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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.

  • Cinq ans d’esclavage

    Yesterday marked the 5-year anniversary of the glorious day that Louis Catorze came to live with us.

    Because of this length of time, we thought we were highly knowledgeable in terms of the many sub-edicts of Little Sods’ Law. But it seems that more and more of them progressively come to light that we never knew existed. He really is the gift that keeps on giving.

    We can now announce the following new addenda to the Law:

    1. If you are in the middle of changing bed linen and become distracted, even for just a second, any black cat in the vicinity will be irresistibly drawn to the unguarded, undressed white duvet and pillows.

    2. The strength of the cat’s attraction to the duvet and pillows will be inversely proportional to the cleanliness of the cat.

    If you are easily repulsed by gross cats, please look away now.

    I have no idea what he did to get into such a state. Nor do I know what most of this stuff even is, although I fear that those things on his left cheek (our right), are dead spiders.

    Cat Daddy: “You’re going to have to move him. I’m not touching him. He’s your cat.”

    [It hasn’t escaped my notice that Catorze is always “my” cat when he’s done something bad or cost us a lot of money.]

    Cat Daddy again: “Oh. You can’t move him, can you, because of your shoulder? So I suppose I’m going to have to do it?”

    Mais oui.

    Anyway, the little sod wasn’t budging from the duvet and clung on as if the lives of every man on the planet depended on it. Eventually he was ejected but, somehow, in all the chaos, the dead spiders were dislodged. I now fear that they might be lurking somewhere inside the folds of the duvet. Ugh. The only thing worse than spiders is hidden spiders. IN YOUR BED.

    Cat Daddy, sinking into a chair and rolling his eyes: “Oh, don’t worry, we’ll find them. First thing in the morning, probably stuck to your face or mine.”

    And now I can never sleep again.

    I am fairly sure that the best recovery from surgery does not involve restless nights fretting about duvet spiders. And I expect that this is all part of the Dark Lord’s grand plan to take me down – making it look like “post-operative complications” – so that he can have Cat Daddy all to himself.

  • Aux yeux du père, le fils est beau

    The last time I had surgery, I woke from my anaesthetic and announced to the ward, “I’ve just been dreaming about ginger cats! Must’ve been Alfie and George!” (Obviously Alfie and George are actual ginger cats that exist. Which is a relief, because made-up ginger cats might have made me look silly.)

    No such morphine-induced excitement this time around but everything went well, although perhaps I shouldn’t have watched so many X Files episodes beforehand as there are startling similarities between a surgical procedure and an alien abduction. There was a brief incident as I left Le Château for the hospital – involving an escape at The Front and gut-wrenching screams that woke the neighbours – but, other than that, Louis Catorze has actually been behaving. I could have done without the 6:15am screaming alarm call the following day, though. And, although he saved me a clean-up job when he licked off the ink that the surgeon had used to mark up my arm, I was really creeped out by it and am now scared to be alone with him.

    I have made the following observations since coming home from hospital:

    1. Catorze has a “Merde, she’s still alive?” face.

    2. His unnerving obsession with his daddy has reached new heights/depths (depending on one’s perception). Or, as Cat Daddy puts it, “He won’t leave me the hell alone.”

    It has never been a secret that I am probably not even Catorze’s second favourite human in a household of just two humans. But whereas he used to climb off my lap and onto Cat Daddy’s only on a moderately regular basis, he now does this every time Cat Daddy sits down. And, whereas he used to wait a few minutes before the lap swap, now he does it in under 10 seconds. (Yes, Cat Daddy has actually timed him.)

    The screamy little sod has shown me SOME love, although not nearly enough considering I was the one who was knocked out cold and chopped up.

    Cat Daddy retires at the end of this month and will be spending a lot more time at home with Catorze than ever before. Will this bromance go from strength to strength, or could this enforced togetherness be too much of a good thing?

  • L’infirmier devoué

    Next week I am due to have surgery on my shoulder, which should hopefully spell the end of a long line of problems. It’s a day procedure, so I won’t need to worry about Louis Catorze causing havoc in my absence (no more than usual, anyway) as I’ll be back that evening, but I am concerned about what he will do when I come home.

