louiscatorze.com

La belle et la bête

27/09/2018

I don’t often feature other cats in Le Blog – mainly due to the fact that Louis Catorze doesn’t have any friends – but I couldn’t resist a picture of Bella, who lives in Cat Granny’s residential care home.

We have visited Cat Granny there many times, and I have often said that the one thing the place needed was a cat. Then, suddenly, Bella was there. She is an absolutely delightful addition the home, happily sitting on residents’ laps for cuddles and slow-blinking at people passing by. And the place is big enough so that, should she want time to herself, she can just slip off and have a nap on a chair (as she was doing here when I interrupted her for a photo):

Cat Daddy and I wondered whether Sa Majesté could become one of those officially certified therapy cats who tour hospitals and residential care homes to cheer up sick and/or old people. Cat Daddy remarked that he was “most definitely certifiable”, which means that he agrees, right? In reality, however, because Catorze is such a little sod, I think he would end up being whatever the opposite of a therapy cat is, i.e. people who were fine before meeting him would need therapy afterwards.

That said, he is bold, friendly and great with new people, and the fact that many elderly people are hard of hearing would mean that nobody would care that much about his screaming. Dialling down the volume on the hearing aid would bring instant peace, something for which we at Le Château desperately yearn at times.

Cat Daddy said we didn’t do enough to support elderly people’s charities and suggested that we make a donation.

Me: “That’s a lovely idea. How much do you want to donate?”

Cat Daddy: “About 3kg of pointless black fur?”

(He was only joking. And, to make up for his unkindness, we have made a donation to the Mayhew, whose therapy animals – unlike Catorze – make people feel better.)
La joie de l’automne

22/09/2018

Today is the autumn equinox, which signifies the start of my favourite time of the year. Normally I would mark this by lighting a scented candle but, because of a certain sneezing little sod, this is now off limits. (He actually hasn’t sneezed in a while, but we are being cautious as we really don’t want another trip to the vet.)

And, if my memory serves me correctly, this time last year I had also hoped to treat myself to a relaxing spa bath but the same little sod ruined it by battering at the bathroom door and screaming himself senseless. So I guess that is also off limits … unless, of course, I invite him in to make use of the steam to clear les narines royales.

Instead, Cat Daddy and I will be celebrating with Louis Catorze cuddles – which, despite everything, are always a treat – and fillet steak when we get home from our autumn walk. And, yes, Catorze will be getting a little sliver of steak with his dinner. (His preference is medium-rare. Thank you for asking.)

Happy autumn to you all. Here is Sa Maj, resplendent among the Japanese anemones, heralding the new season in the only way he knows how:
Un chat sans parfum

15/09/2018

After le silence total for a couple of days, Louis Catorze finally sneezed on Thursday night. So we have been giving him Metacam in his food AND HE HAS BEEN EATING IT (wish I had known it were this easy when I was Greco-Romaning it to him in the past). We have not yet attempted the sauna treatment, although it’s on the agenda for discussion at the next Boys’ Club meeting.

However, as a precaution, the vet did suggest that we do an audit of any new household or skincare products which could have caused an allergic reaction. So I have started to tighten up my usually rigorous control which lapsed a little during the summer months, resulting in a few cheeky perfumed items sneaking their way into the inner sanctum of Le Château. The lapse was partly because Louis Catorze was spending more time outdoors and therefore it didn’t matter so much, and partly defiance on my part: if Catorze couldn’t be bothered to spend time with me, I didn’t see why I should knock myself out making things nice for him and his silly nose.

It also didn’t help that the airline lost our bags when we went on holiday, and we were forced to go shopping for toiletries that didn’t fit our usual exacting specifications. Rather than throw them all away when we got back and create more unnecessary waste, I have been frantically using them in the hope that they will be gone by the time the weather turns and Sa Maj decides to return indoors.

The more time passes, the less convinced I am that his skin issues were directly caused by an allergy to scent, and I am fairly sure that his sneezing was caused by something else (most likely him just being an idiot). That said, I am not sorry that I cut down the scented products and, having got him to a healthy, drug-free state – no Gabapentin or steroid shots since summer 2017 and no Atopica since FOREVER – I am not prepared to take any chances by allowing too many of them back into Le Château again.

