I have finally finished knitting Cat Daddy’s Brentford FC scarf, just in time for today’s match against Huddersfield. The knitting experience has taught me a number of things:
1. Drink-knitting is a thing and, like drink-driving, it should be avoided at all costs.
2. No matter how many times you unpick and redo the bits that you drink-knitted, it will still look shite.
The sober-knitted and drink-knitted parts of the scarf are so utterly distinct that anyone can spot the difference, even from far away. This scarf is not just a garment for winter warmth and an emblem of our beloved football team; its stitches tell a tale of resolute concentration followed by “Oh, sod this” followed by more concentration followed by more “Oh, sod this” and so on, from end to end.
I have started knitting another scarf, this time for someone else, and I was feeling a little bad that, having now learned all the pitfalls, the second scarf would be much nicer than the one I made for Cat Daddy.
Cat Daddy: “Well, mine is the original, and you can never beat an original. Plus, no offence, but I think it’s highly likely you’ll mess up the second one, too.”
Great. Thanks.
Anyway, Louis Catorze approves, even though he is a Sunderland fan. Here he is, giving his final quality control check – and, yes, it seems that the tongue is a crucial part of this:
A few weeks ago I posted this photo and comment (below) on social media, in response to a video of a dog rescuing someone from the water. As you can see, there are a lot of people out there who, like me, know that cats are psychopaths who would happily drown us all if they could. And black ones are the worst of the lot.
I couldn’t be more thrilled that, just in time for Hallowe’en, the number of Likes on my comment has reached 666.
Joyeuse Halloween à tous. And, if you have a black cat and also enjoy swimming, don’t take any chances at the time of year when the little sods are at their most powerful.
With Hallowe’en just around the corner, Louis Catorze has ramped up the creepy to Expert Level.
He has started opening doors and shutters, and he is remarkably good at it. However, when we wake up to find the wardrobe doors open it can feel very unnerving. Think Sixth-Sense-meets-Poltergeist and you will understand what I mean.
Naturellement, he hasn’t worked out how to shut doors after himself – unless it is to shut himself in a room, and then he decides he can’t be bothered to let himself out and screams for us to do it.
When my sister and her family came to visit, Cat Daddy and I assumed that, if anyone made trouble, it would be the kids. Not so. Catorze prowled around the house all night, opening bedroom doors repeatedly and scaring my sister by projecting strange shadow shapes on the baby monitor. (The moving vertical candy cane shape really foxed her until she finally realised that it was his up-tail with the silly kink at the end.) Once dawn had broken he was clearly bored of scaring everyone quietly, and that was when he came crashing into our room, screaming.
At breakfast that morning we discovered that everyone had a complaint about him, except for my eldest niece (aged 3) who said, “Louis came to look after me in the night! I love him!”
Cat Daddy: “I guess someone has to.”
My sister just about managed to catch him in action in the picture below. As if a black cat with vampire teeth weren’t already sinister enough:
As we approach that time of year whose very essence is darkness and death, it somehow seems apt to mention that Cat Daddy and I have just been for a meeting with our solicitor about our wills. And it went something like this:
“Have you written a will before?”
“No.”
“Do you have any idea of what should happen to your estate upon your passing?”
“No.”
“Have you talked about your funeral plans with anyone?”
“No.”
“Have you nominated anyone to have power of attorney in case of your ill health?”
“No.”
“Have you made ANY plans for what might happen after your death?”
“Well, we’ve made arrangements for our cat.”
[Silence, tumbleweed, crickets]
Obviously, if one of us departed before the other, the remaining one would take care of Louis Catorze. (Cat Daddy has just read this over my shoulder and says he wouldn’t, but we all know that he loves his boy.) However, we discovered when planning for the unlikely event of Catorze outliving both of us, that the issue of who would have him isn’t as straightforward as we thought. Many of our friends and family members have cats, or love cats, but that’s not to say they would want another one. Especially not one like Le Roi.
