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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.

  • Notre petite vie est cernée de sommeil

    Louis Catorze disappeared without a trace at the weekend. After hunting all over the house, including in locked cupboards, we eventually found him in the guest bedroom, buried deep underneath the duvet and utterly out of sight except for the tip of his silly little tail sticking out. So, now that the weather has turned colder, and given that he has only used his warm-weather bed a couple of times, I have reinstated his winter igloo. 

    The little sod initially sniffed suspiciously, as if it say, “Really? Pour moi?” But, when he realised it wasn’t some cruel trick, he was in. 

    Cat Daddy was disgusted when I told him, as if I had given our hypothetical human child absinthe and cigarettes. “I can’t believe you’ve GIVEN IN,” he sighed. But he felt a little better when I explained that this meant Sa Maj wouldn’t be tunnelling into the guest bedding, leaving a trail of hair and whatever other unknown crud he always seems to be covered in. 

    I am sure that, when the sun returns, the Sun King will be back out and on the rampage. But, for now, if anyone wants him [Cat Daddy: “I wouldn’t hold your breath, if I were you”], he can be found here: 

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  • Le printemps, c’est l’époque des projets et des plans

    The dark winter seems a lifetime away now, and, somehow, the longer days give us the feeling that we have so much more time to do things. That’s what it all means to us, at least. To Louis Catorze, it means burrowing deeply into his igloo and never coming out.

    Cat Daddy: “This isn’t normal. Staying in there all day is like one of those sensory deprivation torture things. This is what they do to prisoners of war.”

    Me: “But we’re not subjecting him to it by force. He’s chosen to go in there.”

    Cat Daddy: “Exactly: he’s so thick that he doesn’t even KNOW he’s torturing himself! He’s going to come out an institutionalised vegetable with no eyes, because he’ll have evolved not to use them. And he’ll be completely brain-dead because he won’t have used that, either. On second thoughts, maybe that particular ship has already sailed.”

    I did remind Cat Daddy that evolution happens progressively over many generations of creatures, and not with just one animal over a couple of weeks, but he wasn’t really listening. He had a point about the brain-dead bit, though.

    If Sa Maj were our human child, we would be picking up his bed and physically tipping him out (and possibly also making him get a job, as a 9-year-old cat is probably about 50 in human years). But, because he is a cat, he just gets to lie around in his pit and not deal with any other living souls if he doesn’t want to. And the worst we will do is complain about him to strangers on the internet and transform his convertible igloo into the warmer-weather bowl shape.  

    Is it possible to be disgusted at his laziness and, at the same time, envious of his life?


  • Brexit signifie Brexit

    Cat Daddy has been telling Louis Catorze for some time that, as a black French immigrant with suspicious inconsistencies in his paperwork, he could very well find himself booted out after the United Kingdom leaves the European Union. But, thanks to the postponement of Brexit, the little sod is still here; with nobody knowing what the flip is going on and the rest of the world either pitying us or laughing at our incompetence, he doesn’t appear to be going anywhere yet. And, come to think of it, neither do we.

    That said, none of the problems potentially affecting us humans look set to bother him in any way. Whilst Cat Daddy and I are wondering whether we should stockpile continental cheese in case it runs out, there is no such issue with Sa Maj’s treats: Lily’s Kitchen Fabulous Fish is manufactured in London, so we should have no problem keeping that coming. Jambon de Bayonne might be a little trickier to obtain, and it is highly likely to be more expensive when we do, but that’s our problem to fix, not his. 

    Free movement is irrelevant to Le Roi because he doesn’t travel. He stays put and people from all over the world come to him, and we have a guest book to prove it.

    As for border control … well, this is meaningless to most cats as they can’t comprehend the notion of places being off-limits, but it is especially meaningless to those armed with a Cloak of Invisibility and/or the skill of teleportation. With a constant stream of neighbours, delivery people and random passers-by knocking on our door to tell us that “the cat wants to come in” when we didn’t even know he was out, we are yet to come across a border that has prevented Sa Maj from pitter-pattering where he wants.

