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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 silence des méchants

    Louis Catorze scared the merde out of me the other day when I came home from the shops and he didn’t come running to greet me, as he usually does. I went out into the garden and called his name (just “Louis!”, as opposed to his full royal title of “Sa Majesté Louis Catorze, Le Roi Soleil!”) but there was no sign of him. I found him slumped in the flowerbed and, when I prodded him a little, he lifted his head, let out a weak meow and then flopped down again. 

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    I texted Cat Daddy and asked if Boys’ Club had overrun the previous night and whether Catorze might just be over-tired. (His body clock is very much determined by what we do: whether we go to bed early or stay up late, he does the same.) Cat Daddy replied that they hadn’t been especially late and suggested that the lifelessness may be down to the heat. I started to panic; if dogs can die in hot cars after just a few minutes, it seemed quite within the realms of possibility that stupid black animals covered in fur could overheat if they lay all afternoon in a garden hotter than the surface of the sun.

    Cat Daddy arrived home very shortly after our text exchange … and, as if by magic, the little sod sprang into life just before we heard the key (his creepy kitty sixth sense obviously still bring fully functional) and pitter-pattered to the front door, up-tailed and screaming. Cat Daddy accused me of imagining/exaggerating the whole lethargy episode and shushed at all my protests of, “But this isn’t how he was when I got home”. He then spent the rest of the evening cuddling a bouncy, chatty Catorze whilst I seethed in the corner. 

    So Sa Majesté was neither tired nor dead nor suffering from heatstroke, but just being a lazy and mannerless shite. I don’t know why I am even the slightest bit surprised. 

    Cat Daddy: “Look on the bright side: at least you found out for yourself. Imagine if the vet had had to tell you that your cat is perfectly well but just can’t be arsed with you.”

    *It is unlikely that your pet is as rude as Catorze so, if he or she is limp and unresponsive in the heat, please seek medical help.

  • Je braille, donc je suis

    What a wild few weeks it has been at Le Château. La belle France have come out on top, with even Oscar the dog’s daddy putting money on them. Louis Catorze has had an unrelenting whirlwind of attention from visiting football fans. And, best of all, he has displayed some razor-sharp match predictions, which has been a poke in the eye for cynical, doubting Cat Daddy.

    Sa Majesté has even correctly indicated some of the finer details of matches which were not apparent during the prediction, but which later became clear as they played out; after agonising for ages about the butterfly (see previous entry) and what it could possibly signify, and even wondering if it could be a streaker, I now see that this was the pitch invasion by the aptly-named Pussy Riot.

    Now that the excitement of the football is over, Louis Catorze is back to screaming. He just won’t shut up, and Cat Daddy said the other day that it was “getting him down”. 

    He screams before we get up. He screams when we get up. He screams when we’re just watching TV and minding our own business. And, not long ago, when we arrived home from work (and he had escaped out at The Front), he greeted us in the street with such gut-wrenching screaming that we hid in the car because we were so embarrassed. Yes, it was mortifying beyond belief. And, yes, we got it on video (available on request, and screen shots of which are shown here). 

    Nothing whatsoever is wrong; the little sod just likes screaming. We don’t, but then he has never concerned himself with what we like or want, and I don’t suppose he is going to start now. 

    As a child, when I did a first aid course, I recall the teacher telling me that silent casualties were to be dealt with more urgently than screaming ones, because “if they’re screaming, it means they’re alive and breathing”. Le Roi certainly is. And, given the sad little thing he was when he first came to live here (sleeping all the time, barely interacting with us), I guess this is a good thing. 

    So we’re just going to let him enjoy being healthy and happy. And possibly also buy earplugs. 

  • Le roi conjuré

    Someone is feeling très pleased with himself after a fabulous demi-finale. But, because he doesn’t want to upset the grieving England supporters by being too smug, he has chosen the modest, discreet pose that you see below, for today’s entry of Le Blog.

    Louis Catorze’s last prediction was right, his beloved France are through to la finale, and he spent la demi-finale being cuddled by a group of French and Francophile cat ladies who came to drink crémant and watch the match with us. He would, of course, have preferred boys, and he did pop next door to look for some, but soon returned and was perfectly cordial and gentlemanly towards his guests.

    Today sees the very last of l’Assiette de Prophétie and Catorze is, once again, representing his country. His opposite number is Graham Poll, an English referee who famously gave a Croatian player THREE yellow cards before finally issuing a red in the 2002 World Cup. Sa Majesté hopes that, somehow, the use of Mr Poll’s picture will gently nudge the universe into righting the refereeing wrong that was done 16 years ago, preferably in the form of abundant Croatian sendings-off and a French win.

