of lighting Louis Catorze’s night time path, like those runway lights showing planes where to land, the squirrels chewed through the wires once more. This time they chewed right at the start of the string so that only one light worked. Cat Daddy managed to fix them, but yesterday they were chewed through AGAIN in a different place. He is furious beyond belief and says that the next set of lights will be set to electrocution mode. And I fear he might make it happen.

    In other news, we are now in the next phase of the “road map” announced by our esteemed leader in late February for easing Covid restrictions in England. Non-Brits: in case you’re wondering, “road map” in this context just means “list of stuff that’s going to happen”. It’s not a map, and there aren’t any roads in it. We don’t get it, either. And, yes, we also think he should have just said “Here’s a list of stuff that’s going to happen”.

    As from today, we are allowed to meet with five friends outside. Now, if you have ever lived in, or been to, England, you will know how unpredictable the weather can be. Therefore planning an outdoor meet ahead of time is quite difficult if you’re actually NOT ALLOWED to dash indoors if the weather turns against you. Therefore you’d better either be incredibly lucky on the day, or have outdoor cover, or just not bother making plans. Cat Daddy and I have gone for the third option, and we are quite happy with this; we’ve enjoyed the solitude to some extent and so a few more weeks of it, until we are able to do things properly, doesn’t make much difference.

    Louis Catorze, on the other hand, appears to be missing the excitement of company. He used to LOVE having visitors, especially on football days when it was mostly boys, whereas we haven’t had anyone round since Hallowe’en, when we hosted the Dog Family outside. I was pretty sure Catorze hadn’t even noticed that life had changed and, instead, thought things were just carrying on as normal … until the moment when he came running to the sound of my nephews’ voices on a video.

    He was also thrilled to see That Neighbour, who knocked on our door the other day to give us a parcel that he’d taken for us whilst we were out. Unfortunately he left his front door open when he came, so things went a little, erm, awry when Catorze escaped out. But I am certain that, when the little sod ran into his house and refused to leave (twice), he meant it in a positive “I’ve missed you!” kind of way.

    As you can see from the road map, we have another few weeks to go until we are allowed to see people indoors. And I think Catorze is the one who needs it the most.

    Yes, there are two Step Ones. No, we have no idea why.
    Dreaming of boys.

  • La guirlande lumineuse

    The pesky squirrels have chewed, multiple times, through the wires of the pretty solar-powered garden lights that the Dog Family gave to Cat Daddy for his birthday. Of a string of around twenty lights, only four now work. And Cat Daddy is not happy about it.

    After Unrepeatable Expletives of the Worst Kind and threats to obtain a firearm, Cat Daddy decided to … buy a new set of lights. Now, I don’t wish to victim-blame but this is asking for trouble, in the same way at that, if one’s Lexus were vandalised, it would not be advisable to buy an identical new Lexus and park it in the same spot the very next day.

    Cat Daddy has also bought some new fruit trees for the garden, despite Cocoa the babysit cat’s mamma telling us that the squirrels stole the figs and peaches from her trees last year. So, as well as parking a new Lexus in the same place where vandals targeted his old one, he’s also effectively bought several brand new Lexuses (Lexi?) and dotted them tantalisingly around a neighbourhood known for Lexus theft. Oh dear.

    This is only going to fuel Cat Daddy’s already-raging hatred for the squirrels. But he’s done it now, so it’s too late.

    The new string of lights looked lovely trailing around the honeysuckle trellis and across the fence and the shed roof … until Cat Daddy remembered that he had to paint the fence, so there was a second round of unrepeatable expletives when they all came down again.

    This area also happens to be Louis Catorze’s route to Twiggy the greyhound’s place, so we may have to rethink when they go back up. Cats are supposed to be able to deftly pitter-patter through even the trickiest of obstacles – there’s a YouTube cat who can run across a floor covered in dominos without toppling a single one – but this is Catorze we’re talking about. I can well imagine going outside to find him flailing and screaming among the wires, like a fly caught on that sticky paper (not that flies scream, but you know what I mean).

    The fence painting is going on right now as I write. But, when Cat Daddy has finished, I might ask him to nail the lights slightly lower, to facilitate the Catorzian exit route. And his painting supervisor (pictured below) agrees.

    “You’ve missed a bit, papa.”

  • Point de paix pour les méchants

    I have now been back at work for just over two weeks, and it has been quite refreshing to be able to teach Year 11 in peace without any interruptions from Louis Catorze.

    Meanwhile, the little sod has turned his attention to Cat Daddy and has been driving him absolutely spare by following him around, clambering all over him, screaming and so on. I receive numerous messages of complaint from him (Cat Daddy, I mean, not Catorze) during my school day, accompanied by photos of the undesirable behaviours in question and, whilst I laugh and tell my colleagues sympathise, there’s not much I can do.

    On one occasion Cat Daddy kicked Catorze out at The Front, just so that he could eat his breakfast in peace. But when he let him back in again, the pestering resumed.

    Cat Daddy does have occasional respite as he works a couple of mornings a week as a volunteer delivery driver for the local food bank. (Yes, Catorze’s behaviour is such that Cat Daddy regards several hours of sitting in Hounslow traffic as “respite”.) And, at the end of his shift, he just wants to be able to come home and have some peace. However, Sa Majesté says “Non”.

