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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.

  • 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?”

  • La nouvelle ancienne assiette

    Louis Catorze is nibbling from his black plate with considerable caution, the way a hungry person would if they were handed their favourite food in the world and told “It might be poisoned, or it might not”.

    When he’s not eating, he sits by the plate and stares as if it were some strange alien being. But at least he’s eating SOMETHING. And – merci à Dieu – not only is he taking his pills, but he seems to be doing fine on his new dose of one a day.

    Cat Daddy: “He’s not happy. Maybe he doesn’t like the look of his plate because the pellets are all over the place. It’s a mess.”

    Me, sarcastically: “Are you suggesting that we arrange the pieces into a more aesthetically pleasing fashion?”

    Cat Daddy, without a hint of irony: “Well, it wouldn’t hurt to try.”

    Reluctantly, I pushed all the pellets together into a pile in the middle of the plate, to see if it would make a difference. Catorze sniffed the pile, then walked away.

    We really don’t need this right now, what with Le Grand Changement de Nourriture only a few weeks away. But at least someone in the household seems to be having fun with it:

    I’m fairly sure Catorze didn’t do this.

  • J’en ai ras-le-bol

    I have broken the one-of-a-kind French feeding bowl which was gifted to Louis Catorze by one of his favourite pilgrims, and I am very sad about it.

    Because I hadn’t slept very well the night before, I was clumsy when serving up Catorze’s food and pill; I knocked the bowl with the bag of Lily’s Kitchen Marvellously Mature, sending it sliding off the edge of the worktop and onto the floor. Needless to say, it did not survive the fall.

    The good news is that we have a back-up plate: a flat, matt black saucer that Cat Daddy bought for Le Roi’s big brother Luther. (He chose black over a multitude of colours “because it matched Luther’s fur”. I know.)

    The bad news is that Catorze won’t eat from it.

    Yes, he used to use this same plate perfectly happily before acquiring the fancy French one. And, yes, exactly the same food is going onto it. But he still won’t eat from it. It doesn’t bode well for changing his food next month if the silly sod can’t even cope with the SAME FOOD ON A DIFFERENT PLATE.

    Not long after I broke the bowl, he sat at my feet and did the creepy staring again. And, ever since, he has spent his time alternating between screaming and sitting forlornly by his (full) plate.

    This is a level of foolishness that we truly cannot comprehend.

    Someone needs to tell him it’s the same food. Oh, wait … WE DID.

  • Le vieil homme et la bouffe

    We have worked out that we have enough Lily’s Kitchen Marvellously Mature to last us until late April. This means that we have around sevenish weeks to figure out how in the world we are going to change the food of a cat who doesn’t like food.

    The good news about a late April change is that Louis Catorze’s allergy-prone period will be coming to an end, so we won’t have to endure a food change AND maximum pill dosage AND possible deployment of Le Cône all at the same time. (In fact, as from tomorrow we will be lowering his dose to just one pill a day, as his skin and eyes are looking much less sore now.)

    However, at the end of April the little sod will turn 11. And according to, erm, some random charts that I found on the internet – see below for one from catwisdom101.com – this will move him up a whole age category, from Mature to Senior:

    Only a few more years until he reaches Geriatric.

    In short, he will be turning into a cantankerous old man. And we all know that cantankerous old men are deeply set in their ways and not receptive to change.

    He has already taken the first steps towards this undesirable transformation with a newly-adopted raspy old-man scowl, usually emitted when one of us grabs him for Grecoing and which is unlike any utterance we have ever heard before. In fact, far from sounding like a living creature, it is more like a digital sound created by a tech nerd in a Star Wars t-shirt. Being an idiot about his food is also the kind of old-mannish, low-effort-yet-high-impact thing he would do to spite us, and I am sure he will think of more things between now and his birthday.

    Here he is, warning us that things are about about to get serious:

    Looking youthful. And wanting more food.

  • Je vous fais savoir …

    Louis Catorze is becoming very good at letting us know when he wants us to do something. And it’s only taken him seven years.

    If he wants water, he is clever enough to go and sit by his glass. If we are elsewhere, he could very well be sitting there for hours before we realise that he’s there, which appears to be where his plan fails.

    However, if we haven’t seen him in a while, one of us always goes to look for him and, when we find him sitting by his water, we fetch him a fresh glass. And he has grown to learn that that’s what we’re doing so he waits in his drinking spot, whereas previously he would follow us, screaming, presumably furious that we were stealing his water.

    So, although it takes some time, in actual fact he succeeds in getting what he wants. Hopefully he’s not so stupid that he sits there when we’ve left the house, although I wouldn’t put it past him.