    So … will Brexit have ANY impact on him and how he lives his life? See below and try, if you will, to spot the difference between real life and my prediction for the future: 

    Left: life before Brexit

    Right: life after Brexit 

  • Sauver la planète

    Cat Daddy and I have participated in Earth Hour for as long as we can remember. It involves turning off all lights between 8:30pm and 9:30pm on the last Saturday of March, to raise awareness of climate change:

    https://www.earthhour.org

    The best thing about Earth Hour is making a difference with relatively little personal sacrifice although, of course, these things have the best impact if lots of people make the effort. One of our favourite Earth Hour activities is talking a walk through our street and criticising all the neighbours who still have their lights on.

    The downside of Earth Hour: having a black cat, because he will be accidentally kicked, elbowed and/or sat upon at least 638 times during those 60 minutes.

    This is the same black cat who, in the early hours of the morning, will pitter-patter about the house, bounce around on our bed and scream bloody murder, giving us zero doubt about where he is and what he’s doing. It would be great if he were to do that during Earth Hour so that we knew his whereabouts, and if he were to sit still and shut up when we were trying to sleep. But he wouldn’t be quite so blogworthy if he did what we wanted him to do, when we wanted him to do it.

    If you don’t usually participate in Earth Hour, we hope you will give it a try this Saturday night. This is one of our pictures from last year, and Louis Catorze is in the bottom left corner (we think):

  • La beauté gagne quelquefois à être regardée de loin

    If a cat were to, erm, accidentally get hair-removing wax and baby oil on their fur, they would be ok, wouldn’t they? I’m asking on behalf of a friend.

    I don’t suppose I need to explain what happened during the beautician’s visit, so I will let your imagination paint that picture on its own. And it turns out that the only way to painlessly remove salon wax is to dab the affected area with baby oil.

    As you can imagine, Sa Maj wasn’t a fan of that. The little sod took off and dived under the bed with the wax only part-removed, refusing to come out. And, when I caught sight of him trying to groom it off much later, he had somehow managed to form the remaining wax and the stuck fur into a sort of pointy, greasy dreadlock on his leg.

    Cat Daddy said it was my fault and that I should never have let him come in during the treatment although, had I shut him out of the room, his screaming outside the door would have sent me over the edge. In the meantime, as I write this, he is in his igloo and I daren’t attempt to check him in case the wax has made him stick to the inside. I have horrible (yet also a bit funny) visions of hearing a ripping sound as I shake him out and having him tumble undignifiedly at my feet with one bald leg.

    I guess that, once the greasy leg-dreadlock has hardened, I will have to cut it off. Wrestling an oily animal who is freakishly strong when angry, with a pair of scissors in my hand: what could possibly go wrong?

  • Il faut cultiver notre jardin

    The spring equinox is here, which means brighter days and a renewed sense of joie de vivre. And, as if to mark this theme of vitality and optimism, someone or something has puked in our vegetable patch, right on the bit where we plant our salad leaves and kale. 

    Now, I know what you’re thinking. Believe me, I thought it, too, and it was also the first thing Cat Daddy said upon discovering it (right after all the swearing). But, disgusting though this is, when you have just one animal who eats pretty much just one thing, you soon get to know what their regurgitated food looks like. This was much too copious and too, erm, orange to have been produced by Louis Catorze. I know his brew like I know my own name and, trust me, this ain’t his. 

    So, thoughts? The only other possible culprits are: 

    1. Foxes (highly likely) 
    2. Badgers (unlikely but not impossible)
    3. Other cats (seemingly likely but we never see any in our garden, ever, so I am a little sad at the idea that they don’t come to befriend Catorze yet they make the effort to come here to vomit)

    As with most other things that go on at Le Château, I don’t suppose we will ever find out the truth. In the meantime, I shall be praying for rain to wash everything away and buying my salad leaves from the supermarket. 

    This picture is of Sa Maj sunning himself and rocking out to the Rolling Stones during Boys’ Club, because, obviously, I wasn’t going to post a photo of the vomit. 

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  • La photographie est la littérature de l’œil

    Cat Daddy suggested the other day that I start an Instagram account for Louis Catorze, as “taking a photo is much easier than writing a whole blog entry” and therefore I would be able to post more often. In actual fact I do have an Instagram account for him but I have never, ever used it, so I agreed that kick-starting it could be a good idea.  