Here is a written summary of our discussion and conclusions:
⁃ My mum: has a cat who has one feline best buddy but hates all others, so no
⁃ Sister 1: has recently adopted a cat who has a history of scaring other cats, so no
⁃ Sister 2: husband is a dog person, so no
⁃ Neighbour 1: has Oscar the dog, so HELL no
⁃ Neighbour 2: has Cocoa the babysit cat who enjoys life as an only cat, so no
⁃ Neighbour 3: “likes cats, but wouldn’t want to live with one”, so no
⁃ Neighbour 4: is sick to death of having to bring Sa Maj back to us every time he escapes at The Front or breaks into his house, so no
Luckily, Catorze’s ex-rescue have a policy of allowing their ex-cats back into the fold should circumstances change. And, as they not only know his intricate and elaborate history but also saw fit to spend in excess of £12,000 trying to make him well, I would feel more comfortable with them heading up his rehoming process than with potentially inconveniencing someone who didn’t really want a(nother) (complicated) cat. So I have asked one of my sisters to be in charge of contacting them and arranging for them to collect him, and hopefully they would be able to find another set of suckers family to take him on.
I don’t suppose any of us really want to think about our cats outliving us. But we should probably still plan for it, just in case.
Poor old Louis Catorze. Here he is, dutifully fixed to his post at the virginia creeper and utterly unaware that the tantalising sounds within are, in fact … falling berries.
Oui, mes amis: there are no birds, no mice and no bugs, nor has he discovered an opening to The Underworld. It’s just berries. Cat Daddy made this discovery during an alfresco session of Boys’ Club, and it perfectly explains not only why Catorze assigned himself to a spot too high for mice and too low for birds, but also why he hasn’t caught anything yet (not that we are complaining about this).
Anyway, he has spent most of the week still in the same place. No doubt he will be there today, tomorrow, the day after that, and the day after that. It would be tragic if it weren’t so utterly hilarious.
This week I asked some of my students whether they liked dogs or cats. They said cats. This is the correct answer.
The conversation then led to our own cats, past and present, including, of course, Louis Catorze, and at the end of the lesson I showed them a photo of him. They were utterly spellbound and speechless at the sight of his magnificent vampire fangs.
“Miss, he’s REALLY beautiful!” they exclaimed. “Can we see more pictures? Can we just look at cat pictures next lesson instead of doing work?” They will never know how much I wanted to say yes to this. French pluperfect tense grammar rules or cat photos? It’s a no-brainier, oui?
Anyway, the students now appear to be under the impression that people would pay a fortune for a black vampire cat, and they are devising a Dragons’ Den-worthy scheme to get rich by breeding Le Roi and having his hypothetical Reine birth lots of fanged babies. Cat Daddy spat his tea all over his newspaper when I told him this, and said, “Bad, bad idea. One: he has freakish physical and mental abnormalities that are best not passed on. Two: females aren’t his thing. Three: he has no balls and can’t reproduce anyway.”
Good points, well made. But, as the little sod’s big day approaches, I’m with my students on this one. I think that we have been blessed with a very special gift indeed, because who DOESN’T want a vampire cat at Hallowe’en? And it is my civic duty to share this gift with the world.
Whilst most normal cats are opting for indoors as the temperatures drop, Louis Catorze has been doing the opposite. This will, of course, be of no surprise to anyone.
He has been spending more time outdoors than he ever did in the height of summer, even/especially when it’s raining. In fact, we have barely seen the little sod lately, except for the regular 3am drenched screamathons. Even Boys’ Club meetings appear to have been adjourned indefinitely. And this is because he has found a new hunting spot. Oui, Mesdames et Messieurs: there is something in the virginia creeper.
The other day I just about managed to catch him mid-rummage (see photo). I am mystified as to what it could be as I can’t imagine birds would live so low down, nor do I think mice would live so high up. But whatever it is has been occupying every waking minute, and no doubt the mystery will be solved when we are woken in the middle of the night with a twitching, oozing corpse dumped onto our bed.