    When he asks for more food – a new thing since the steroids because, prior to that, he didn’t care much for food – things are very different. Hungry Catorze will find me wherever I am (never Cat Daddy, always me) and sit and stare. Most cats scream for food, but I guess the issue there is that he screams so often, for so many reasons or for absolutely no reason whatsoever, that we would never succeed in narrowing down what he wanted.

    The first time he sat and stared, we didn’t know what the problem was and we were terrified. Luckily, now that we have figured it out, I comply as soon as I can because I just want it to stop. Staring may seem comparatively inoffensive because it’s silent but, trust me, something about it bores deep into the soul and it’s creepy as hell.

    Here are some examples of just how chilling it can be. Naturellement, when I put food into his bowl, he just sniffs it and walks away.

    “Feed moi.”
    “Feed moi.”
    “Feed moi.”

  • Les fissures de la fourrure

    I am going back to school this week. (Please note: “back to school”, not “back to work”. I have been at work this whole time.) Although I am looking forward to a little normality, I will to have to relearn the following:

    – Driving

    – Wearing shoes

    – Using a pen and paper (teachers and students: remember pens and paper?)

    – Talking to people without yelling at them to mute

    – Styling my whole hair, as opposed to just styling the front bits that people see during video calls

    Speaking of hair (kind of), Louis Catorze’s fur cracks are becoming more and more pronounced. I love cats’ fur cracks. Explaining what they are is absolutely impossible, so I have attached a photo of the ones that Catorze has always had on his weird tail:

    It’s not normal. We know.

    Nobody quite knows what makes some cats’ fur crack and others’ not but it seems to be a plushy cat phenomenon, rather than one affecting sleek cats. I had always believed that fur cracks, like energy in Physics, could not be created or destroyed – a cat either had them or didn’t – but not so anymore: Louis Catorze used to only have fur cracks on his tail, but now he has them on his body, too, and his fur appears to become much thicker when he is on the steroids. It’s all very strange, but then we have come to expect “strange” as far as he’s concerned.

    Here are Catorze’s drug-induced bodily fur cracks, looking more peculiar than ever as they pulse up and down with his breathing and making him look like some Vernian monster from the deep. As with the above photo, please excuse the dust; either he had rolled in crud, or he was shedding crud, or possibly both:

    I want to stop looking but I can’t.

  • Русские идут!

    After falling in love with a photo of a Russian Black cat – and there I was thinking a Russian Black was a cocktail – I joined a social media group all about Russian cats.

    The rules of the group are very specific about the types of photos that may be posted, which is fair enough since Russian cats are what it’s about. I initially thought I would find it hard to resist posting photos of Louis Catorze but, as I get to know the cats in the group, I feel increasingly relieved that nobody expects to see him, as it would be akin to showing my battered, ancient skateboard to a group of people who all drive shiny Lamborghinis.

    Russian cats are SERIOUSLY fancy. We’re talking supermodel-fancy. Their fur is incredible, and something about their faces makes them look as if they’re permanently smiling, whereas Catorze’s fur is grim beyond belief and he looks as if he’s been sent by Satan to end humanity. Russian cats are also able to pose beautifully with their surroundings, so you’d be forgiven for thinking their humans were all professional photographers.

    Not only are the cats fancy, but their homes are also très fancy indeed. Very often the decor complements/matches the colour of the cat in an effortlessly tasteful way, making every single photo in the group – without exception – worthy of the front cover of a “Fancy Cat Vogue” publication. Photographing Louis Catorze in his relatively modest Château, on the other hand, is quite the endeavour: it usually involves shifting unsightly objects from the background (if I can be bothered), brushing away surface crud from the furniture/floor/cat, adjusting the light to hide the grubby carpet/walls/cat, planning my disclaimer apologising for said grubby carpet/walls/cat, consulting my good friend the black markup pen to edit any unattractive pink rear end, and so on. And, even after all this effort, the photo is usually still terrible.

    Would I ever want a Russian cat? Absolutely. They’re so beautiful that I can’t imagine anyone NOT wanting one, and if I came across one in a rescue situation I certainly would be tempted. Incidentally, this is not to sidestep paying a breeder; after all, Le Roi was the most expensive cat in the history of his rescue, so any plans to minimise spending went out of the window from the start. This is because my heart lies with the freaks and misfits that nobody wants, perhaps because I identify with them more closely than one would imagine.

    And it does happen: if fancy cats are your thing, they do, very occasionally, pop up in rescues. Catorze’s big brother Luther was a Bombay, although we didn’t know at the time and we just thought he was a skinny black cat with a weird tail. Had they told us, I can’t say it would have made much difference. However, when they presented Luther as the longest-serving inmate of the least popular colour and with a chequered medical history, I thought, “That’s the cat for me.”