    However, we failed to take into account one thing: Catorze is apocalyptically rubbish in photos. He has no idea how to pose – or perhaps he does know but just doesn’t want to do it – and, since Instagram is all about making oneself look better than one does in real life, trying to run an account would be completely impossible. Each of the pictures that I post on Le Blog is the least awful one of a group of about 50 absolute howlers, so, in order to post a (passable) photo a day, I would have to take a total of 350 a week. And, what with work, life and dealing with Catorze, I simply don’t have time.

    Blog entries, on the other hand, depend upon Sa Maj doing stupid shit, and this is ridiculously plentiful. In fact, he does so much of it, so often, that there aren’t enough days in the week to document it all in real time. I then have to save some of the ideas for publication the next time that he does that same piece of stupid shit (and there is always a next time). 

    It’s a sad day when it’s far easier to write several hundred words about stupid shit than to take one decent photo, but such is life with Le Roi. 

    Below is one of the worst examples of the contents of my “Recently Deleted” camera roll, which demonstrates my point. The little sod decided to jump when I was mid-snap – and, yes, those two white vertical lines are, indeed, trails left by his fangs. 

    Should you feel inclined to follow louiscatorze14 on Instagram, erm, I wouldn’t bother. 

  • Le Roi Soleil, c’est un chat mystère

    Not long ago we had a cat-loving male friend come to Le Château for dinner. Louis Catorze loves all visitors but cat-loving men are, naturellement, the best kind. 

    When he arrived Catorze was all over him, up-tailed and purring. As our music grew louder and we grew drunker we didn’t notice until too late that, at some point during the proceedings, Sa Maj had disappeared. We did think it unusual for him not to partake in such an evening – predominantly-male soirées of loud rock music are very much his thing – but we weren’t concerned enough to halt our music and drinking to search for the little sod. 

    When our friend’s cab arrived and he opened the door to leave, in dashed Catorze from The Front where, presumably, he had been all evening. 

    How the flamin’ flip did he get there? (And why didn’t he use the same method to come back in again?)

    We initially thought that, perhaps, he had pitter-pattered out when our friend arrived, but then we remembered the purring and flirting and the comments about how Catorze’s permanent up-tail revealed, erm, a larger-than-desirable expanse of rear end. So he definitely teleported AFTER our friend’s arrival, not during. Cat Daddy even thought I may have opened the front door during the evening to put bottles into the recycling box, but I am far too lazy to do this bottle by bottle and would much rather wait until the end of the night and take out all eight three bottles in one go. 

    However Le Roi may have managed to pull off this trick, our greater concern is that, because of our music, we wouldn’t have heard him screaming to get back in, nor would we have heard an irate neighbour losing his/her shit and knocking at our door to return him to us. This is bad. VERY bad. 

    I really, really need to find out how Sa Maj did this. But I probably need to apologise to our neighbours first.

  • Le Roi est malin: vive Le Roi!

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    La vie est belle. It’s now March and almost officially springtime, the weekend is here, our bathroom floor is done so we no longer feel like we’re camping, Łukasz who did the work survived Louis Catorze’s screaming and is still speaking to us, and sometimes the little sod’s eyes look as if they’re getting better. They’re probably not as good as this picture would suggest – I got very lucky with the camera angle and the light – but he is behaving perfectly normally (for him) in every other way so, for the moment, we are not unduly concerned.

    However, his cruel bastardliness remains constant, striking from nowhere like an earthquake and with a few little aftershocks that you should have expected but that always knock you for six. 

    Last night, the minute Cat Daddy sat down, the little sod got off my lap and went for his. He has, of course, done this about 873 times in the past, so this is nothing new, but previously he would at least go through the pretence of liking me for around 15 minutes before departing to the greener grass. On this occasion he didn’t even give it a minute. In fact, as soon as Cat Daddy approached to sit down, I could feel Sa Maj’s horrid, treacherous little paws fidgeting and squirming to prepare himself for his flight. 

    Cat Daddy felt so bad for me that he actually told his boy off for his rudeness. And, to cheer me up, we spent the next half hour complaining about him. But, at the same time, wouldn’t life be much easier if we humans could be that honest? I would love to be able to say, “I like that person better than you and, now that they’ve arrived, I would rather spend time with them,” and I am sure there are plenty who would love to say it to me, too. 