    Prior to the prediction we had a situation d’urgence: NO JAMBON DE BAYONNE (apart from a few old scraps which we knew Sa Majesté would refuse). I wanted to slip him some supermarket prosciutto di Parma and hope he wouldn’t notice but Cat Daddy was having none of it and, luckily, when we went to the cheese shop, we were saved by its jambon sec de pays. Unfortunately we weren’t able to be so authentic with Croatia, and their food is a sliver of pâté (chosen by Cat Daddy) from the World Food aisle in Morrisons, which is perfectly nice but which is probably about as Croatian as La Marseillaise. I think he has done it on purpose to make his boy’s countrymen win.

    1. Sa Majesté stuck his nose into the pâté, enough to leave an imprint, but did not consume any
    2. Sa Majesté licked the jambon twice, but did not consume any
    3. A butterfly came along and he pitter-pattered after it, screaming 

    The one positive that has come from England’s loss is that it has gained la France some unexpected support. With the exception of one friend who called Catorze “smug” and declared that he would “never support France” (YOU KNOW WHO YOU ARE), everyone wants to see the team that clobbered England in turn be clobbered in la finale. 

    There’s nothing like a healthy bit of eye-for-an-eye vengeance to unite the country, n’est-ce pas?

  • Le mal que les chats font

    Yesterday I pinged my calf muscle whilst running across the road to catch the bus. (The urban legend is true, Mesdames: ultra-flat ballet pumps really are worse than heels due to their lack of support.) Cat Daddy has been showing his support by cooking for me and bringing me ice packs and cheer-up champagne. Louis Catorze showed his support by bringing me a dead bird at 4:45 this morning.

    I was jolted awake by the sound of his screaming, in particular because it didn’t sound like his usual voice. I thought he might be hurt, especially as I had heard noises yesterday afternoon which sounded just like gunshots. (We don’t live in that kind of neighbourhood, but Cat Daddy said that he could very well imagine one of our neighbours finally snapping and losing it with Catorze.) However, it soon became apparent that the screaming was different because the little sod had something stuffed in his mouth. 

    Our previous cat, Luther, was able to purr even with a mouse in his mouth, my hands around his throat and my knee digging into his back. But Catorze’s ability to scream through a mouthful of dead animal has shocked me to the core.

    I bounded out of bed to wrestle whatever it was from him, forgetting completely about my calf muscle. As I toppled, winced and steadied myself, Catorze dropped his prey and I was able to lurch towards him and drag him away. I then saw that it was a tiny baby bird and, thanks to the bastard cat, I now know what baby bird ribs look like. This is not something I ever thought I would know, nor do I ever wish to see such a thing again. 

    Cat Daddy rolled over sleepily and asked if he could help. I told him that I was fine but, in the time it took me to hobble to the bathroom for some tissue in which to wrap the bird, bad Catorze had picked it up again and chewed off the little remaining flesh. I then realised that I wouldn’t be able to manage this on my own, so Cat Daddy had to don his dressing gown and deposit the poor bird in the park bin opposite our house.

    This bin has become the final resting place for many of Catorze’s victims, and I hope it’s not the same person who empties it each time and who wonders why someone is throwing away so much wildlife.

    Cat Daddy was able to fall asleep not long after returning from the park. I, however, am still awake, and have written off all thoughts of sleep. Somehow it seems more productive to sit in front of the TV and document this tragic incident than to lie in bed, clock-watching and cursing this horrid cat.

    And the little sod is curled up on my lap without a care in the world. 

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  • Le chat parmi les pigeons

    As you are already aware, Louis Catorze’s timing is utter merde and we are convinced that he does it on purpose. If we’re home all day with nothing to do, he behaves perfectly normally (well, “normally” by his standards, anyway) but, if we have important, inflexible plans or are in a rush, that’s when he will play up. And Saturday was no exception. 

    Cat Uncle was holding a barbecue at his place in south-west London to celebrate England making it to the quarter finals of the World Cup (which, let’s face it, is no regular occurrence). A few minutes before we were due to leave, Sa Majesté decided that that would be a good moment to foam at the mouth and pitter-patter about Le Château, dripping gross, stringy foam as he went. Oh. Saint. Jésus. 