    Here is Alik, the divine, dark angel who prompted me to become a member of the fancy cats group despite my own cat being as unfancy as can possibly be. Thank you to his Cat Daddy, Joseph, for letting me use this picture:

    Just exquisite.

    If you are thinking of adopting a cat, please ensure that you do so from an ethical, registered breeder or from a rescue. And, if you’d like to find out more about Russian cats, you can do so here: http://www.russiancatsaustralia.com

  • Le chat sur un toit brûlant

    Every so often, a little ray of sunshine comes my way when I realise that my cat is not THE most embarrassing cat in the world, but perhaps only just scraping into the top ten.

    This absolute muppet (see link https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-56271478 ) not only managed to hold up a whole train but his escapades were as public as can be, first taking place in a crowded station with CCTV and now immortalised on the internet for our entertainment. The only slight surprise is the colour of the cat as I would have expected this behaviour, first and foremost, from black cats (psychopaths who want to ruin our lives) or gingers (arrogant and into themselves, and therefore would have loved the attention).

    Somewhere in London, a tabby cat owner is wincing as they read the BBC’s online news, thanking their lucky stars that the photos are sufficiently grainy to instil some reasonable doubt, therefore allowing them to just deny everything. I myself am thanking my lucky stars that it’s not Catorze, although this is only because he doesn’t know where the station is.

    Here he is, telepathically communicating praise to his stripy copain:

    “Bien joué, mon gars.”

  • Le thé parfumé

    I have caught Louis Catorze nuzzling the spout of the teapot.

    (Yes, although Dry February is officially over, I’m not in any hurry to hit the booze yet and am happy to stick to tea. In fact, I might even try for Dry March, too, just to see whether I continue to feel healthy and alert or whether my body eventually starts to reject the unfamiliar non-alcoholic beverages and my organs slowly pack up and die.)

    I haven’t been so disgusted since I caught Catorze’s big brother Luther doing the same thing to my electric toothbrush when I’d left it to charge up on the floor (because the plug points in our old house were all at ground level). Just as I had left the toothbrush in that same spot about 768 times previously and then used it afterwards, I have left many a half-pot of tea unguarded and then unsuspectingly drunk the tepid remains.

    As nuzzlers go, Catorze doesn’t simply brush his cheeks against things; he really, gets stuck in, meaning contact with nostrils, lips, teeth and all sorts. And, because of his tooth impediment and the fact that his lower lip dips downwards to accommodate les fangs, his mouth can never close fully and therefore he would have spread saliva and snot all over the teapot spout.

    Now, we all know that bacteria are wiped out by high temperatures. But Cat Daddy, who is a tea expert, has taught me well: green tea, my drink of choice, is brewed at 80 degrees, whereas a temperature of 100 degrees is what’s needed to destroy bugs. And, even if I had brewed the tea at 100 degrees, leaving it to go tepid would have undone any possibility of destroying germs. In fact: tepid temperatures are like a come-hither party invitation for all things gross and germy.

    Anyway, I am now scarred for life and will never, ever recover from this. As for Catorze … well, this picture suggests that he might not be too bothered:

    Morning tea with a hint of cat spit.

  • Défense de tuer les rouge-gorges

    Most people would have dismantled their festive decorations on Twelfth Night, but we barely needed to bother because the squirrels were kind enough to do much of the job for us. We can’t be sure of exact numbers but we imagine we are about ten baubles down, thanks to those pesky, thieving little sods.

    However, this is by no means the end of Cat Daddy’s war against them. His latest piece of weaponry is the feeder pictured below, which allows birds to access the tasty treats but somehow doesn’t permit “pests”. Nothing is quite as passive-aggressive as a feeder that says “Here’s food for everyone else, BUT NOT YOU.”

    Our favourite visitors are a pair of robins, who are so friendly that they even come to feed whilst we are doing our noisy outdoor workouts.

    Photographed by Cat Daddy a fortnight ago.

    We love them, and we look forward to seeing them every time we look or go outside. But we are also very nervous on their behalf, because of this individual:

    Don’t even THINK about it.

    Now, the last time that Louis Catorze caught a bird was a long time ago (full story featured here: https://louiscatorze.com/2016/07/16/loiseau/ ) and, as far as we know, he hasn’t caught one since. So logic would deem it unlikely that things would go awry. However, this is Catorze, he who pretty much INVENTED the dark art of doing exactly the opposite of whatever is expected or wanted. This is why we are nervous.