When I let retailers know that I’m looking for low- or no-scent products because of my sensitive-skinned cat, it’s amazing how many of them turn out to be cat people. I receive lots of nice comments and questions about Sa Maj and, if I send a photo along with my enquiry, they often say how handsome he is. (Cat Daddy: “Trust me, they’re just trying to be polite.”) And, every now and again, someone truly goes the extra mile and does this:

Bravo et bien joué, Scent Trail. Sa Majesté wholeheartedly approves, as you can see from the photos in which he is conducting his official royal analyse de contrôle de la qualité.

Louis Catorze loves Scent Trail and highly recommends, in particular, their lime and vetiver candle, which appeared to have a calming effect on him during his stressy, tail-chewing days. Their products can be bought here:

https://www.scent-trail.co.uk/ourshop/
Un rare courage devant la maladie

12/09/2018

Cat Daddy and I had a long discussion about the right time to take Louis Catorze to the vet, because investigating the sneezing would require a general anaesthetic and that is not something that we feel should ever be undertaken lightly.

However, Catorze scared us witless when his usual breathy post-drink wheezing – a bizarre but utterly harmless quirk of his – sounded more like that awful mating fox yelp that sometimes wakes us Londoners in the night. And, when I checked his face again on Tuesday morning, I could see that his right nostril was somehow enlarged and misshapen. We know our cats’ faces like we know our own, don’t we, so we knew then that it was time.

Cat Daddy took Sa Majesté to the vet that morning and, as luck would have it, he had a sneezing fit in front of her so she was able to see it properly. He was sedated and thoroughly examined, only to discover no blockage whatsoever. It turns out that the little sod is likely to have a viral infection, and the cure is Metacam anti-inflammatory (which, apparently, tastes like chicken) along with … a series of steam sessions to help clear his nasal passages. I’m not joking. “Just turn on the hot taps in the bathroom and shut the door,” is what we were told.

Cat Daddy afterwards: “So it’s cost us £300 to send him on a jolly day out and to find out that he basically has a cold? And now we’ve got to give him tasty meds and a luxury spa treatment? Who does he think he is: royalty?”

Mais bien sûr.

And, to add insult to injury yet again, not only was the little sod super-affectionate and flirtatious with the veterinary staff all day long, but he also stopped sneezing. Since his procedure there hasn’t been so much as a sniff, neither at the veterinary surgery nor here at home. So we have been left feeling hugely relieved but also quite annoyed, and Le Royal Sick Fund is sitting in a corner, crying, after the battering it has received. And Cat Daddy and I may well go and join in.

Here is Le Roi just after he returned home, displaying his macho shaven arm like a tattoo sleeve. Quel. Fichu. Salaud.
À ses souhaits

10/09/2018

It’s happened before, Mesdames et Messieurs, and I don’t know why I didn’t learn my lesson from the last time: the minute I boast about Louis Catorze’s astonishingly good health, something goes wrong.

Remember when I played Saint Jérôme to his lion and extracted a HUGE piece of grass from his poor little nose? (The full story is here, in case you missed it at the time: https://louiscatorze14.wordpress.com/2017/07/02/saint-jerome-et-le-lion/)

Well, the little sod now has something else stuck up there. I can’t prove it but I know it. I am even inclined to believe that he remembers me removing the grass the last time, as he won’t leave me alone and even allowed me to look up his nose and down his throat. (If you have followed Le Blog for any length of time, you will know that he would usually kick me unconscious and leave me for dead for trying to pull a stunt like this.)

For the moment his snorts seem to be quite infrequent – one or two a day, as opposed to several times an hour the last time – and he is managing to eat, drink, scream, purr, sleep and sit outside for hours on Rodent Duty. But I can see that, if the blockage doesn’t work its way out – or at least make itself known so that I can pull it out – we are going to have to make our third vet trip in as many weeks.

