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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.

  • La coupe du Roi

    Le royal wine glass is no more. Cat Daddy kicked it over last week, smashing it to pieces and dismissing his accident with the words, “Well, we’ve all done it.” (No, we have not. Absolutely nobody else has done it, ever. Only Cat Daddy.)

    Anyway, this left us with the onerous task of finding an appropriate replacement, which is not as straightforward as it sounds because Le Roi will not drink from any old glass. So Cat Daddy grumpily put down an old Bodum storage jar thing (minus the stopper) as an interim measure until we found something which Sa Majesté would deem acceptable.

    Cat Daddy returned from the kitchen with an assortment of glasses in his hands, ready to try them out one by one. However, to his delight, he was met by the sight of Louis Catorze’s silly snout deep in the Bodum jar as he slurped away.

    And that was that; as far as Cat Daddy is concerned, we don’t need to bother looking for a new drinking vessel. I, however, miss the elegance of the wine glass; it was just so much more fitting for a Sun King. I’m sorely tempted to try him out with a few glasses from our collection and, if none of them meet with royal approval, buy him a new one.

    So … opinions on this one? Too much?

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  • La fraternité noire

    Today is a rather bittersweet day. I look forward to 1st October all year as it signifies the start of the Halloween countdown and the Season of the Black Cat, but this year it also marks the fact that we have now had Louis Catorze for longer than we ever had his big brother, Luther. That makes me a little sad because, when we adopted Luther, we expected to have much more time with him. Nobody adopts a cat and plans to only keep them for 2 years, 2 months and 10 days.

    That said, if Luther were still with us, Louis Catorze certainly wouldn’t be. When we discovered him, he’d already been waiting for a home for 15 months; had we not come along at that point, who knows how long he would have continued to wait? (Cat Daddy just read that bit, rolled his eyes and said, “Some other stupid suckers would’ve come along eventually.”)

    We were initially drawn to Louis Catorze because, subconsciously, we wanted another Luther. But, in fact they couldn’t be more different: Luther’s face was chiselled and angular whereas Catorze’s is spherical (see pictures); Luther was sleek whereas Catorze is plushy; Luther wandered for miles and we’d often spot him in parts of the neighbourhood where he had no business going, whereas Catorze tends to stay close by; Luther was a healthy, intelligent thoroughbred whereas Catorze, erm, isn’t. But, over the last 2 years, 2 months and 11 days we have really enjoyed discovering these differences, and now we’re rather glad of them.

    So, whilst we won’t exactly be celebrating this day, we will be giving Sa Majesté lots of love, thanking the universe for flinging him our way despite the heavy price we paid, and looking forward to the Season of the Black Cat. We hope you have an equally lovely day with your furry overlords of whatever colour.

     

  • La chasse de trésor

    Cat Daddy is back after his 2-week business trip to the States, and he came home laden with gifts including this fabulous cushion cover.

    imageI had a feeling that his return would either calm Louis Catorze down a little or send him into an even more excitable and annoying frenzy. I was right about one of those.

    The little sod won’t leave his papa alone and has been yelling, climbing all over him and staring at him with crazed, psycho eyes. And, as we all know, some cats are known to bring gifts to staff on such occasions as returning after an absence, but Le Roi has taken it a step further and has devised a sort of twisted treasure hunt.

    On the morning of Cat Daddy’s return, I had to clean 2 perfectly round, 5p-sized drops of fresh blood from our bedroom floor. There were no other smears or trails, just 2 solitary drops. Yet a thorough inspection of Louis Catorze – well, as thorough an inspection as he would allow without slicing me up – revealed that he was neither hurt nor in distress.

    This could only mean that the blood came from another entity. And there was every chance that this entity could be somewhere within the walls of Le Château.

    My mistake was cleaning up the blood before Cat Daddy had seen it because, bien sûr, he didn’t believe me when I told him about it. His theory is that it could have been nail varnish (?), ignoring my protests of “But I only own 1 bottle of nail varnish and it’s glittery silver, not red” and the rather more pertinent “I think I know the difference between nail varnish and blood.”