    So we have decided to follow the advice of The Guardian (see link: https://www.theguardian.com/science/2021/feb/11/meaty-meals-and-play-stop-cats-killing-wildlife-study-finds) and ramp up Catorze’s play sessions, especially as the sunnier weather seems to be giving him a boost of not-needed energy. And, as an extra precaution, Cat Daddy has “had a serious word with him” (?).

    Please keep your fingers crossed and hope that Catorze behaves himself.

    *EDIT: the day after I wrote this piece, Cat Daddy overheard Catorze making “his awful hunting noise” at two birds on the feeder. Oh my.

  • Dormir, c’est du temps perdu

    From 8th March onwards, I will be back at school.

    This means that I will be able to teach lessons and attend meetings in peace, without Louis Catorze barging in and interrupting. The bad news is that his creepy kitty sixth sense appears to have informed him of the diminishing opportunities to ruin my life, and so he thought he’d put all his efforts into one final hurrah.

    Yesterday I took part in a podcast chaired by my Ultimate Boss, the head of all the schools within our education group. I knew full well that our mutual friend would cause problems so I shut him out of the room. However, this failed to stem the flow of this tiny tsunami of feline psycho, and I should have taken additional measures such as having Cat Daddy supervise him, locking him in a lead-lined underground vault, that kind of thing. This was a huge oversight on my part.

    I thought he might scream once or twice, but I didn’t think the little sod would have the energy/inclination to sit outside the door and keep screaming throughout the entire recording. I know. Believe me, I am wincing with shame at my own stupidity.

    This will give some insight into how it went:

    Ultimate Boss: “What made you all become languages teachers?”

    “Mwaaaaah!”

    Ultimate Boss: “How have you adapted your methods since we shifted to online learning?”

    “Mwaaaaah!”

    Ultimate Boss: “What impact does language learning have on cognition?”

    “Mwaaaaah!”

    And so on.

    Anyway, my poor colleague who is responsible for our media communications will now have a job trying to edit the screaming from the final piece.

    And the worst thing is that, throughout the recording, nobody acknowledged the interruption. With hindsight, it would have been less awkward had someone said “What’s that noise?” I would have replied, “Oh, just ignore it. It’s only my silly cat!” and we would have laughed and carried on. But, conversely, in the same way that fear makes demons and poltergeists grow more powerful, saying nothing made it worse; clearly everyone, including Ultimate Boss, thought, “I don’t want to be the one to blink first.”

    After SIXTY MINUTES of this excruciating torment I finally opened the door, imagining a feeble Catorze weak and withered from thirst, but the little sod ignored his water and came straight to my lap. He could have sought cuddles at any point during my lunch break, my free period or even, at worst, a normal lesson with students (yes, even that same Year 11 class, AGAIN, would have been preferable). But, naturellement, he didn’t want them then.

    Here is Catorze, pictured immediately after the harrowing event. And, if you feel like listening to my podcast about the importance of languages in a post-Brexit world, don’t bother. Just record the next cat fight that you hear and play it on a loop for 60 minutes, for the same overall effect.

    “Je ne regrette rien.”

  • Compassion pour le diable

    Louis Catorze really has surpassed himself this time with his dark arts and sorcery.

    It was 6pm and, once again, he had eaten around his pill leaving it untouched in his bowl, so I had no option but to dig it out from inside the Pill Pocket and Greco it to him. I decided to grab him whilst he was on our bed – better a static target than a moving, screaming one – and this was the sequence of events that unfolded that terrifying evening:

    1. First Greco attempt: spat out.

    2. Second attempt: spat out.

    3. Third attempt: little sod not only spat it out but rolled on top of it. And there was no unrolling him.

    Yes, I know that he only weighs 3.5kg (or thereabouts). Yes, I know that I weigh considerably more. But this is Catorze we are talking about; if he doesn’t want it to happen, it won’t.

    4. Fake-stroking in an effort to make him unroll.

    5. Purring but no unrolling.

    6. More fake-stroking.

    7. Purring but no unrolling.

    Eventually I gave up and decided to go back downstairs. At this point Catorze decided to join me and stood up to stretch.

    The pill was nowhere to be seen.

    I. Looked. Everywhere. It was neither in the folds of the duvet, nor on the floor, nor stuck to Catorze’s fur (and I made sure of this, patting him down like a prison officer searching an inmate for a concealed shank). Rien, nichts, niente, nada.

    THE SPOOKY LITTLE FREAK HAD MADE HIS PILL DISAPPEAR. And we still haven’t found it.

    I am nowhere near competent enough to take on this kind of devilry. And Catorze knows this perfectly well.

    “Pleased to meet you. Hope you guess mon nom.”