dogs

Des affaires importantes

~ iamthesunking ~ 22 Comments

The Queen is no longer with us. However, it’s the same old nonsense here at Le Château as far as the King is concerned.

Cat Daddy and I went out the other day, at around 4:30pm, with the intention of feeding Louis Catorze before leaving. But we completely forgot.

The little sod was sound asleep on the outdoor sofa when we left the house and, when he’s not annoying us, it’s actually quite easy to forget to feed him. We only remembered when we were at the pub and tucking into our own meal but, of course, by then, it was too late to do anything about it.

As we journeyed back from our evening out, we chuckled wryly at the prospect of being greeted by an indignant, screaming cat. However, we opened the door to silence and emptiness. Cat Daddy went outside to look for Catorze but there was no sign of him.

This was very unusual, especially as he hadn’t been fed. We were convinced that he would show up soon, bellowing at us for neglecting our duties, but he didn’t. When he still hadn’t returned in the time it had taken us to make some tea, I went out with my torch and searched the garden.

Once again, he was nowhere to be found. Even Cat Daddy had started to worry by this point, and he feared that a red kite, whom he has seen hovering around lately, had managed to have Catorze as an amuse-bouche. As for me, I went to bed mentally planning Catorze’s WANTED poster and feeling a bit sick.

I woke up the next morning, a few minutes before my alarm, to an outraged Catorze, and a message on my phone from Cat Daddy, sent at 00:03, saying that the little sod had just rolled in. I have since found out that, upon finally making an appearance, he scoffed down three scoops of Orijen (his allowance for the WHOLE DAY), sat purring on Cat Daddy’s lap for ten minutes and then went back out “on high alert, as if something were still outside”.

So he wasn’t hungry. And the screaming, the wide-eyes and the circling of his empty bowl like a hungry great white shark, were all lies.

Whatever ICB it was, so pressing that he disappeared all evening and only managed ten minutes of Boys’ Club, appears to be ongoing. Here he is, off again:

En route to Twiggy the greyhound’s place.

The Queen is dead; long live the King.

Les chiens renifleurs

~ iamthesunking ~ 14 Comments

I am back at school and, last week, we had the usual fire safety training. (You’d think it were as simple as “Get everyone out and dial 999” but it’s much more complicated than that, and we have to renew the training every year.)

One thing that absolutely blew our minds was finding out that there are fire investigation dogs who are able to identify whether or not a fire was started deliberately. My colleagues are all animal lovers* so the reaction was as one would imagine:

“Oh my goodness!”

“Wow!”

“That’s so clever!”

“How do they do that?”

“Do you ask them to bark once for accident and twice for arson?”

*My colleagues’ pets include Winston the tabby cat, Luna the calico cat, Waltham the Dalmatian, Frida the Dachshund, Baby and Henry the parrots and a trio of feral foster kittens who haven’t yet been named because they’ve only just arrived.

Tony the fire training officer eventually said, “Right, that’s enough about the dogs. Can we move on now?” But we didn’t. And, during our coffee break, I was typing “fire investigation dogs” into Google and reading the results to a captivated staff room.

Not only can the dogs sniff out whether or not accelerant was used to start a fire, but they can also locate whereabouts on the site it was used, including across multiple rooms/floors and in unobtrusive locations. What unbelievably clever and helpful doggies. Whereas cats, I’m sure, wouldn’t be so obliging. It’s not that they can’t do clever things. They just don’t feel like it.

The fire investigation dogs were probably the second most important and talked-about part of the day, with the first being, erm, the fact that our school can’t fit cars, staff, students AND the fire engine into our tiny car park without trapping people in close proximity to the burning building. So we need to rethink our emergency assembly procedures.

Anyway, here is Simba, one of the fire investigation dogs who featured in our training (pictured here in his work uniform):

Good boy.

And here is Louis Catorze, who would probably start a fire on purpose if he knew that it would send big, strapping firemen rushing to us:

Bad boy.