What more surprises could be winging their way to us during this cursèd month when psycho black cats are at their most powerful? (Not a rhetorical question: I genuinely want answers so that I can prepare myself.)
Cat Daddy and I are a little sad because we have had to give up Kim*, our lovely, reliable car who never gave us any trouble. (Although we do, of course, realise that we lead a very fortunate life if that’s our greatest upset.)
*Not named after Kim Kardashian, I might add, but after, erm, Kim Jong-Un. It was funny at the time.
Our new car is the same make and similar in colour and shape to Kim, so there should be none of that initial new car confusion when attempting to locate it in car parks. But will Louis Catorze recognise it? For all his lack of brain cells, the little sod had grown to know the sound of Kim and was always at the door to greet us when we got home.
Cat Daddy is convinced that cats instinctively pick up on the HUMAN presence at the door, not the car outside, and appears to have completely forgotten about this incident:
But I think it’s both. And I now wonder how long it will be before Catorze learns to associate a new car sound with us? I will keep you informed on how promptly he shows up at the door when we get home after being out.
The day we dropped off Kim and collected her successor, I said to Cat Daddy, “This must be what it’s like when you foster a cat and then it finds a new home, don’t you think?”
Cat Daddy, without looking up from his laptop: “No. I don’t think it’s remotely like that.”
Me: “Do you think Scott [the car dealership sales guy] would think it weird if we asked him to make sure Kim went to a good home? And maybe the new owner could send us photos?”
I am taking a break from Le Château this weekend, leaving Boys’ Club to itself – Cat Daddy has assured me that he will “try to remember” to feed and water Louis Catorze – and I have escaped to the south coast for my annual Halloweekend celebration with my sister and her family.
It’s a tradition that we started some years ago and still continue to this day, and this time I am lucky enough to be a guest in their lovely town house overlooking the sea. My sister doesn’t have any cats but she does have a homicidal Hitchcock-esque seagull, easily big enough to carry off Catorze should it feel so inclined, who lives on her roof and who dive-bombs passers-by every now and again. So I haven’t entirely escaped from unhinged animals who want to kill me.
To help us decide what to do this weekend, we have been taking inspiration from Tina Brown’s book “Haunted Experiences in Hastings and Beyond”. The last chapter is entitled “Ghostly Animals” and, would you believe, it turns out that they’re all cats. Every. Last. One.
Oui, Mesdames et Messieurs: it seems that, whilst other animals have got the hang of the whole resting in peace thing, cats haven’t (or don’t want to). Even death is not enough to stop the little sods from driving us round the bend. I am shocked but not the slightest bit surprised.
Do you have any scary cat stories? Have you encountered any ghost cats, or have your living cats ever freaked you out with their kitty ESP, their spirit-spotting capabilities or their general creepiness? If so, I would love to hear all about it.
The members of our knitting class are now busily working on new individual assignments, having submitted our group one a few weeks ago. And we have welcomed Wife of That Neighbour as our newest recruit. Well, after making Freddie Mercury’s “I Want To Break Free” jumper she is knitting royalty, so how could she NOT join us?
Puppy Mamma is going to make a jacket for Nala the dog and I have started making a scarf for Cat Daddy in Brentford FC’s colours, but we might tell Cat Daddy and Puppy Daddy that our next assignments will be matching Freddie Mercury-style pink sleeveless jumpers for them, just to see their faces.
Anyway, I am sure you’re desperate to know what our group project was. (Cat Daddy: “NO. BODY. CARES.”) The multi-coloured, spirally squares that we made have all been coordinated and sewn together by our instructor to make a throw, and we have decided to donate it to a local charity shop to be sold or raffled. So, if you live in or around TW7 (which is where the shop is located) and you happen to purchase or win this item, you may wish to pay extra attention to the areas circled as they contain cat and dog spit:
A few days ago I invited one of my neighbours – Cat Mamma of Blue, the Smoke Bengal – for Crémant and cheese. And, yes, I am fully aware of the middle-classness of every bit of that sentence.