    So this thing, whatever it may be, remains unknown and unfound, despite our best efforts (or, rather, MY best efforts, as Cat Daddy refused to help me look for an imaginary corpse that had shed imaginary blood). And I know that, if we fail to find it by sight, in time it will deploy the next clue: the come-hither stench of death, to help us locate it by smell. Let’s hope Cat Daddy finds it before I do.

  • Plus claire la lumière, plus sombre l’obscurité

    What a week it’s been at Le Château. Events include a grovelling apology from me to Ocado on behalf of you-know-who (pretty sure it should be you-know-whom?), a reply from Ocado claiming the right to hazard pay for their traumatised drivers (I think they were only half-joking), and another somewhat unfortunate incident.

    On Wednesday night there was a knock at the door at 10:30pm: Marius-Olivian driving the Lemon van, a whole week early?

    However, when I checked my Ocado order again I realised that he was actually on time, and that I had messed up: I’d accidentally booked the delivery for this week instead of next week. So, not only was there no room in the fridge for the food because I hadn’t sufficiently run down supplies, but Cat Daddy was still away and there was a greater risk of Catorze-Ocado carnage.

    Naturellement, as soon as I opened the door, notre ami shot out and began sniffing around the Ocado crates, getting in the way of Marius-Olivian as he was unloading. He called out, “Go back in, kitty!” Louis Catorze took no notice.

    After Marius-Olivian left, waving Catorze a jaunty goodbye as he did so, I felt somewhat relieved; getting in the way of the unloading, whilst not very helpful, wasn’t nearly as bad as him sending yet another driver fleeing in fear. But, alas, the night was not over. It was at that point that the little sod discovered the motion-activated porch light at Bert the dog’s house next door, and the next few minutes went something like this:

    1. Cat activates light
    2. I reach to grab him
    3. He scuttles off out of reach and refuses to be caught
    4. I turn around to go indoors
    5. Cat activates light again
    (Repeat indefinitely, or until one party collapses from frustration and fatigue.)

    I couldn’t just go to bed and leave him to annoy yet another set of neighbours – he’s already made us quite unpopular enough – so I was forced to wait until he had finished his game. And he only decided to stop after hearing the local fox’s mating/war cry (still not sure which) and having the uncharacteristically good sense to realise that, if he didn’t come in, he might be eaten.

    I can’t cope with this monster on my own. Thank goodness there is only 1 more sleep until Cat Daddy comes home.

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  • Une livraison spéciale

    When you order groceries online from Ocado, there’s a section at the end where customers can warn delivery drivers of potential hazards – steps, thorny shrubs, excitable dogs, that kind of thing. I never imagined I would ever need to write anything, but Louis Catorze’s love of boys – Ocado drivers are almost always male – has taken his nuisance level to new heights lately.

    We had a delivery at the weekend and normally the little sod is very pleased indeed to see Ocado drivers but, this time, presumably because Cat Daddy has been away for a few days and he has been deprived of male company as a result, he totally lost his shit. As soon as I opened the door to unsuspecting Deyan driving the Apple van, Catorze decided to race in and out of the door and thunder up and down the stairs multiple times. It’s surprising how loud a 3.5kg cat on bare floorboards can be.

    Deyan had clearly never seen anything like it, commenting that the cat was going crazy; then, after going through my receipt and taking my plastic bags back, he made a swift exit. And this is not the first time we have had such an experience: in the past I have had to apologise to quite a few other Ocado drivers including Amil driving the Onion van, who glimpsed a furry cat toy that notre ami had dropped in the hallway and thought it was a rat, and Gary, also driving the Apple van, whom Le Roi almost tripped up in his haste to snuggle him.

    One day, Ocado will be able to just turn up, deliver in peace and leave, but I don’t think that day will be anytime soon. In the meantime, I think this wording should cover all eventualities:

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  • Rouler par terre

    I often read about other cats and their humans’ struggle to administer the flea medication, and I am usually lucky with my boy because he’s too daft to see it coming.

    However, Louis Catorze has found a breathtakingly annoying way of getting his own back: once he’s been splurged with the stinky, sticky fluid, he races upstairs and rolls it off onto our clothes and/or sheets.