    Our options were: crossing our fingers and hoping he would be ok by the time we returned, or taking him to the vet, feeling stupid (again) when they told us that nothing was wrong with him and then being late for the barbecue. Given that the rest of him appeared to be fine (no lethargy, no temperature, no crack addict eyes, no other concerning symptoms), we opted for the former, and I ignored Cat Daddy’s helpful remarks of “Foaming at the mouth? That’s rabies, isn’t it?”

    We had a lovely time at the barbecue but started to feel guilty and scared as we made our way home, in case it were something more serious or in case Catorze had morphed into a rabid French werewolf in London during our absence. As I opened the front door I almost didn’t want to see what was behind it … but we were greeted by a perfectly normal and foam-free Roi, pitter-pattering towards us, tail aloft and screaming himself witless. We were relieved beyond words, but will be keeping a close eye on him in case of future foam incidents. 

    In other news: it seems that, despite Les Bleus playing in blanc and confusing Louis Catorze somewhat, he won the battle of the Louis/Luis and France have made it through to the demi-finale! And, on this occasion,  la France will be playing la Belgique, so l’Assiette de Prophétie bore a picture of famous Belgian Hercule Poirot and a mini serving of the classic moules-frites. (Yes, I did go to the fish counter and ask for just one mussel. Although I didn’t make just one chip, because that would have been silly.)

    1. There was a LOT of screaming
    2. Louis Catorze ate the jambon de Bayonne 
    3. There was more screaming, then a refusal of the moules-frites

    Let’s hope that Les Bleus make it and don’t have to suffer the indignity of playing the third place play-off on 14 juillet. Because, as Hercule Poirot says, “If you’ve lost, you’ve lost.”

  • Tous ceux qui montrent leurs dents

    So Louis Catorze and his Assiette de Prophétie didn’t get the last prediction right. And, somehow, according to Cat Daddy, this is my fault. “It’s because you didn’t give him proper Argentinian beef. I TOLD you to give him proper Argentinian beef.” 

    [This is wholly and categorically untrue; he told me nothing of the sort. And, in the unlikely event of me finding any proper Argentinian beef, he would have been the first to complain about it being too good for Catorze.]

    Not only did Sa Majesté’s psychic powers desert him during the last match but he, too, deserted us; instead of watching the match with us and mingling with our (predominantly male) guests, he decided to go to … a school fête. On his own. I’m not joking. 

    Le Château sits right behind a school and, on Saturday, they held a summer event with loud music, crowds, kids … in short, all the things that cats are supposed to hate. Naturellement, Louis Catorze decided to shimmy under the fence and go there instead of cheering on Les Bleus with us. 

    I called out to him at various intervals during the day and, although he didn’t return, he occasionally meowed back to let me know that he was ok. I don’t know how he spent his time but I have been picturing him pitter-pattering between stalls, shedding cat hair on the home-made cupcakes and being stroked by the school kids and their parents, smug in the knowledge that he managed to sneak in without buying a ticket.

    Anyway, today is la France’s quarter-final match against l’Uruguay, and, since authentic Uruguayan choripán chorizo is rarer than diamond-studded unicorn horns here in the U.K., I had to settle for Morrisons chorizo. And, because he has the same name as the little sod – and also because we couldn’t think of any other Uruguayans – Luis Suarez represented his country. 

    As you can see, we changed the French part to enable us to show two Louis/Luis, both alike in dignity (which, frankly, doesn’t say much), each symbolised by a sun and each famed for his headline-grabbing, extraordinary teeth. 

    1. Sa Majesté sniffed the jambon de Bayonne, made a weird kind of “Ow-owww!” noise and pitter-pattered outside, screaming
    2. He continued to scream outside and the noise riled Oscar the dog, who started barking 
    3. Sa Majesté came back later and happily ate the jambon de Bayonne when I fed it to him by hand (but refused the chorizo)

    So … does this indicate a ferociously-fought competition throughout with a last-minute winner from an easy assist by les Bleus?

    Cat Daddy, rolling his eyes: “No, it doesn’t. And, besides, they both play in blue, so “Les Bleus” is meaningless here.”

  • La patte de Dieu

    Oh, Louis Catorze: how DO you do it? 

    La France have played all 3 group matches, and the little sod seems to have been startlingly accurate with his predictions. In case you missed the excitement, here is a brief summary (you’re welcome): 

    Match 1 (la France et l’Australie): Sa Majesté refused both pieces of food. Outcome: La France beat l’Australie (but the VAR revealed that one of the French goals should not have been a goal, so technically the referee was wrong but Catorze was right).

    Match 2 (la France et le Pérou): Sa Majesté ate the French food. Outcome: La France beat le Pérou. 