Une histoire de deux Louis

~ iamthesunking ~ 24 Comments

Louis Catorze saw the vet on Tuesday. He’s had a good run this summer, with his last steroid shot being on 30th June, so we are glad we’ve been able to stretch it out until now.

As ever, the appointment couldn’t possibly have been straightforward and had to be a total comedy. (Funny for everyone else, I mean. Certainly not for me.)

This was the sequence of events on that morning:

1. Feed and water Catorze, as usual, then wait for him to join me on sofa.

2. Hear him gadding about in soft plastics recycling box in the dining room and figure that, as long as I can still hear him, I will be able to locate him when it’s time to go.

3. Gadding-about noises slow to a gentle rustle.

4. Check dining room, just to be sure.

5. No Catorze. Assume he has teleported out.

6. Search house and garden. Conscious of time (appointment in thirty minutes’ time) and start to feel anxious.

7. Wake Cat Daddy and ask him to come downstairs and act as bait to flush out Catorze. He is not pleased.

8. Final sweep of dining room, turning every metaphorical stone in ultra-meticulous CSI fashion. Eventually find Catorze asleep in Deliveroo bag.*

9. Cat Daddy is even more furious that I made him get up for nothing.

10. Bag up Catorze and schlep him to the vet.

11. Arrive at vet practice and Catorze emits a particularly long, rasping scream, startling a dog and his human who is paying their bill.

12. To break awkward silence following scream, I say, “Shush, Louis!” Dog pitter-patters over to me.

13. Dog Daddy: “Oh, is your cat called Louis? So is my dog!”

14. Catorze screams some more. Louis the dog rests his chin on my knee as if to offer me support in this excruciating situation.

15. Vet comes into waiting room and calls, “Louis, please?”

16. Louis the dog obediently pitter-patters into the examination room despite having already been seen.

Is this exceptional responsiveness from Louis the dog … or the ultimate in Catorzian mind control, with the little sod commanding his canine counterpart to take a bullet for him?

Anyway, apart from all that, everything is as it should be. I mentioned to the vet that Catorze’s mats were returning (although none were visible at the appointment, having inexplicably vanished the night before), and she said that we needn’t be concerned unless we could see Catorze struggling to groom certain areas (no) or having difficulty running and jumping (HELL, no).

The vet also checked his front right paw, where he’d managed to get a blob of pungent plant sap on himself a few days ago and now it’s left a hole. Again, nothing to worry about.

It was a relief to discover that this was plant sap. Initially I thought one of the neighbours had finally snapped and put down poison for him.
Post-sap hole.

When we arrived back home, Cat Daddy made his boy do the Chubbing Up Dance when he found out his new, meaty weight of 3.34kg. And, at the time of writing this, they were both enjoying Boys’ Club somewhere.

To scrape some positives from the situation – well, I have to try – at least Le Roi is doing well. Let’s hope that this continues as summer draws to a close and his party season starts.

*Cat Daddy and I have only used Deliveroo once (during that fateful weekend away when he set that kettle on fire), and it was such a shambolic experience that we haven’t used it since. So how we came to have a Deliveroo bag is beyond me.

Big Brother veille sur vous

~ iamthesunking ~ 22 Comments

Is there a link between Facebook and WordPress? I know that they’re not owned by the same people, but is there some sort of creepy algorithmic link, in the same way that every keystroke that we type is monitored somewhere?

I ask this because, since my last post, my Facebook feed has been full of unsavoury animal ads, of which the most alarming was: “Are your dog’s anal glands full?”

Jésus, Marie et Joseph, et le petit âne.

I am shuddering, sweating and bleeding from the eyeballs as these words fall from my once-clean hand, and I pray that it will be the only time I ever have to write this. After today, let us never speak of this again.

Worse yet, the offending ad was a VIDEO. Naturellement, I didn’t watch it all the way through, but what I did see – and what my brain visualised – was enough. Could it be that the mention of animal arses on WordPress somehow triggered Facebook to bombard me with all this?

This is not the first time that we have suspected Them of spying on us. Cat Daddy once had a brief discussion with a friend about a magic wallet into which you could stuff multiple credit cards, without the wallet getting fat and bulky. The next morning, his Facebook feed was full of ads for said wallet.