    More recently, Catorze decided to add bathroom interruptions to his repertoire. Whilst this is common in cats, it never used to happen with Catorze unless the bathroom had just been cleaned, in which case he did it in order to get high on the bleach. Yet, for whatever reason, he has decided to start doing it now.

    Here he is, pictured at the start of the most recent senseless ambush. I don’t imagine we will ever find out the reason why.

    Oh, for crying out loud: WHAT NOW?

  • La nouvelle nouvelle assiette

    I promise I wasn’t posting about the broken bowl to elicit gifts – mainly because Louis Catorze is an idiot and doesn’t deserve gifts – but thank you to everyone who has spent time looking for a new bowl for him since the sad demise of his fancy French one.

    I have received many suggestions for replacement bowls ranging from modern artisan numbers to antique pieces more suited to a museum display cabinet, and perhaps Catorze felt that a saucer from Wilko (non-Brits: ask your more downmarket British friends) was beneath him. Much of our crockery and cookware is from Wilko and it serves us perfectly well, but maybe that’s the point: if it’s good enough for us serving bitches, it’s not fitting for the Sun King.

    However, we know, don’t we, that had I bought Catorze one of the expensive platters that you recommended, he would have sniffed it, looked at me as if to say “… The hell do you call THIS?” and walked away.

    Nope.
    HELL, nope.

    A MASSIVE THANK YOU to the gorgeous Sammypuss and his Cat Daddy, Alex, who very kindly sent Catorze a new bowl (below) and some TRÈS fancy treats (which were licked once, then respectfully declined). Since the little sod appears to have a preference for food pellets in one neat pile, rather than scattered around the plate, I have a feeling he will like this bowl better than the flat saucer.

    However, because the plan I have for Le Grand Changement de Nourriture requires a temporary period of TWO BOWLS, I had to consider the following options:

    1. Continuing to feed Catorze on the unsatisfactory flat saucer, reserving the new one for Le Grand Changement in April. (Désavantage: a few more weeks of haphazard eating and creepy staring.)

    2. Giving Catorze his food in the new bowl immediately. (Désavantage: risk of chaos and disorder when I introduce ANOTHER bowl for Le Grand Changement.)

    3. Bringing forward Le Grand Changement to try to get both the bowl chaos/disorder and food chaos/disorder out of the way at once. (Désavantage: possible risk of rejecting the last supplies our painstakingly-sourced Dark Web Lily’s Kitchen, and also not necessarily a guarantee of chaos/disorder avoidance.)

    4. Dispensing with bowls altogether and feeding Catorze by throwing handfuls of food in his vague direction. (Désavantage: chaos and disorder of a different kind.)

    I was tempted by Option 4. However, I have chosen Option 2 and I fear I may live to regret it.

    Merci, Sammypuss et Alex!

  • Des jonquilles aux derniers lilas

    The spring equinox is here.

    Last spring, we had the most beautiful daffodils in the world and everyone admired them. Although I’ve always loved a cheering display of these heralds of spring, I have never thought individual daffodils to be truly beautiful until I saw these ones that Cat Daddy had planted the previous autumn. Whilst they were recognisable as daffodils, the ragged edges gave them an untamed oomph, like the kind of daffodils one would more likely stumble across in Faeryland than on earth.

    I loved our first spring with them. Sadly it was our ONLY spring with them because, as soon as they had withered, Cat Daddy pulled them all up again (although a few somehow escaped the cull, and we are still debating what to do with those). This was partly because daffodils are toxic to cats – and maybe we should have known this before, but the list of cat-incompatible plants is so long that it would be impossible to memorise everything – but also because that late winter/early spring was when Louis Catorze’s health took an especially bad turn. I don’t think we will ever know what caused him to deteriorate, but introducing a new thing known for its toxicity probably wasn’t smart.

    So now the daffodils have gone to a new home with my mum, whose cat has no health issues and steers well clear of flowers. I hope my mum enjoys them as much as we did for that one brief season.

    Here is one of our daffodils, photographed last year:

    Fun while it lasted.

    And here is the reason why we can’t have nice plants:

    It’s all his fault.

  • Presque le début du printemps

    When I was looking back over past blog entries the other day (as I sometimes do, in an “Oh my God, did he really do that or was it just some awful dream?” type of way), I remembered that, this time last year, Louis Catorze was Côned.

    Naturellement, I am desperately hoping that we won’t have to adopt the same horrible measures again, and I can’t seem to stop myself from neurotically studying photos of Louis Catorze this time last year, searching for a sign that he is better now than he was then. And I think he is. It’s very hard to tell, because he can look pretty normal in some light and utterly awful in others. Plus, last year, he’d also had his skin biopsy which added a further layer of itchy complication into the mix. But, this time, we acted a lot more quickly to introduce/up the steroids, so hopefully that will be enough.

    That said, knowing him, he will probably find some new and unexpected way of sabotaging our efforts. He usually does.

    Anyway, Catorze certainly isn’t acting like a sick cat. In fact, even Cat Daddy commented that the little sod had been having a fine old time outside, gadding about in the Zone Libre and enjoying the early spring. It would have been nice had he done this on that Wednesday afternoon instead of screaming through my podcast for a whole hour, but tant pis.

    One of Catorze’s favourite things to do is sitting on Oscar the dog’s summer house roof. We are certain that he misses his old sparring partner, and that he goes there to look for him.

    “Où est mon ami?”