    Match 3 (la France et le Danemark): Sa Majesté refused both foods, screamed, then ran to hide. Outcome: A dull, goalless draw in which both teams were booed and jeered for their strategic time wasting; clearly Catorze had picked up on the poor, ungentlemanly play and decided that such mediocrity was not fitting for a Sun King. 

    Cat Daddy: “This is absolute effing nonsense. People must be getting bored of it. I certainly am.”

    So that I can embarrass Cat Daddy even further, we are having a football barbecue later today, with Louis Catorze as the star attraction. This means MORE BOYS COMING TO LE CHATEAU, so, bien sûr, Sa Majesté will be in his element. 

    We couldn’t* get hold of any proper grass-fed Argentinian beef, so we had to make do with a sliver of supermarket fillet steak on l’Assiette de Prophétie. And the Argentinian representative was the only living soul who has had more drugs in him than Louis Catorze: Diego Maradona, pictured below with the same look that Catorze has after a steroid shot:

    *I wasn’t allowed to

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    This is what happened: 

    1. Sa Majesté licked the beef, then pitter-pattered away with his tail up 
    2. Cat Daddy: “When the octopus did his predictions, just one touch determined the winner. Maybe this means Argentina will win on penalties?”
    3. Cat Daddy again: “Oh my God, I can’t believe I just said that. Don’t put that in your blog!”

    Let’s hope that God will be regretting THAT helping hand in 1986, and that he will swing the result Francewards to redress the balance. Allez les Bleus! 

  • La mort rampante

    It’s a football day again! Well, most days are football days at the moment, but we are perfectly happy with that. And Louis Catorze is riding high on the success of his last prediction. The only thing is, having told my friends that he was rubbish and that they should put money on the opposite of whatever he did, a couple of them followed that advice and now aren’t too happy. Oh dear.

    Anyway, today’s opponents: le Danemark. Today’s food: Danish bacon (and there was a LONG discussion about whether or not the sample should be cooked or raw, but I ended up keeping it raw to maintain consistency and keep it a fair contest). And today’s Danish representative: Lars Ulrich of Metallica, who is quite an apt choice as Louis Catorze happily spends many late night Boys’ Club hours listening to rock music with his daddy. 

    Catorze was brushed to smarten him up for the prediction, and this was the outcome of his most recent Assiette de Prophétie: 

    1. Sa Majesté sniffed first the bacon, then the jambon de Bayonne, then screamed as if alarmed and ran away
    2. I went after him to try one more time, he continued to run, screaming, then he hid in the tiny gap between the shed and the Forbidden Greenhouse, which is impenetrable to humans
    3. I gave up 

    Me: “What does this mean?”

    Cat Daddy: “It means he doesn’t like raw bacon. Or maybe it means the apocalypse.”

    We repeated the experiment again with cooked bacon, just in case a few minutes under the grill was all that stood between us and doomsday. Le Roi sniffed both meats and pitter-pattered off, screaming. 

    Conclusion: inconclusive. The end of the world? France and Denmark to draw? A protest against the Putin regime? Any ideas, Mesdames et Messieurs? 

  • Le Syndrome de Münchhausen

    Cat Daddy and I had lots to do yesterday, with an event going on in our town and the pair of us having offered to help. So, naturellement, Louis Catorze thought this would be a good time to get a mysterious, tick-like foreign body attached to la personne royale. 

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    Whatever it was was stuck fast to him and wouldn’t budge, despite his efforts to groom it off and my efforts to restrain him (you can guess how THAT went) and pick it off. Eventually I managed to sneak a couple of photos whilst he slept and I e-mailed them to the vet, who asked me to bring in the little sod just to be sure. Cat Daddy, having wound himself up at the thought of Catorze contracting Lyme disease (no idea what this is) and passing it onto us (no idea if this is even possible), agreed. 

    Whilst he shopped for the things we needed for the town event, I took the screaming bag of fur to the vet. And, oh my goodness: the screaming on the journey was off the scale, with each note held for longer than the last and my eardrums throbbing and bleeding by the time we got there.

    After all that, the vet told me that it was not a tick but some sort of clingy crud stuck to Catorze’s fur. And he was able to pick it off in a few seconds, with Catorze being noisy but relatively compliant throughout (whereas he had screamed and fought like an exorcism gone badly wrong when I had tried to just LOOK). The vet very kindly didn’t charge me for the consultation, obviously realising that the embarrassment was quite enough without me having to also lose money, and I skulked home, red-faced and ashamed. This time, c’était le silence total from the once-screaming bag of fur. 