On another occasion, my students were telling me about some crypto-currency that I’d never heard of, called Moondoggy or some such thing. When I Googled it whilst chatting to them, it was top of my search menu.

Students: “WHAT? It should be, like, the seventh or eighth thing, not the first! They’re listening to us!”

The most bizarre of them all was when Cat Daddy and I were watching Fargo, and we discussed one of the actors having also been in The Usual Suspects. Forty minutes in, we paused the film to get some snacks, then resumed … to find that we no longer recognised the characters or understood the plot. We wondered if Louis Catorze had spiked our popcorn with catnip … until we discovered that we were no longer watching Fargo. We were watching The Usual Suspects. And we weren’t even watching it from the start but from about – yes, you’ve guessed it – forty minutes in.

No, we did not switch films when we paused (and, if we had, we would have started it from the beginning, like normal people). No, we do not have a smart remote control prompted by voice commands, nor do we have Alexa.

Even more peculiar was that I’d made a mistake, and in fact the actor whom we were discussing was NOT in The Usual Suspects. Which disproves the theory that either we or They had somehow summoned a menu of All Films Starring Steve Buscemi, and selected one to start playing randomly from the middle.

Not even my tech-savvy students could explain this one. However, one of them, who has a chat noir and therefore knows exactly what they’re like, said, “Miss, erm … was your cat around at the time?”

“At the apex of the pyramid comes Big Brother. Big Brother is infallible and all-powerful.”

I don’t recall seeing Catorze but, of course, that doesn’t mean he wasn’t there. I would definitely remember, however, if he’d sat on the remote and switched films with his arse.

OH GOD, WE ARE BACK TO ANIMAL ARSES AGAIN.

On that note, here is Freya, whose fluffy hindquarters started off this whole thing:

“You mock my arse? You can kiss my arse!”

It wouldn’t surprise me if Freya were the mastermind behind all this.

Meanwhile, I am mystified by how They can be clever enough to know that I mentioned animal arses, but not clever enough to pick up on the tone and to understand that I was talking about my AVERSION to them. If it were all some marketing ploy to sell me dog anal gland cream/pills/whatever, They have failed.

However, one thing in which They HAVE succeeded is getting me to buy is more vodka – lots of it – to numb the trauma.

Hors de ma vue! Tu infectes mes yeux!

~ iamthesunking ~ 26 Comments

*WARNING: CONTAINS GRAPHIC DESCRIPTIONS OF CAT ARSE*

Anyone who knows me knows that a cat’s rear end is my least favourite part of it. In fact, I’d go as far as to say it’s one of my least favourite things in the world. I would rather face War, Famine, Death or whatever the fourth Horseman of the Apocalypse is, or even all four at once, than have anything to do with a cat’s arse.

Obviously the only solution to this is finding a cat with no arse, which is unlikely to happen unless someone in a lab were to create a genetically-modified Doctor Doolittle-style push-me-pull-you thing (younger followers, ask your parents). But a short-haired cat is a reasonable compromise. Hairless cats have everything permanently on display, with no barrier whatsoever between the arse and your furniture. And long-haired cats, whilst the arse is concealed from view, can have all manner of unspeakable horrors lurking within the depths of that fur.

On Saturday Cat Daddy and I went to Leicestershire and, whilst there, we visited one of Louis Catorze’s favourite pilgrims, who lives with her husband and FOUR feline overlords. And the cats very generously allow two dogs to lodge in their house, too.

Indy and Dyson (with Cat-and-Dog Daddy reflected in the television, encouraging them to look in the right direction.)
A visual representation of what Indy’s tail feels like when he wallops your leg with it. (He is a VERY happy dog.)

Upon arrival, we became acquainted with the canine contingent and three-quarters of the feline contingent. As ever, when meeting other cats, I kept saying “They’re ENORMOUS!” over and over again when, in actual fact, this is what all normal cats are supposed to look like.