For once, unbelievably, I am actually HOPING he will spew up something unpleasant – yes, even whilst lying on the trousers that I was going to return to Marks and Spencer but now can’t as they are full of cat hair (see below). Please send Catorze your best vomiting vibes.
Parce qu’il le vaut bien

08/09/2018

Louis Catorze had his annual booster injections yesterday, and it was nothing short of wondrous to be able to have such a straightforward visit. Well, when I say “straightforward” I mean the treatment required, not the overall experience. Naturellement we had the usual screaming on the journey there and the usual brutal combat during the injection, although this time it was I who had the merde kicked out of me and not the vet. And, to quite literally add insult to injury, the little sod refused me cuddles but was happy to have them with the vet and with a delighted 7-year-old boy whom I invited into the examination room with us because he was desperate to see the black vampire kitty. (Cat Daddy later on: “Other people come into the examination room with you, JUST TO SEE HIM?”)

Health-wise everything was great: no pressing problems to discuss with the vet as Catorze’s eye is now fine, no having to pre-order the special vaccine which didn’t clash with his myriad of other treatments, no new medication to pay for, just turning up, having him weighed and injected, gritting my teeth through the kicking and screaming and then going home again.

It’s been a tough road getting Catorze to this level of health but, despite being an ungrateful little sod, he is worth it, and you would understand if you were to see his heartbreaking “Before” photos. They are too upsetting to post here and, in fact, I have only ever shown them to 3 people: my friend in South Africa who runs a feline health forum, a lady in Malaysia whose cat had similar symptoms and, erm, a famous Asian celebrity to whom I sent them by accident because she happened to have the same name as the lady in Malaysia. But, trust me, the transformation is miraculous, and it’s hard to believe that he is the same cat.

Not long after our return, as I attended to the lacerations on my hand – who knew that a cat’s BACK feet could be such lethal slashing machines? – Catorze recovered from his anguish by rolling on the pavement at The Front, which dogs have used multiple times as les toilettes. Quelle joie.
Un médicament amer peut sauver la vie

04/09/2018

Cat Daddy has been feeling a little sheepish and guilty for the last couple of days. This is not just because he didn’t believe me when I told him that Louis Catorze was bleeding, but also because he is now paranoid that he caused the injury through too-rough rough play.

Although this is highly unlikely, we have started to be a little more gentle with our poor boy. Unfortunately this is not mutual, as Catorze has been fighting like a rabid hell-hound every time I attempt to give him his eye ointment and, quite frankly, it’s a miracle that I haven’t accidentally stabbed him in the eye with the tube and made the injury worse. Being a cream rather than a watery liquid, it’s quite tricky to apply, even when one is not also holding down a writhing, screaming animal with the strength of 10 grizzly bears. If I don’t take off the lid in advance of the application it means I’m fumbling around trying to do it whilst also doing the Greco-Roman death-wrestle, but if I DO take off the lid in advance of the application, the little sod smells the ointment and does a runner.

Day 1 was not very successful as I was on target with the eye ointment but it splurged all over Catorze’s face as well. There was also the added stress of it being a Broadline day, so I had a total of THREE Greco-Roman death-wrestles to deal with that day. Day 2 was, sadly, much like Day 1. And on Day 3 I tried to reduce the pressure on the tube by 90% but this appeared to reduce the splurge by only about 0.3%. When the little sod came to offer forgiveness cuddles later on, he took me by surprise by approaching with completely noiseless pitter-pattering, and, as he jumped onto my stomach with no warning, my scream of, “JEEESUS, Louis!” sent him scuttling off again, making me feel like an absolute monster.

Tomorrow is Day 5. This really, really cannot end soon enough.
Les mûres de la colère

01/09/2018

Yesterday evening Cat Daddy and I marked the end of Psychological Summer with some celebratory fizz in the garden, and all was going well until I wiped Louis Catorze’s weepy eyes with some tissue and discovered that one was oozing blood.