    So, to conclude: 

    1. Louis Catorze has neither ticks nor Lyme disease
    2. Somehow *I* have come out of this looking like the time-wasting, over-reactive cat freak, despite Cat Daddy being the one who started the whole Lyme disease thing
    3. I have a new “I can never face the vet again” story to add to my already-extensive list 

    Cat Daddy: “I KNEW it wasn’t a tick. And, besides, Lyme disease attacks the brain, so Louis would have been pretty safe.”

  • Le match est fichu?

    Phase Quatre is now under way; Louis Catorze is happily munching a 50:50 mix of Acana Pacifica and Lily’s Kitchen, and there have been no further puke incidents (that we know of).

    His football predictions, however, have been somewhat offish, with France actually beating Australia (contrary to Catorze’s indication that it would be a draw). That said, given that France’s penalty really shouldn’t have been a penalty at all – and with the Video Assistant Referee, rather like autocorrect, managing to stuff up the very thing that it’s supposed to fix – morally I’d say Sa Maj got it right.  (If I’m honest, though, it’s more likely that he refused both foods because I accidentally served them fridge-cold, forgetting that he favours room-temperature. This is very poor servantry on my part.)

    He actually watched the match, too, meowing encouragement at Les Bleus all the way and pretending not to notice his countrymen’s cheating, diving and handballing. However, rather than watching from the comfort of our laps, he decided to sit outside and watch through the window. Yes, he could have come in had he chosen to do so. And, no, we have no idea why he didn’t. 

    La France’s opponents today are Le Pérou and, to represent them, l’Assiette de Prophétie bore Peruvian ceviche and a picture of the only Peruvian that we know: Paddington Bear. Cat Daddy got all cross with me for buying good fish just for this, but he felt much better when I told him that we would be having Louis Catorze’s leftovers for dinner. 

    Anyway, this is what happened: 

    1. The fish was sniffed, then Catorze walked away
    2. He approached the jambon de Bayonne from a completely different angle, as he did with the previous prediction, thus ruining the aesthetics of the sequence of photos
    3. The jambon de Bayonne was consumed with enthusiasm 

    The third photo is pretty conclusive, n’est-ce pas? 

    Cat Daddy: “Oh. I wanted Peru to win.”

    On verra. 

  • On devrait être si chanceux

    Louis Catorze is a huge football fan, and, whilst he was happier 2 years ago when the Euro tournament took place in his fatherland of France, he is still content to follow this year’s World Cup. And, naturellement, he will be firmly supporting France and hoping that they fare better than they did in the Euro 2 years ago, when they were devastatingly defeated à la dernière minute par le Portugal. 

    A new football tournament means the return of Louis Catorze’s results predictions! Hurrah! And we shall be ignoring cynical Cat Daddy’s joyless cries of, “But he didn’t get a single one correct last time” and his visible cringing when I tell people that he did (twice) manage to correctly predict Brexit.

    To mark France’s opening match against Australia we lined up a serving of French jambon de Bayonne versus probably-unauthentic-yet-more-accessible-than-witchetty-grubs Australian shrimp, with Catorze’s taste buds set at “winner is eaten first”. Each nation, as you see below, was represented on the plate by their respective diminutive yet charismatic figureheads (the human Sun King for la France and Kylie Minogue for l’Australie). 

    The results were as follows: 

    1. The jambon de Bayonne was licked once, then Catorze walked away
    2. The shrimp was licked once, then Catorze walked away
    3. Both foods still remained at the time of writing this 

    We can only assume that this means a draw, which, given each team’s track record, makes absolutely no sense whatsoever.

    Kick-off is at 11am, so we shall soon see whether the little sod has managed to fine-tune his extra-sensory powers since the summer of 2016, or whether this is all just a(nother) pile of merde.

    Cat Daddy: “Seriously? Nobody cares.”

  • C’est mieux dehors que dedans

    *WARNING: THIS POST CONTAINS GRAPHIC REFERENCES TO CAT PUKE*

    The puke switch has been activated. I should have known I had spoken too soon in my last post, and no doubt this is because Louis Catorze has been outside chewing grass and not because of the food change, but that doesn’t make it any less foul. And, sadly, the combination of cat puke the same colour as our floorboards plus a tiring day spelled disaster for me when I stepped into it with bare feet. 