    Not long ago I had a visit from a friend who knows about Catorze’s mistreatment of me but has never seen it in person. I couldn’t wait for her to witness it so that I would have one person on my side (whereas Cat Daddy just pretends to be on my side to keep the peace and is really on Le Roi’s side). And, naturellement, during her visit the little sod ignored his daddy and was all over me, as if to say, “See how she lies?” 

    As I have always said, he has never left visible marks on a human body nor on any object; his modus operandi is psychological torture, preferably the kind that makes you look like an idiot or a fantasist if you try to prove it to others. 

    My friend: “Awww. But you wouldn’t have him any other way, would you?”

    No comment. 

  • Il n’y a pas que le travail dans la vie

    We are having some major work done in our bathroom this weekend, with the whole floor being replaced.

    For most households with pets, this would require calming, anti-anxiety measures in the form of Feliway and suchlike. In our case it is the workmen, and not the pets, who will be requiring the calming, anti-anxiety measures, because Louis Catorze can’t seem to take no for an answer when it comes to men and won’t leave them alone. So we have tea ready for them in case Sa Maj is bad, and neat vodka and a cattle prod in case he is really bad. 

    So, at best, we can expect some mildly irritated but tea-soothed men who manage to get their work done in spite of the screaming. At worst, with all the Roi distractions and the anaesthetising glugs of vodka, a three-day job could end up taking three months to complete. 

    Here is the little sod carrying out his pre-work inspection and testing the acoustics of the bathroom. (It turns out that feline screaming magnifies/echoes massively in here, so I think we’re going to need more vodka.) 

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  • La brosse infernale

    We are usually only obsessively meticulous about brushing Louis Catorze during the warmer months, when he moults and scratches a lot. But, because his skin and fur are generally much healthier when he is brushed regularly, we decided to step up his grooming régime a few weeks ago, at around the same time that we started the hot water steam thing.

    The good news is that handfuls of fur come off his body when he is brushed, which surely HAS to make a positive difference to his skin health, yes? The bad news is that he still loathes being brushed, which means I have to grit my teeth and adopt the Stranglehold of Death before I can get the brush anywhere near him. Needless to say, these now-daily sessions of torture leave me drained, pained and bleeding from the eardrums, and I wish we didn’t have to do them.

    My mum told a long time ago that, when you brush your cat, you should leave the brushed-out clumps of hair in the garden because birds use them to line their nests. This didn’t seem very likely – after all, my mum also tells me that you can get cancer from plastic water bottles that have been left overnight in the car – but a couple of reliable fellow cat freaks have confirmed that it is, indeed, a thing. So, much to Cat Daddy’s disgust, I have been doing my civic duty by emptying the contents of Catorze’s brush outside, and the very thin silver lining to the dire grooming sessions was that at least the birds would benefit from it all.

    Below is a picture of a clump of Catorze’s brushed-out hair from at least two weeks ago. Oui, Mesdames et Messieurs: IT IS STILL IN THE GARDEN. I really thought that there would be a few takers for some warm kitty fur, given that we remain in the depths of winter. But it seems not.

    Cat Daddy: “Ha! The birds of TW8 would rather freeze than go near his shitty fur. Not even the rats want it.”

    Oh dear. It’s a good thing Sa Maj is utterly unaware of his fur not meeting the exacting standards of the local wildlife. And, even if he were aware, I don’t suppose he would be remotely bothered.

  • De l’eau pour tous

    After a suggestion from one of my lovely blog followers, I have been putting a bowl of hot water in each of the rooms most frequented by Sa Maj in the hope that the extra moisture in the air might help his eyes. 

    When we first adopted him we were told that he only drank from glasses, and that under no circumstances would he drink from a bowl. “I’m sure he’ll use a bowl eventually, when he gets thirsty enough,” I replied cheerfully. He didn’t. So we had no option but to provide him with his own special glass. (Well, it was either that or have him randomly drink from any receptacle that he came across, which is asking for trouble.)