    If we shut all internal doors, and if it’s dry outside, he races outside and rolls it off onto our patio. The rolling not only smears our patio with ugly, oily marks, but the dirt sticks to his damp fur … and then he pitter-patters back indoors and rolls off the revolting grease-dirt combo onto our clothes and/or sheets.

    This picture sums up both the horror of it all and the ambivalence of the little sod.

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    And, sadly, short of putting him in a box for 24 hours following his treatment, I see no solution to the problem. How do you deal with your furry overlords and flea treatment? Right now I’m quite envious of anyone whose cat flees to an unknown outdoor location and remains there until dusk (by which time the fur is dry).

  • La patrouille de France

    Ever since Le Jour du Rat, rather than snuggling up with us all evening, Louis Catorze has been spending increasing amounts of time outdoors. We initially didn’t pay too much attention to this, assuming he was relaxing on one/both of his outdoor cat thrones. However, a few days ago we discovered that he is not sleeping, nor even horizontal, but upright and wide awake. And he sits staring for hours at the same spot (a gap under the fence that separates Le Château from the school at the back).

    I know that stance; I recognise it from the Luther administration. It turns out that Louis Catorze is not being lazy, antisocial or whatever: in actual fact, the little sod is on Rodent Duty. Although I have not (yet) seen him haul any (more) rodents through the gap, I know that this is what’s going on.

    Oh Seigneur.

    His big brother Luther once brought in a mouse and it lived happily in our kitchen for months; this meant many, many nights of duty, with Luther sitting patiently, eyes glued the spot under the kitchen unit. Friends eventually started placing bets on when he would catch Mousey – yes, actual bets with actual money – with one person believing he wouldn’t do so for THREE YEARS. Luckily it wasn’t quite as long as that (although it felt like it).

    The only thing that distracts Louis Catorze from his sentry post is me getting my phone out to photograph him; as soon as he sees it he runs towards me, chirping and trilling. So the photos that you see are actually of Luther, cool and resolute, thinking, “You’re going to have to come out sooner or later, Mousey. I’ve got time.”

    And, eventually, Mousey did come out and was caught. I hope Catorze will not have the same success.

  • Pas de nouvelles, pas de nouvelles

    What an insane week it’s been at Le Château: I am back at work after a whole summer off, Cat Daddy has been away on business and is preparing to go again next week, we’ve had a dead mouse in the bathroom and Le Roi’s booster jabs were due today.

    But the one piece of great news is that, because Louis Catorze is not any medication at the moment, he was able to go to our local vet and have a standard vaccine, rather than enduring a 90-minute round trip to the rescue centre vet for the special non-live vaccine that only they can supply. Until now he’s had to have that because Atopica isn’t compatible with standard booster injections and so, unsurprisingly, I opted for the 90-minute round trip rather than risk a freakishly psycho FrankenRoi. It feels like a luxury not to have to do that anymore.

    “I wonder if the vet will compliment him on his appearance?” I shouted in the car, so that I could be heard over Catorze’s screaming. “He’s looking really good at the moment.”

    “Yeah, but it’s all relative,” Cat Daddy yelled back. “Of all the cats that she sees, where do you think he would rank on a scale from 1 to 10?”

    Silence, tumbleweed, crickets. Even Catorze shut up at that point.

    Anyway, after Louis Catorze’s initial “Quoi? Here again? I thought we were done with this place?” everything went ok. He has beefed up to a whopping 3.49kg, which came as a surprise to the vet as cats usually LOSE weight during a break from steroids. There was the usual yelling and swearing (from him) when his ears were examined, and the procedure had to be aborted when he unveiled an ingenious new trick: bending forward and wedging his head between his thighs so that his ears were inaccessible. (Imagine a cat preparing to do a forward roll but not actually rolling, and just remaining in a tight ball. Little sod.)

    We’re home now and the post-vet sulk appears to be a thing of the past, with Louis Catorze instantly forgiving us (or forgetting) and happily pitter-pattering about our feet. I hope this peace is a taste of the weekend to come; we could all do with it.