    I often hear reports of cats being extra loving and affectionate when their humans are ill or convalescing. Sa Maj, on the other hand, does everything in his power to send me back to hospital, no doubt hoping that I will die there. When I came home after spinal surgery the little sod jumped onto my torso, then used it as a launch pad to jump somewhere else. And, when I had abdominal surgery, he did THIS (see below), which not only nearly burst my stitches as I tried to wrestle him out of the room (1st link), but also triggered the long-term avian war that still wages on to this day, having started with the starlings and continuing with the magpies and the angry green parakeets (2nd link):

    https://louiscatorze.com/2016/07/16/loiseau/

    https://louiscatorze.com/2016/07/20/tel-est-pris-qui-croyait-prendre/

    So … can we trust Catorze to be nice/good this time?

    Cat Daddy: “You’ve really learned nothing in the last few years, have you?”

  • Le miroir de l’âme

    Although hay fever is, mercifully, not one of the things we need to add to Louis Catorze’s list of health problems, something – probably rolling around in all the dust from when the Forbidden Greenhouse was dismantled – has aggravated his eyes again. So, as well as wiping down his polleny body, we are also having to wipe down his eyes. This is even less fun than it sounds.

    Naturellement, being Sa Majesté Louis Catorze Le Roi Soleil, only the best paraphernalia will do, so I have been making up a solution of pink Himalayan salt and boiled water in one of Cat Daddy’s antique glass Chinese tea cups. (Cat Daddy: “I’m sorry, you’ve been doing WHAT?”) But it doesn’t take away the displeasure of having to trap the squirming little sod and restrain him as I wipe. 

    There’s also the problem of what to use to wipe, as everything I can think of appears to be either too rough (e.g. towel or microfibre cloth), too sheddy (e.g. tissue), too dangerous (e.g. cotton buds – and ours are bamboo so there’s the risk of splintering as well as eye-stabbing) or too smooth to grip onto the crud and sweep it away (e.g. every other material on earth). I use kitchen towel, and I expect I will receive a deluge of responses saying how bad that is, but it seems to be the lesser/least of the many aforementioned evils, and the textured nature means it whisks away the crud without me having to rub repeatedly. Trust me, the fewer wipes, the better.

    Hopefully this, alongside the rigorous brushing of his gross, chalky fur, will keep the problem under control and not require a trip to the vet. Here he is looking especially foul after rolling around somewhere he had no business being. Regretfully, the fifty shades of grey shown here are dirt, not a trick of the light:

  • À genoux devant Le Roi

    My Laziness With Cat knee injury is no better and, in fact, if anything, it appears to be getting worse. So, this week, I went to see a physio to find out why and to try to get it fixed.

    Physio: “So how did you do it?”

    Me: “Erm … ahem … I sat with my feet extended outwards, and my cat resting on my legs.” [I mutter the last bit under my breath in the hope that she might mishear, but she hears perfectly well and now it actually says on my notes: “Sat with legs stretched out and cat on knees.”]

    Her: “Oh dear. That’s not a good position to be in with nothing supporting the backs of your knees. Especially with a heavy cat on you.”

    [I can’t quite bring myself to tell her that Louis Catorze is actually gossamer-light and that the injury more likely came about because I didn’t budge from that sofa for about 10 hours quite some time, so I just nod at this point. Nor do I mention that I kept crisps and champagne within arm’s reach so that I wouldn’t have to disturb Sa Maj by getting up for food and drink.]

    Anyway, it seems that I have over-stretched my knee and some tendon is inflamed, so I have had an ultrasound treatment with that wet jelly stuff to bring down the inflammation. The knee is now strapped up with that weird black tape that athletes use which, whilst not pretty, is moderately better than the TubiGrip and gives some authenticity to the story that I am some grande sportive with a training injury. And, as we edge nearer to the date of the half-marathon in which I pretended to be participating, at least now I seem to have the perfect excuse not to do it (or anything, come to that).