    Naturellement, after a lifetime of refusing to drink from a bowl, the sudden presence of bowls from which we DON’T want him to drink has made him decide that he might be interested after all. And the only thing that stops him from doing it – apart from me taking my phone from my pocket to catch him in the act – is using hot water straight from the kettle which, despite being the best for adding moisture to the air, comes with its own, obvious problems. (Don’t worry: we are fully aware that Sa Maj is stupid enough to scald himself, so we ensure that we are around to keep him under Suicide Watch. Once the water has cooled and he is no longer under surveillance, no doubt he has a good old slurp and renders this experiment a complete waste of time.)

    Cat Daddy has also kicked and/or threatened to kick more bowls of water than I can count. So, between the two of them, the men of the household are doing their best to make sure that this whole thing fails dismally. 

    Me: “We could always buy him a plug-in air humidifier?”

    Cat Daddy: “[Hysterical laughter followed by unrepeatable comments peppered with rude words.]”

    Fortunately Catorze continues to remain in good spirits and is utterly unbothered by his condition. In the meantime, we shall keep topping up the boiling water in the hope that it does him good. 

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  • Toute maladie peut être soignée mais la sottise est incurable

    Louis Catorze’s above-eye fur is thinning, and the skin around his eyes is starting to look a little thick and leathery. Given that these signs often indicate a resurgence of all his old problems, this makes me very anxious indeed. I am also somewhat baffled as he has been well for such a long time, and I cannot imagine what could have triggered this. 

    We have had the central heating cranked up unusually high lately, and, historically, his issues have been worse in cold weather. But, other than that, there have been no changes whatsoever in anything we have done. He is eating exactly the same food, and everything in his environment is as it has always been.

    He is perfectly fine in every other way – eating, drinking, screaming and sprinting around the house with bulging psycho eyes whilst chasing imaginary prey (or at least I hope it’s imaginary) – so I guess he can’t be THAT unwell. But, to be on the safe side, I am turning the heating down when I can, even if this means the rest of us are cold. 

    Cat Daddy, shivering in two jumpers and a blanket: “[Unrepeatable mutterings.]”

    Please keep your fingers crossed for him – Catorze, I mean, not Cat Daddy – and let’s all hope that it’s nothing rather than something. 

  • Où le chat et le loup jouent

    Some time ago I posted about Little Sods’ Law, a black cat charter which dictates, amongst other things, the following: 

    1. If you see a black cat misbehaving in public, the chances are that it’s your cat.
    2. The likelihood of it being your cat is directly proportional to the embarrassingness of the misbehaviour. 

    I am shocked to report that, on Saturday, the Law was disproven and, for once, it was not Louis Catorze causing the mayhem. But my phone still buzzed all weekend with messages asking me to check and be sure:

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/47104907

    When I became a member of the Chat Noir club, whose founding member was Le Roi’s big brother Luther, I was concerned that I would not be able to tell my cat apart from others. (With hindsight, I can’t think of a situation that would require such a skill. Perhaps if twenty black cats suddenly appeared in my house at once, it would be handy to know mine so that I could then kick out the impingers. Or I guess I could just keep all twenty.) But we know our own cats, don’t we, black cat owners? And the Everton cat’s hellraising shenanigans have demonstrated, if anything, just how different and distinct black cats are from one another.

    This cat has a much fatter, rounder face than Catorze and no chin of which to speak (imagine a large grapefruit compared to a small lemon). And he has a thick, solid physique more reminiscent of Cocoa the babysit cat than of Catorze. That said, both causing trouble and large crowds of men are highly irresistible to Sa Maj, and we know only too well of his teleportation skills, so pitter-pattering to a stadium and invading the pitch are just the sort of things he would do. 

    I do hope that this beautiful chap finds his way back to wherever he is supposed to be. If he turned up at Le Château I would be sorely tempted to keep him, and, despite everything I have said about the uniqueness of each individual black cat, I would ensure that he and Catorze were never seen together, in an effort to convince Cat Daddy that we still had just one cat. 

    Cat Daddy, whilst watching the Everton v Wolves game: “Bloody ridiculous. First an Anfield cat, and now this. Why do Liverpudlians take their cats with them to football matches? Not even YOU do that.”

    True. But only because I didn’t think of it.