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  • Le personnel domestique est de retour

    Cat Daddy and I have been away for a few days; this was our first mini-holiday in years, due in part to my inconsistent health but also to the fact that Louis Catorze used to require medication every other day, and we didn’t think it fair to make a neighbour or a cat sitter do battle with him. We returned home on Friday to a strikingly glossy, healthy-looking Roi who was delighted to see his daddy again. (Me, not so much.)

    Oscar the dog’s folks looked after him magnificently well in our absence, and we are super-grateful to them. (They came here to feed him, obviously; he didn’t go and live with them, although part of me thinks it would have been funny to try it.) Not only were we able to go away with peace of mind, knowing that the little sod would be loved, but their kindness also meant I didn’t have to write the embarrassing advert: “Wanted: cat sitter for tiny black cat with annoying voice that could strip paint. Must be prepared to referee turf wars with dogs and dispose of rats, birds, slugs and other assorted wildlife, living, dead or somewhere between the two.”

    As you can see, normal service has very much resumed, with both daddy-love and newspaper impingement in progress. And Cat Daddy has come up with a solution to the newspaper problem: take advantage of the lack of binding or staples in a newspaper and separate it as soon as you see the cat approaching. Just make sure you end up with the decent half, and that the cat sits on the boring property bit.

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  • La liberté de la presse

    Cats and newspapers. Every single time. WHY? I wish I knew what they put in the ink/paper to make newspapers such irresistibly comfortable cat mats.

    But, of course, this never happens with old newspapers lying around, nor with ones that you’re not interested in reading. It only happens when you are mid-read and completely gripped by the civil war report (or sex scandal – depending on the calibre of the newspaper).

    Cat Daddy thought he’d successfully outfoxed Louis Catorze by keeping a second newspaper handy and deploying that each time the first was sat upon, but the second newspaper is never as good as the first. It is invariably an older copy which Cat Daddy has already read from cover to cover, therefore something of a compromise read. I once suggested that he buy 2 copies of the same newspaper each time he visits the newsagent, but that didn’t go down too well; I got the same look that I get when he catches me putting ice cubes into le royal wine glass on a hot day.

    So, unless you are ungallant enough to just shove the cat off, I guess there is no solution to the problem. Not even Cat Daddy is prepared to go that far. The last photo shows him delicately lifting his dear boy’s paws to read underneath them:

  • Le jeu de trônes

    Today’s entry is dedicated to Rachel, a much-loved follower of Le Blog. She was drily witty, interested in people and had the unique skill of making every person feel that their cat was the best and most fascinating cat in the world – yes, even mine, which is quite some feat. Rachel, you would relate to this, especially as your kitties would always sit on things that they weren’t meant to sit on: the clothes that you had put aside for the charity shop, your wheelchair, your pillow (without tucking the tail around the arse – ugh) and so on. We miss you and hope that, wherever you may be, you are happy and surrounded by maddening, shouty, delightful cats. (With tucked tails.)

    Good news: we have found a way of stopping Louis Catorze from scratching the footstool. Bad news: we have had to surrender it to him as a cat throne. So now he has a total of THREE cat thrones: 2 outdoor ones, of which Le Roi needs both at once, and the new indoor one. See below for both:

    It really was the only solution. Imagine you had the inclination to destroy some brand new furniture: would you destroy your own, or someone else’s? Exactly. Even Louis Catorze has the brains to figure out that trashing your own stuff is stupid; since the footstool officially became la propriété de la monarchie, it hasn’t been scratched once.

    Sometimes Le Roi graciously allows Cat Daddy to rest his feet on it, but only if he can sleep on Cat Daddy’s outstretched legs.

    Think of it as a quid pro quo but with a slightly selfish bias: “quid pro”, maybe.

    Or perhaps even just “quid”.

  • Les poils d’enfer

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    Forget about the Rio Olympics, and forget about chasing Pokemon(s). (Do you add an “s” or is there one noun for both singular and plural, like fish and sheep?)

    Here at Le Château we have had our own challenge of physical and mental endeavour: daily brushing of a certain someone who had been looking a bit scruffy and ragged at the start of the summer. (Cat Daddy has just read this and said, “You’d better put that it’s Louis Catorze, in case everyone thinks it’s me.”)

