louiscatorze.com

La sortie d’Halloween

29/10/2016

As Halloween approaches, cat freaks the world over debate that all-important question: should we keep our usually-outdoor cats under house arrest on the night of the 31st?

My responses are as follows: do you trust your neighbourhood and its residents? And do you trust your cat? We are lucky enough to be able to give a yes to the former but, sadly, it’s a “Hell, no” to the latter; Louis Catorze ignores the rules, goes rogue when he feels like it and, quite simply, is way too much of a liability.

His big brother Luther, although quite the adventurer, fortunately hated kids. So, when sugared-up hordes of them came a-knocking, we could rely on him to run in the opposite direction.

Louis Catorze is different, and risks life and limb to escape into the jaws of danger at moments when we really aren’t expecting it. On Thursday night, for instance, when Cat Daddy opened the front door to put out some rubbish, Catorze shot out and headed straight for the fireworks in the park opposite Le Château. His wayward arse was eventually hauled to safety, but not before the indignity of being poked out from under a bush with a mop.

And, because Sa Majesté LOVES strange men, he can’t be trusted to steer clear of psychos in the unlikely event of them turning up in our neighbourhood. If he were to happen upon a gang of youths dressed in clown masks and carrying spades and bin bags, he would probably roll at their feet and then happily follow them into the woods, slow-blinking sweetly as they buried the bodies.

So, whilst the little sod will be allowed to come and go freely at The (safe and enclosed) Back, on Halloween night The Front will be as airtight and impenetrable as Kim Kardashian’s new jewellery box. I hope your furry overlords manage whatever containment procedures are imposed upon them, and that you all have a safe and happy Halloween.
Compétiteur, prêt!

22/10/2016

We have now lived through pretty much a whole week of having to medicate Louis Catorze three times a day. (Well, when I say “We”, I actually mean just me; somehow Cat Daddy has declared himself exempt from the task, just by being catastrophically bad at it.)

And, whilst the odd attempt was better than expected, it was mostly as one would imagine: a Mad Max-style, bare-knuckle fight to the death. That is, until a fellow cat freak had the genius idea of dropping the medication onto his fur and letting him lick it off, thus sparing us the jaws of doom. (Thank you, Caroline!)

Mind you, this only worked for a day or so; after that the little sod stopped licking it off, choosing instead to eyeball me menacingly as he let it air-dry on his body. And his rigorous grooming regime meant that it was all brushed out at the end of the day anyway. So we had to suffer his stiff, sticky, unpleasant-to-stroke fur and brush out the mess, whilst he got away with ingesting no medication whatsoever.

I had no choice but to revert back to the gladiatorial combat.

Luckily it’s all over now and Le Roi’s foot has healed, so we can enjoy counting down the final few days before his big night on the 31st. Let’s hope he manages to stay out of trouble until then.
Joyeux anniversaire, Maman

16/10/2016

Whilst most people spend their birthday morning having champagne in bed, I spent mine reading the instructions of 2 different medications, preparing them and then delivering them to a struggling, kicking bastard of a cat. And, to add to the pressure, we had guests so it was all performed in front of a live audience.

To make matters EVEN worse: one medication requires a 0.3ml dose and the other 0.9ml; one is a simple pipette and the other an utterly suctionless syringe; one states “with food” which makes things tricky because Louis Catorze doesn’t have a specific meal time and, in fact, doesn’t even really like food; one smells like a toddler’s sugar-vomit (not that I have ever been unfortunate enough to experience this, but I imagine it’s just the same). I could go on but I won’t.

Eventually I did the deed, with only a moderate amount of medication spilling onto the kitchen worktop, onto my clothes and (possibly) into my cup of tea. My sister comforted me by remarking that I shouldn’t stress about getting every drop into the cat and that, if any of it managed to fly in his vague direction, that was an achievement. My 3-year-old nephew’s observation, once Le Roi had scarpered: “I think he liked it!” Erm, were you actually WATCHING, kiddo?