    Here is Sa Maj, disapproving of my sloth even though he is partly to blame for it:

  • Sous le soleil

    Quelle joie: the Forbidden Greenhouse is no more! As you may be aware, this was Louis Catorze’s go-to place during heatwaves, so we were just in time before he could cook himself during Saturday’s 33-degree scorcher. (And, yes, we know perfectly well that, if it’s hotter than the depths of hell and you’re a black animal covered in fur, basking in a greenhouse like one of those desert lizards isn’t a very good idea, but this is Catorze we’re talking about.) Anyway, what a relief to no longer have to worry about a potential “Cat dies in hot greenhouse” shocker, with me protesting, “But he CHOSE to go in there, and he kicked me in the face when I tried to pull him out!” as the baying mob come for me with their flaming torches and pitchforks.

    The crumbling shed has also gone and Cat Daddy has treated himself to a whizzy new one with a sedum roof, despite the obvious risk of Catorze finding some way to ruin it. We are very pleased with it and we are now taking bets on which of the following scenarios we will see first:

    1. Sa Maj sunbathing up there
    2. Sa Maj and a friend (Cat Daddy: “He’s going to have to find one first …”) sunbathing up there together
    3. Sa Maj hunched creepily over a row of drying-out-in-the-sun mouse corpses, cackling to himself as he decides which one to lick first
    4. Some other bizarre and abnormal “You couldn’t make this up” type of incident that I haven’t thought of

    All suggestions are most welcome, Mesdames et Messieurs.

  • Toute blessure guérit, sauf les blessures du chat

    It’s official: Louis Catorze is bad for our health. Three weeks ago, whilst Cat Daddy was away, I sat with Catorze on my legs and my my feet outstretched and resting on the coffee table. We spent the day fixed in that position watching back-to-back X Files together, including that episode where Agent Scully has to deal with a barking, snarling dog infected with an alien virus. (And, no, Sa Maj didn’t even flick a whisker at the barking and snarling. This is no doubt because he carries the same alien virus and therefore he knows his own kind, in the same way that zombies never attack other zombies.)

    Anyway, at the end of our 10-hour fairly lengthy spook-marathon, I tried to get up but I couldn’t. My left leg (upper calf, lower thigh and behind the knee) had completely seized up, and it has been painful ever since. I don’t suppose sitting at length with my legs in an over-flexed position, and with a 3kg weight on them, was the best thing to do, but it’s too late now.

    As a result, I am struggling to walk and my daily routine now includes the attractiveness of a limp and a thigh-to-ankle TubiGrip. Naturellement people have been asking what happened, and I have been too embarrassed to admit that it was a Laziness With Cat injury but I have lost track of which lie I have told to which person. (I know, I know, I should have just told the same lie to everyone instead of telling some people that I tripped on a wonky paving slab and others that it was a half-marathon training injury, but I didn’t think this through.)

    These last few weeks of the school year have felt like months. And this picture of Sa Maj just about sums up my place in it all; I am like a portrait cat trying to fit into a landscape sun puddle:

  • La propreté est proche de la sainteté

    Hurrah! Someone has FINALLY acknowledged what I have been saying for years: hay fever sufferers, wipe down your cats!

    And, somehow, I can’t help singing that mantra in my head to the tune of “Spice Up Your Life” by the Spice Girls (younger followers, ask your parents):

    "Pollen in the air


    WIPE DOWN YOUR CATS


    In your nose and in your hair


    WIPE DOWN YOUR CATS


    People everywhere


    WIPE DOWN YOUR CATS ..." and so on

    Wiping down is easier said than done if your pet goes in and out about 738 times a day, as Louis Catorze does. So we try and grab him just before we go to bed as he usually comes up with us and settles across our stomachs like a two-person, living belt, no doubt shedding pollen with every movement. Naturellement he isn’t the greatest fan of being wiped down but, because of the difference it makes to my itchy eyes and to Cat Daddy’s scratchy throat, the little sod is just going to have to suck it up. Plus it’s preferable to bathing him, which would require sedatives (for us as well as for Catorze). 

    Thank you to both Spa de Sal and Hen Corner for their hay fever advice and for their fight against the evil pollen of TW8. Details of their wonderful products – a health-boosting salt spa experience (no, I haven’t taken Sa Maj there, but I would if I could) and lovely London honey – can be found here:

    https://spadesal.com

    https://hen-corner-micro-bakery.myshopify.com/collections (scroll down for the honey) 

     

  • Quel ange me réveille de mon lit fleuri?