I am generally of the view that, if Catorze is well enough to eat, drink and scream, then he’s fine. But blood is never, ever good. Despite Cat Daddy’s protests that it was “probably just blackberry juice”, I rang the vet in a panic and booked a 6:30 appointment, then rang again and made a 6:50 appointment when the little sod did a runner and I realised that we wouldn’t be able to catch him in time for 6:30.

After barricading the cat flap so that he couldn’t escape back out again, cornering him and stuffing him into his pod, we took him, screaming, to the vet. Whilst Cat Daddy rolled his eyes and continued to mutter things about blackberry juice, the vet first tested for eye ulcers by dropping a scary fluorescent green liquid into Catorze’s eyes – to the sound of Cat Daddy’s giggles and daft questions about whether it would make Catorze glow in the dark – and then peered under his upper eyelids where she discovered that he had cut himself. I prayed that we wouldn’t have to do the Greco-Roman death-wrestle to shove medication down his throat, only to be told the horrifying news that we would have to shove it into his EYE instead. Twice a day, for 5 days. Oh. Seigneur. Dieu.

“Do you know how he might have cut his eye?” I asked.

“It could have been any number of things,” the vet replied. “Scratching himself, or catching it on something. Possibly a plant.”

Cat Daddy: “Could it have been a blackberry plant?”

[Silence, tumbleweed, crickets.]

Anyway, a few minutes and £44 later, we were back at Le Château finishing our fizz and Catorze was happily pitter-pattering around us. The only indication that we had been to the vet was Cat Daddy complaining about the almighty cost for such a tiny injury and still insisting that it was blackberry juice and not blood.

And, to make matters worse, I had a stressful evening and a fitful night’s sleep because Catorze later disappeared, which is unlike him; he now tends to forgive us quite quickly for vet visits and his days of Le Grand Mega-Sulk are long gone. I was terrified that he had reacted to the fluorescent green stuff and gone somewhere quiet to die, but I discovered this morning that we had forgotten to unbarricade the cat flap and so the poor little sod had been stuck outside all night. As I write this, I am giving him guilt-cuddles on the sofa whilst I drink my morning teapigs tea, feeling like the second-worst human being ever (with Cat Daddy being the worst, for his refusal to believe me when I said I’d seen blood) and wondering how the flip I am going to hold him still and get this medication into his eye.

To prove a point to Cat Daddy: one of the pictures below is of what I wiped from Catorze’s eye, and the other is blackberry juice. Spot la différence?
Je bouffe, donc je suis

30/08/2018

After several months of a carefully-orchestrated changeover and regular snippy comments from Cat Daddy about the slowness of it all, Louis Catorze has now fully transitioned from Acana Pacifica to Lily’s Kitchen. So he is well on his way to becoming a zero-waste kitty. (Cat Daddy: “Apart from the waste that comes out of his arse end.”)

Better yet, he genuinely seems to like the Lily’s Kitchen better, which is quite the accomplishment for a cat who, generally speaking, doesn’t like food. He actually comes running when he hears the biscuits rattling and sometimes clears his plate, neither of which he used to do before, and I feel almost* guilty that we have subjected him to merely satisfactory food until now.

*Almost, but not quite. Louis Catorze leads a life of luxury and certainly doesn’t need our sympathy.

Whilst I am delighted that our boy is happy and that he has actively reduced his carbon pawprint, I hope we won’t lose the many advantages of a cat who doesn’t like food. It is an absolute joy to be able to leave human food on the kitchen worktop, knowing that it will be safe. It’s also great to be able to go out for a whole day, having put down 2 meals’ worth of food, and know that the little sod will make it last. His big brother Luther was very much a guzzler rather than a grazer; his inability to pace himself meant that, if we were going out, we would always have to make arrangements for someone to come and feed him. I recall my mum once witnessing his gluttony and saying, “That food was meant to last him until the evening. When you gave it to him, did you not EXPLAIN?”