Louis Catorze headed straight outside for a mega-sulk in the rain – yes, he would rather be outside getting soaked than be anywhere near me. And, rather than offering to help shoulder the burden, Cat Daddy helpfully added, “I think you might as well carry on being the person that does the meds. I mean, he hates you anyway, so it won’t make any difference.”
La loi de l’emmerdement maximum

15/10/2016

How to make your cat sick: brag to all your friends about how well he is. Sod’s Law – or, in this case, Little Sod’s Law – decrees that all will turn to merde after that.

Tomorrow is my birthday, and my family had arranged to come over today for a 2pm birthday lunch at our favourite pub. So, naturellement, Louis Catorze picked 1:30pm to start walking with a limp, shaking his back right foot and swearing at anyone who tried to take a closer look at it.

Whilst I would have been ok with leaving it until the next day given that the little sod was moderately content and not in the worst agony, the vet isn’t open on Sundays. And I didn’t dare leave it until Monday in case it was something awful. So Cat Daddy drew the short straw and agreed to take him to the only available appointment today, which was right in the middle of our lunch.

Usually we are seen on time and are out of the vet’s within 15 minutes. Not today. When Cat Daddy got there there was a dog and a cat in the queue ahead of him, and Louis Catorze managed to rouse the cat into some sort of angry rap battle during the long wait. When that cat was seen, he turned out to be a complicated case and wasn’t out for ages.

The good news is that Louis Catorze only has a minor cut on his foot. The bad news is that Cat Daddy had to pay £80 for the treatment and missed his main course at my birthday lunch. And the even worse news is that we have to give Catorze 2 lots of medication by syringe (an antibiotic and an anti-inflammatory) a total of 3 times a day for a week. This is quite a horrifying thought, not only because he will shred us to pieces but because we haven’t had to assault him with medication for some time now. The trust that had started to build up over the last few months will now be gone in an instant, and he will probably never come near us again.

And oh my goodness: I have just checked the medication, and one of them is a weird powder that has to be transformed into a liquid. So I’ll need to perform some sort of spooky alchemy before I can even give the darned thing to him.

Please wish me luck. I’m really going to need it.
Le Roi brûlé

12/10/2016

Oh my goodness: Louis Catorze has burnt himself.

I have no idea where – I checked him over to the best of my ability, dodging the kicks like an Olympic Tae Kwon Do champion, to find no singed fur or skin – but he came indoors a couple of nights ago in a cloud of that unmistakable, gut-wrenching, burnt hair stench. He wasn’t the slightest bit bothered – in fact, he didn’t even seem to be aware of it – but, unsurprisingly, the thought of him rolling about in flames doesn’t fill me with joy.

So, one word: how? Autumn, the season of garden bonfires, may well be here, but only just. Most gardens are still clinging onto the last remains of summer; we even have tomatoes in ours, and you can’t get summerier than that. None of our neighbours have had bonfires lately, and it’s definitely not from cigarette ash because he doesn’t smell smoky, just burnt. So I can only imagine he has sneaked into someone’s house and pitter-pattered headlong into a candle flame. This is not good.

I asked some of our neighbours whether Louis Catorze had ever tried to get into their houses, and 3 of our 4 closest ones confirmed that he had, on more than one occasion. (And the only reason why the 4th neighbour didn’t give the same response is because they weren’t home when I went to ask.) Bert the dog’s folks, rather alarmingly, informed me that they regularly had to fight to keep Catorze out, and that he would persist in trying to get past their door even with Bert growling away on the other side. Oh dear.

Now … do I let them know that at least one of their barricades has failed? Or is this yet another of those moments where an anonymous neighbourhood poster would be more appropriate? “Warning: combustible French cat on the rampage. Watch out when lighting hobs, bonfires and candles.” That should work, oui?
La coupe du Roi

05/10/2016

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?
La fraternité noire

01/10/2016

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

28/09/2016

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.

I 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

23/09/2016

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.
Une livraison spéciale

20/09/2016

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:
Rouler par terre

17/09/2016

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.

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

14/09/2016

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

09/09/2016

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.
Le personnel domestique est de retour

03/09/2016

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.