    The summer solstice is here, and that can mean only one thing: Louis Catorze’s summer bed has been deployed.

    The rest of us, of course, have to put up with just one bed all year round, but Sa Maj has his winter bed (the igloo), his spring and autumn bed (the igloo converted into a bowl) and his summer bed (the chaise longue). And, when he feels like it, he also has our bed, any of two guest beds, any of two laps (but usually Cat Daddy’s), any of THREE sofas, Cat Daddy’s overnight holdall, Cat Daddy’s work rucksack, the shed roof, Oscar the dog’s shed roof and probably a whole host of other locations that we don’t know about.

    Here he is, staring evilly (looks wrong but spellcheck confirms that it is, indeed, an actual word) from the chaise longue, probably mentally totting up his total number of beds and cursing us for providing so pathetically few.

    Happy Midsummer to you all from the Sun King.

  • Creuser sa propre tombe

    We have a Code Rouge situation at Le Château: SOMEONE HAS BEEN DIGGING AROUND AMONG THE SEDUMS. Although we have no actual proof, a certain suspect ticks all the boxes in terms of past history (he did the same thing to Cat Daddy’s chilli and strawberry plants), motive (generally being a shite) and opportunity (multiple escapes at The Front since we installed the planter).

    I suppose we should be trying to find a solution, but the truth is that we’re utterly defenceless against the little sod’s sorcery, i.e. Cloak of Invisibility, teleportation, astral projection or whatever the heck he does to get past us and breach the security perimeters of Le Château.

    The one thing saving Louis Catorze’s royal arse at the moment is the fact that this is only a Code Rouge and not a Code Brun. (At least we hope not; we daren’t poke around in the soil to find out.)

    Please see below for the evidence discovered by Cat Daddy. Any advice on how to deal with the Dark Lord and his forces of evil would be much appreciated.

  • L’épée tue beaucoup de monde, mais le chat tue d’avantage

    Louis Catorze’s hours and hours spent outside, presumably on Rodent Duty, have finally paid off: the little sod delivered a mouse to me at 4:30 yesterday morning. I awoke to the sound of pitter-pattering and squeaking, then turned on the light just in time to see my sweet boy not only deliver the killer blow but also, erm, lick the dead mouse thoroughly and meticulously from head to tail. Then he flipped it over onto its back and licked the other side from head to tail, too.

    I would never have believed this had I not seen it myself. The little sod’s prey is often wet and I have always assumed this to be because of the rain – and it happened to be raining on this occasion, too – but now I know that it’s MAINLY because he takes great pains to lick it thoroughly after killing it.

    So … reasons for this peculiar behaviour?

    1. All cats do it?

    2. A last-ditch attempt to extract the tasty mousey flavour before the dead beast is confiscated?

    3. Some sort of elaborate death ritual, like the Ancient Egyptians used to do? (Not that they used to lick their dead. You know what I mean.)

    4. Some sort of creepy serial killer calling card?

    Cat Daddy (who slept through the whole thing) when I told him: “He did what? Ewww! Just like a serial killer!”

    Oh dear. Numéro 4 it is, then. And, yes, after Googling “Why does my cat lick its prey after killing?” (which yielded zero results) I also Googled “Serial killer calling cards”. It turns out that, whilst people do some highly disturbing things, no murderer in criminal history has ever done anything as freakish as licking their dead victim from head to toe, then flipping them over and licking the other side.

    Cat Daddy: “Don’t worry, it’s not as if he’s going to do this to us. Mind you, that’s probably only because he’s not big enough or we’re not small enough.”

  • La douce flamme

    As if Mother Nature flips a switch the moment the calendar changes from May to June, hay fever season is now upon us and I have gone from having zero symptoms to moderate ones. Cat Daddy doesn’t know it yet but we have invested in a ton of allergen-busting beeswax candles, because we had used up the ones left over from the time that we thought Louis Catorze had hay fever when, in fact, he had a blade of grass stuck up his nose. (If you missed out on that joyous tale, here it is:)

    Saint Jérôme et le lion

    We have also bought of those electric rechargeable lighter things for our beeswax candles. It’s much nicer to use than the old-style, nail-splitting, blister-giving, butane-filled monstrosities and (we hope) less wasteful than wooden matches. And poor Catorze is terrified of it.