If I’m honest, I did have an ulterior motive: Louis Catorze has no friends – Cat Daddy’s theory is that word has spread about how boring Catorze is, and so no cats want to stop by – and I had hoped that Blue’s Cat Mamma would put in a good word for him. Blue and Catorze would be the perfect match: similar in size despite Catorze being, erm, eight years older, similar in their puppy-like behaviour, similar in their goading of foxes (ok, maybe that’s not such a good shared trait), and they even have a common history of itchy skin problems. It’s a beautiful friendship waiting to happen, non?
It’s highly likely that Sa Maj and Blue have already met, not only because of the proximity of their respective gardens (yes, I actually typed “THEIR gardens” and somehow it seems to fit so I’m just going to leave it) but also because they both slip out into the school at The Back and hang out there. If you were a cat and there were one other cat in the huge expanse that is the playground, you’d greet them, wouldn’t you? Well, ok, I personally wouldn’t; as an introverted human person who can only deal with written interactions, the last thing I would do is approach a stranger from a distance just to say hello. Nevertheless I like to think I have raised my cat to be a little more convivial.
Cat Mamma lives just about close enough to be able to shout loudly from our garden and be heard from hers but, despite calling for Blue at regular intervals during the evening, he didn’t come over (although Catorze did, because the stupid doughnut thought she was calling HIM). So she went over to fetch him. Yes, she actually went home, picked him up and brought him to the front door. Blue was perfectly happy about this, incidentally, and he does know the way home from both The Back and The Front.
Sadly the fledgling friendship failed to take off as we had hoped (or even at all). Sa Maj, who was outside at The Back, obviously made use of his creepy kitty ESP and picked up on the fact that he had a caller at the front door. In his keenness to greet him, he came clattering loudly through the cat flap and the noise made Blue nervous, so Cat Mamma had to carry him back home. My parting words to her may or may not have been, “Please keep trying to persuade him. But don’t make Louis sound desperate …”
Please keep your fingers crossed for this friendship, and let’s hope that these two will embark upon lots of exciting adventures* together.
*Not too far from our houses, and without crossing any roads.
Autumn is here! And that, invariably, means rain, but it doesn’t stop it from being my favourite time of the year.
Now, we all know that Louis Catorze doesn’t respond to anything in the way that a normal cat would, but his love of the rain is something that I find especially freakish. He loves it so much that he doesn’t simply linger outside if caught in a downpour: he will actually run FROM INDOORS TO OUTDOORS when he hears it. Imagine Lieutenant Dan from Forrest Gump when he’s on the boat, and that will give you a startlingly accurate image of what Catorze is like during a storm. Normal pets are usually hiding under the bed and praying for it to be over. Catorze, erm, isn’t.
If he’s not hunting – which he often is, as there is something about the rain that either flushes animals out of their hiding places, or flips Catorze’s “Urge To Kill” switch, or both – he will just shelter under our outdoor table and watch the rain, like this. (See video below, at the end of which you can just about catch Cat Daddy’s “Ugh!”) Sometimes Catorze will sit like this for hours.
A few nights ago I glimpsed Louis Catorze jumping from our fence post onto the roof of Oscar the dog’s folks’ new extension. As they weren’t home, I didn’t feel any urgent need to drag his arse down (not that I could have done so, even if I had wanted to). Then, as Cat Daddy and I settled down to watch television, we kind of forgot about Catorze.
Cat Daddy went into the kitchen some time later to make tea, then returned looking perplexed (and with no tea). “I don’t understand it,” he said. “I can hear Louis screaming but I can’t see him. He can’t still be on next door’s roof?”
He was. And he was stuck, meaning he had probably been screaming for about two hours.
I went upstairs and leaned out of the guest bedroom window to try and grab the little sod, but he remained just out of reach, screaming himself silly. Cat Daddy then pulled open the kitchen Velux window and climbed onto the worktop in a second attempt to rescue him, but Catorze did the same again, pitter-pattering just out of reach and his screams ringing out across TW8 like an air raid siren. (The aborted rescue mission is pictured below.)