    We were spoilt with Luther because, being a Bombay, he didn’t shed. So we never had to brush him, ever. Not so with Le Roi; he moults like crazy, and brushing him is the second most miserable experience imaginable (the first being giving him pills).

    Brushing Louis Catorze tests all these components in a way that no Olympic sport ever could:

    – Speed, as I try to catch the little sod
    – Strength, as I grab hold of the little sod
    – Endurance, as I attempt to keep hold of the little sod whilst also trying to brush him
    – Super-sharp reflexes, as I dodge the kicks and the Freddy Krueger slasher claws

    Of course, when Cat Daddy brushes him, the scenario is rather different:

    – One or two unremarkable squeaks
    – Cuddles for daddy afterwards

    It’s just not fair, is it?

    “Maybe he just doesn’t like the way you brush him,” suggested Cat Daddy, helpfully. “He never misbehaves when I do it.”

    Très bien pour lui. What does he want: a medal?

    (He didn’t get one. But what he did get is the permanent role of Gardien de la Brosse Royale; if he’s so darned good, he can show the rest of us how it’s done.)

  • Le dimanche sanglant

    Whilst last Sunday was officially Olympic Sensational Sunday to most British people, to Cat Daddy and me it will always be known as Le Jour du Rat.

    This morning we were talking about the psychology behind cats’ offerings and why they bring them even if they’re well-fed. Some of the theories are as follows:

    1. It’s part of an involuntary natural instinct
    2. They are gifts borne out of love
    3. Cats think we are rubbish hunters, so are attempting to show us how it ought to be done
    4. Cats are little shits

    What’s puzzling us about RatGate – apart from the rat’s curly hair, which appears to be bothering many Roi followers at the moment – is that the rat looked as if it had been dead for a little while. So … had Louis Catorze killed it ages ago, stored it in some unknown place and then artfully plated it up for his papa, like a Masterchef finalist presenting a piece of 21-day hung steak?

    Or – and this is more likely – had the fox killed it and saved it for later, and was Catorze passing off the fox’s efforts as his own?

    Either way, I remain traumatised by the whole event, replaying it in my mind over and over again. However, something tells me that Cat Daddy may have moved on:

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  • À bon chat, bon rat

    Just like pre-baked jacket potatoes, cycling superhighways and selfie sticks, outdoor sofas are one of those things that seem like a good idea at the time.

    But, if you have a cat, you may need to rethink your plans to get one. Outdoor sofas can get covered in all sorts of undesirable matter: paw prints, cat hair, dead rats, that kind of thing. And guess which one of the three greeted Cat Daddy this morning, when he went outside to enjoy his first cup of tea of the day?

    When he broke the happy news to me, for some reason I felt the need to go and look to make sure he was telling the truth. He was. There, on his favourite spot on the sofa, was a large, curly-haired (nope, neither have we), three-legged rat.

    (Don’t worry: Cat Daddy found the other leg later.)

    There was also evidence that a fox had been in Le Jardin but, from what I have learned about foxes’ hunting habits during the five or so solid hours that I have since spent Googling the subject, leaving prey behind on a raised podium isn’t their style. Although it’s quite possible that a fox killed the rat, the podium presentation has Louis Catorze written all over it.

    Whilst I shrank into a corner, rocking back and forth, Cat Daddy remained admirably stoical as he grabbed the gloves, spade and bin bags. I would dispute his theory that “if Louis Catorze had really done it, he would have brought the rat indoors.” No: he didn’t bring it indoors because he COULDN’T (although I bet he gave it his best shot). This thing was at least 30cm long from nose to tail, and probably a good 1/3 of the little sod’s own body weight. And it certainly explains why he was curiously absent for much of last night instead of snuggling up with us and watching the heptathlon and the long jump.

    So the outdoor sofa cushion covers are drying outside and our bed linen is next, because we doubt that notre ami mutuel washed his paws this morning before tricking us into unsuspecting bed cuddles.

    Here he is, looking very sorry for all the bother he has caused, with stuff on his face that I really hope are cobwebs but I expect they are some sort of nasty rat granules.

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