    Oui, Mesdames et Messieurs: he won’t even flinch at loud rock music, other cats, dogs, foxes, marauding youths in Hallowe’en costumes and (we imagine) masked men wielding bolt cutters, but he is scared stiff of the rather pleasant, gentle fizzing emitted by this device. He can hear it from wherever he is in the house and runs for the hills.

    I now turn on the kitchen taps to drown out the sound. And, as I am using both electricity AND water when lighting each candle, the electric lighter is no longer the eco option that I had hoped, even if I do catch all the water and make use of it. 

    But you know, don’t you, that you would do exactly the same, if not more, for your feline overlords’ comfort? So, for now, both the candles and the water-bearing shall continue. And, with any luck, the purifying powers of the beeswax candles will benefit Sa Maj as well as us.

    Here is the little sod after the last candle-lighting, having fled upstairs and taken refuge in, erm, a bag:

  • Vieux chien fait bonne chasse

    We are so lucky to have Oscar the dog’s family as friends, especially given the havoc caused by our feuding animals. They are even kind enough to take Louis Catorze’s side in any unfortunate disputes, despite the fact that it is always his fault for wandering onto Oscar’s territory. If he stuck to his own patch and minded his own business, there would be no problems.

    The four of us have occasionally wondered whether a controlled meet-up on our territory – rather than Oscar’s – would improve relations between the pair. And now, it seems, we don’t need to wonder anymore. Last weekend – 48 hours after the Dog Family’s move back home – our peace was shattered by the sound of barking. I opened the front door to check that Sa Maj wasn’t causing trouble (even though I had that sinking feeling in my gut and just KNEW) and the little sod shot past me, hotly pursued by Oscar.

    It turned out that Catorze, having teleported out at The Front again, had decided to take a nap in Oscar’s garden, and Oscar, unsurprisingly, was not too happy about this. Catorze stood his ground, bared his fangs and hissed, terrifying all onlookers* and even stopping Oscar in his tracks for a few seconds. Then, as Catorze decided to head back towards Le Château, Oscar followed.

    *Oh yes: the embarrassing incident was witnessed by a mortified Dog Mamma and Dog Sister, the visiting Dog Grandparents and the wife of THAT neighbour who is always having to escort Catorze back when he escapes and screams bloody murder.

    The pair of them raced through the house, dodging both me and Cat Daddy, and Catorze shot through the cat flap and out at The Back like a speeding bullet. Oscar wasn’t able to fit through, so he gave up the chase at that point and decided instead to turn his attention to Catorze’s food bowl. Dog Mamma then intervened and, for once, it was Oscar being escorted back to his rightful place.

    Both dog and cat spent the rest of the afternoon sleeping off the excitement and, in fact, Catorze appeared to forget entirely about it within a minute. This is good, because he is clearly as untraumatised as can possibly be. But it’s also bad because he probably won’t learn his lesson, and it wouldn’t surprise me if he were heading back over the fence right now to cause more problems.

  • Bâtir des châteaux à Londres

    Oscar the dog’s folks recently had some work done on their house, and they moved out during the renovation process. Naturellement, the triple draw of workmen + dust in which to roll around + free run of enemy territory meant we didn’t see a great deal of Louis Catorze whilst it was going on. And, when we did, he was usually covered in all manner of building waste but, by the time we picked up a brush, he had pitter-pattered off to roll in more.

    Now that it’s all complete and the Dog Family are home again, life should go back to normal. However, we have some concerns: where there was just a roof before, there are now two glass skylights. And, where there was just brick before, there is now a whole wall of glass bifold doors. In short, the renovation has hugely increased Sa Maj’s opportunities to eyeball Oscar, scream at him and whip him into a frenzy. This is not good.

    Here is the little sod (pictured before the work was finished) inspecting the quality of the workmanship and figuring out the best vantage points for his bullying. Both Cat Daddy and I would love to think he will have a sudden crise de moralité and behave, but we have a really bad feeling about this.