“I don’t know what to do,” Cat Daddy sighed, wincing visibly at the screaming. “If he’s refusing to come to us then I’m tempted to just leave him there, but he’s disturbing the whole neighbourhood’s peace. It’s embarrassing.”
I then went out into the back garden and called Sa Maj. I knew he wouldn’t come running and leap into my arms like nice cats do in romcoms, but I had no other ideas and, somehow, it seemed more useful than laughing and taking photos doing nothing.
When Catorze heard my voice coming from the garden, it was as if he only then remembered how he had got onto the roof in the first place. With each step punctuated by a scream, he pitter-pattered towards the edge of the roof, jumped back onto the fence post, picked his way gingerly along the top of the fence and then down from the brick barbecue. He was then promptly fed and watered and spent the rest of the night purring away on his papa’s lap, as if his misadventure never happened.
Cat Daddy: “Cats are meant to have a sense of instinct. Surely he can’t be so thick that he just FORGOT to retrace his steps? Thank God [Oscar’s folks] weren’t home.”
On this occasion, no. But it’s only a matter of time until he’s stuck there when they ARE home, his screams flip Oscar’s “Urge To Kill” switch and the neighbourhood comes to a standstill once more.
Apologies in advance to the good people of TW8, especially the Dog Family.
Louis Catorze had a visitor to Le Château yesterday. As is customary when Sa Maj receives his subjects I ensured that his fur was brushed, the house was tidy and that there was ample tea at hand. I even made sure I knew where Catorze was and, when I saw him asleep in his favourite spot in the flower bed (where the unholy devil-plant used to be), I was pretty confident that he would remain there until his guest arrived.
Naturellement, when she did, he was nowhere to be found. His disappearing acts are very common, but I don’t want them happening when people have come a long way to see him, laden with gifts for both of us: in this case, Châteauneuf du Pape (which, coincidentally, was the wine that Cat Daddy and I had on our first date), a huge bag of knitting yarn, and jambon de Bayonne for Sa Maj.
I searched in all the usual, and some more unusual, hiding places. I peered over the fence into the playground at The Back where, worryingly, I had seen a fox sunbathing that morning. I even checked The Front in case he had teleported there, all to no avail. We then decided to have our tea outside, during which time we heard barking next door.
Our guest: “I guess that must be Oscar?”
Good grief, even the nemesis made the effort to show himself. I then started to panic that, for the first time ever, a pilgrim would have to leave without seeing Catorze or signing the guest book. That simply would not do.
I searched again upstairs, and over the fence at The Back. I then decided to check more thoroughly among the ferns and the thicker shrubs, but was beaten back by cobwebs, spiders and – shudder – the excruciating thought that I might be stepping in cat shit.
I turned to our guest and said, “I’m going to have to poke him out. If, indeed, he’s even there. I honestly have no idea.”
So there I was, poking the various bits of shrubbery with a broom, calling Catorze’s name (minus the royal title) and hoping beyond hope that the neighbours couldn’t see or hear me. I didn’t see the little sod shimmy out, but when I heard our guest exclaim, “Awww! Louis!” I was très relieved. And not only did he shower her with nuzzles and chirps, but he even treated her to one of his very rare squeaks. (Well, I say “rare” when, in actual fact, they are quite abundant, but of course they NEVER happen when we are trying to show them to others, or when we are filming.)
So, despite the initial consternation and the indignity of la personne royale being poked out of his sleeping place with a broom, the morning was a success. Jambon de Bayonne was consumed (apart from that one bit that we left out for too long and ended up too dry for the discerning royal tongue), the book was signed and the accompanying photograph was taken, so all was well.
Sa Maj is now taking bookings for autumn. And there are still a few blank pages in his book, waiting to be filled with photos of smiling pilgrims.