Here is Catorze’s custom-made feeding station (created by the builders upon Cat Daddy’s orders), which houses his black kitty feeding mat (gifted by my sister) and his vintage French bowl (gifted by one of his best-loved pilgrims). La vie est belle.
La prise de la Bastille

25/08/2018

One of our neighbours popped round a couple of days ago, and not only did he overhear Louis Catorze’s tormenting of Oscar 2 weekends back, but the little sod has, on numerous occasions, broken into his house. Through an UPPER FLOOR window.

And, on the most recent occasion, a member of his family found him pitter-pattering around their landing, screaming, because said window had been shut and he couldn’t get back out.

“Mortified” doesn’t even BEGIN to describe how Cat Daddy and I felt upon learning this news. And “mystified” would have been our second adjective of choice, had we not remembered what used to happen in our previous home when we were attempting to train Catorze to use the cat flap. Long story short: he wasn’t having any of it and, instead, chose the Mission Impossible route in and out via next door’s fence, their conservatory roof and our upstairs bathroom window. During one outward (we assume) journey he even managed to get a large bottle of mouthwash stuck in the slats of the Venetian blind. To this day, we have no idea how he did this.

We also recalled that, just like his big brother, Luther, Sa Majesté was a master of going into places where he had no business being. Our next-door neighbour at the time would often text me saying, “There’s a black cat in my house. Is it yours?” And, when the texts stopped, I assumed it meant that Catorze was no longer impinging but, in actual fact, the neighbour had simply got to know him so there was no need to ask me if he were mine. The same lady also once heard scrabbling around under her bed and thought she had mice but, when she looked, it was Catorze.

So now that we know HOW, the only question is WHY the little sod would break into a house that has traces of dog in it, that doesn’t have a supply of food (both of which should make it less attractive to an impinging cat) and that is occupied mainly by ladies (which should make it less attractive to Catorze). And I don’t suppose there’s much we can do to stop him. We are just lucky that we have patient, understanding neighbours who like us.

Cat Daddy: “For now. Our neighbours like us FOR NOW.”

This photo was taken last month but I love it because it sums up Le Roi’s arrogant and entitled attitude, surveying his Château and all the neighbours’ adjoining Châteaux which, it seems, are also his Châteaux:
Les oiseaux furieux

20/08/2018

Cat Daddy and I have been struggling to sleep since returning from holiday. This is partly down to our post-holiday body clock stuffage, but also because of the Angry Birds, a flock of attractive but maddening bright green parakeets who have nested in the park across the road. Our neighbours hate them, too, and, if we are to hope for any sleep at all, we have no choice but to either keep the windows closed in the heat or to do Rock, Paper, Scissors to determine who will be the one to get up and shut the windows once the racket starts at dawn.

Cocoa the babysit cat is doing his utmost to keep their population down – and has had some success – but he has a way to go before he makes a significant difference. Not that we actually want to see them all killed but, after several consecutive nights of no sleep, we can’t help but cheer on Cocoa just a little bit.

Sometimes a squawky magpie or two also join in, resulting in a cacophonous chorus of “Screech-screech-screech-screech-screech-screech-screech-screech-cawwwwww-cawwwwww!” It’s quite the most dreadful thing imaginable.

Not long ago I was forced to get up upon hearing the hellish alarm call, because just lying there would have made me more annoyed. I looked out at The Back and saw about a dozen or so parakeets perched on the telephone wires screeching at something below them. And now I know what has been making the Angry Birds so angry. Most of them flew away when I went outside, but I managed to catch one bird with the object of its enragement:

Oui, Mesdames et Messieurs: what’s making them so cross is a little black sod, pitter-pattering about the garden, stopping occasionally to look up at them and meow back. As I watched, open-mouthed with shock, I observed that the meowing only made the Angry Birds’ screeching worse, which in turn made the meowing worse, and so on, just as it does with Oscar the dog’s barking. Oh. Mon. Dieu.

I have no idea whether the Angry Birds are screeching to alert their comrades of the potential predator danger, or whether they are just shouting insults and swear words (which, frankly, is much more likely). Whatever the reason, we apologise unreservedly to the neighbours who follow Le Blog and, erm, might just keep quiet about this when we bump into the neighbours who don’t.
L’ordinateur a l’intelligence de celui qui s’en sert

16/08/2018

We have only been back for a few days, and already Louis Catorze is causing utter mayhem and driving us round the bend.