    Our floorboards are the original ones dating back to when Le Château was built and, when we had it renovated, the builders put some sort of magical expanding stuffing between the floorboards to plug up the gaps. However, this was almost 3 years ago and, over time, in some areas the stuffing has worn away. And, tragically, by stepping on the puke AND in trying to clean it up, I ended up accidentally pushing some of it between the gaps. 

    Oui, Mesdames et Messieurs: THERE IS NOW CAT PUKE UNDER OUR FLOORBOARDS. AND I PUT IT THERE.

    Cat Daddy is not pleased about this at all. But, as he’s partially-sighted, I can’t imagine he would have spotted it, either. Nor would his clean-up attempts have been much better. 

    So now we’re playing a waiting game. And, rather like Edgar Allan Poe’s The Tell-Tale Heart but with its stomach-churning stench rather than an ominous drumming, the festering cat puke will slowly alert all comers to its horrifying presence beneath the floorboards. Sadly, as Cat Daddy has firmly vetoed taking up the floorboards (“They’ve been here for over a century and have remained intact through 2 World Wars, so we’re not pulling them up just because of HIM”) there isn’t much we can do, apart from hope that it soon passes.

    Here is the little sod showing profound regret at the anguish he has caused: 

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  • Rien ne sert de courir

    And behold: Phase Trois is under way!

    I never thought this day would come – mainly because I imagined I would have throttled the little sod long before we reached this point – but we have a carefully-calibrated* 6:4** ratio of Acana Pacifica to Lily’s Kitchen Fabulous Fish. AND LOUIS CATORZE IS EATING IT. 

    *(Too much Lily’s Kitchen accidentally tipped in)

    **(Was meant to be 7:3 – see above)

    When I began Phase Une I bought only the smallest pack of Lily’s Kitchen Fabulous Fish, for fear of Catorze rejecting it. But now I have been able to buy the largest and best-value size, safe in the knowledge that it won’t go to waste AND that I can just toss the packaging into our compost. What’s more, we were able to walk to Pets at Home and carry it home (on the hottest afternoon of the week, with poor Cat Daddy as the load-bearing packhorse) rather than ordering online and having it arrive in cardboard, bubble wrap or, worse, those awful polystyrene Wotsit things that won’t be recycled and that spread everywhere like an STD of the parcel world. 

    (Cat Daddy wanted to know why I was writing about STDs in a cat blog but, as he hates the polystyrene Wotsits as much as I do, he will understand when he reads this.)

    I was also about to say that we have successfully avoided activating the puke switch so far, due to the gradual transition, but things are already going unsettlingly well and I daren’t tempt fate. So I shall avoid any talk of the puke switch. NOBODY MENTION THE PUKE SWITCH.

    Phew. I think I just about saved myself there.

  • Je suis venu comme un boulet de démolition

    D204A87E-B936-48E7-BD3F-F254CE20741BCat Daddy is furious because someone or something has been into the Forbidden Greenhouse and trashed his precious chilli plant seedlings. I asked if the motive for this heinous crime had been toilet use, but this just made Cat Daddy more angry as the garden provides more than adequate cat toileting areas. He snapped that he didn’t know and wasn’t prepared to dig in and find out, but that I was welcome to do so myself if I wanted to. (I didn’t.)

    The sliding door of the Forbidden Greenhouse had been left open the tiniest amount, which means that the culprit was either a largish rat or Louis Catorze (although Cat Daddy has just muttered that there isn’t much difference between the two). This, along with Catorze’s penchant for sneaking unnoticed into places that he has no business being, makes him a highly likely suspect for this crime. 

    The other piece of evidence in the case of Cat Daddy versus The Crown is the curious set of pawprints seen in the picture. Bizarrely, they lead INTO the scene of the crime but there are no prints leading out. This would appear to vindicate the defendant, as it’s not possible to cavort about in soil and leave with clean feet, but unfortunately Catorze has previous when it comes to this; in the past I have found muddy paw prints in the centre of our bathroom floor but none leading into, nor away from, that point. The only way of doing this would have been to levitate in, gad about on the floor with dirty paws and then levitate out again.

    Cat Daddy: “If I ever catch him doing anything like this again, he’ll be levitating for sure: right off the end of my foot after I kick his arse.”

    Oh dear. No further questions, Your Honour. It’s not looking too hopeful for the defendant, is it?

    Anyway, Cat Daddy is now on a mission to protect the rest of his plants from further destruction: the seedlings in the Forbidden Greenhouse are now under much better protection with the door fully closed, and the outdoor salad leaves are secure behind a mesh barrier. 

    So, what say you, ladies and gentlemen of the jury? Do you find the little sod guilty or not guilty?