His connerie began on the very evening of our return, when he goaded poor Oscar the dog so badly that we, Dog Mamma and Dog Sister had to go out and intervene before blood was spilled. And, on Monday, he walked across my laptop, causing me to submit my enhanced disclosure application before I had proofread it.

For those who don’t work in education: this is the highly important process that informs one’s employer whether or not one has a criminal record, so it’s safe to say that it really, really needs to be done properly. Worryingly, after Catorze pressed/kicked “Submit”, I received no error message indicating incomplete or invalid information, meaning that everything written thus far had some sort of logical sense. Whether or not it was correct or desirable is another matter.

So, at best, I may have entered an incorrect passport or driving licence number and will look like a dodgy fraudster when this is detected. And, at worst, I may have mistakenly clicked “Yes” to the question asking about crimes against children. I guess I won’t know until my application has been processed and my employer contacts me to ask me to explain myself.

Here is the little sod, pictured not long after the incident and having also dribbled on Cat Daddy’s newspaper. Shits given: zéro.
On est de retour!

13/08/2018

We British “sit” everything, from pets to houses to plants. And, apparently, the only things that the French “sit” are babies. Yet this hasn’t stopped me from referring to Équipe Une and Équipe Deux as “les chat-sitteurs”, with “chat-sitteur”, rather like “professeur”, being an invariable noun, as “chat-sitteuse” sounds somewhat absurd despite both Équipes being female. (This was the basis of my conversation with Cat Daddy on the flight back from Belfast, until he put on his headphones a few minutes in and pretended to be asleep.)

We are back from holiday and, whilst it didn’t go entirely to plan, with both lost luggage and injuries preventing us from doing all that we wanted to do, it was a relief to escape the heatwave that has only just relinquished its hold on London. And it was nothing short of delightful to be able to sleep in without being jolted awake by screaming, rodent deliveries and suchlike.

That said, we did miss Louis Catorze, although he has had an absolute ball over the last couple of weeks and probably didn’t even notice/care that we had gone. Apart from bringing Équipe Une a rat* on their very first morning, he seems to have been the perfect host.

*Oui, Équipe Une: I may have given the impression that it was a mouse, but only because I didn’t want to scare you with the awful truth. When I saw the long, rangy limbs in your photo, I KNEW. Je suis désolée. Cat Daddy and I are still wondering how on earth Catorze managed to haul a beast half his body weight through the cat flap, and we are just grateful that it didn’t end up on your bed. Erm, see you again next summer?

So life has resumed as normal. Cat Daddy and I are facing the mammoth task of undoing all the damage caused by eating our weight in potatoes for a fortnight (which will be a challenge, as my leg and his back are still done in). And Le Roi, no doubt, will go back to doing whatever it is that he does, although Cat Daddy’s too-rude-to-publish remark suggests that perhaps the little sod doesn’t contribute an enormous amount to the planet.

This image shows one of the places that we visited, whose name had a certain air of familiarity:
Ce n’est qu’un au revoir, Mon Roi

27/07/2018

Cat Daddy and I are going on holiday today, so Le Blog will be taking a bit of a break. And, naturellement, we will be leaving Louis Catorze in very capable hands during our absence.

Équipe Une, who will be living with Sa Majesté during the first half of our break, will be the same French friend who took care of the little sod last year (and who, inexplicably, is happy to come back). Équipe Deux, for the second half, will be another friend who is an excellent, experienced cat-sitter but who has occasionally been run ragged by her charges with hunting incidents, veterinary emergencies, cheeky feral impingers who sneak in and pretend to be part of the household, and suchlike. So we are hoping and praying that Le Roi will behave and not add himself to her blacklist of problem cats.

And, yes: the moment I typed those words, I suddenly had a feeling of dread. Darkening skies, circling ravens, the distant rumble of thunder, and so on.

He will be good, won’t he?