Draco, initially shy but soon gave in to cuddles and play.
Pumpkin, who struts into other people’s houses and makes himself at home.
Weasley, the smallest of the bunch (but still much bigger than Catorze).

Cat-and-Dog Daddy brought the fourth cat – a stunning, long-haired beauty named Freya – to us and she pitter-pattered elegantly around us as we talked, with her fluffy tail aloft. As she did so, I noticed solid matter stuck to her hindquarters.

Be careful where you put your hand.

Me: “Freya’s got something stuck to her arse.”

Cat-and-Dog Mamma: “Oh, has she?”

Me: “I think it’s a leaf. It’s definitely a leaf, isn’t it? Isn’t it? Please tell me it’s a leaf. PLEASE TELL ME IT’S A LEAF.”

Cat-and-Dog Mamma, glancing at Freya’s arse: “Erm … no.

Saint. Jésus.

Freya then pitter-pattered off. I had awful visions of her returning to us with the offending substance still affixed to her arse … or, worse, returning to us with the it NOT affixed to her arse and the Cat-and-Dog Parents having to do the Chasse de Trésor around the house.

I don’t know how the offending substance was eventually dealt with, and I didn’t ask because I was too busy thanking the universe that Freya didn’t deposit it onto my lap.

Freya is OUTRAGED that her lower portions are being discussed.

Never did I think I would be GRATEFUL for the Catorzian arse, yet here I am. If my only direct dealings with it involve colouring in photos using the iPhone’s black markup tool, I have got off lightly. As for indirect contact, I don’t want to know. If I thought too hard about where Catorze’s arse had been, I would never touch anything in Le Château again.

Nicely in shadow, just the way it should be.

Des substances qui améliorent la performance

~ iamthesunking ~ 24 Comments

Cat Daddy and I are off on holiday today. At a time when petrol prices are astronomical, what better thing to do than, erm, a two-week road trip?

Earlier this week we took Louis Catorze to the vet for his steroid injection. To be honest he wasn’t desperately in need, but our other options were to wait until we returned home from holiday (nope) or have our chat-sitteur take him to the vet (hell, nope).

Our cleaning lady started vacuuming just before we set off for the appointment, and the sound of the vacuum cleaner turns Catorze into a feral, screaming hell-beast. So that didn’t really help us. However, at least no dogs were waiting in the Dog Area. When that happens, it never goes well.

Once, when I arrived at the surgery, there was an Oscar the dog lookalike in the Dog Area. Although Catorze and I obediently complied with the apartheid system and sat in the Cat Area, the reception is fairly small. So the opposing factions were able to eyeball each other across the room like the Jets and the Sharks in West Side Story, and it was only a matter of time until one of them decided to start the altercation. I imagine it was Catorze, although I can’t remember for sure. My brain appears to have blocked it out, the way that brains do with traumatic events if they know that you won’t be able to cope with them.

“I don’t know why he’s doing this,” the Dog Daddy said, apologetically, of his dog. “He doesn’t usually mind cats.”

More barking from the Oscar dog, more screaming from Catorze and more apologies from the Dog Daddy followed.

“What’s your cat usually like with dogs?”

Jésus, Marie et Joseph, et le petit âne; let’s not even go there. Luckily the Oscar dog was then called into the examination room, so I was spared the horror of having to have that conversation. “He torments the shit out of them” probably wouldn’t have sounded great.

Anyway, the little sod’s dose kicked in the day after this latest appointment and, whilst I was packing, he followed me around, walking across all my clothes, screaming his little guts out. The only thing that shut him up was me picking him up and holding him, so I had to finish packing one-handed.

One of my friends suggested that perhaps Catorze felt sad that we were leaving. I’d say it were drugs, general idiocy or a combination of the two.

Glassy-eyed and ready to cause havoc.

Le Premier Chat

~ iamthesunking ~ 19 Comments

Louis Catorze is delighted that one of his comrades has infiltrated moved into the White House. And he is not remotely surprised to learn that the cat chose them, and not vice versa, when she decided to join Dr Biden on stage during her husband’s presidential campaign.

I imagined that Catorze would be somewhat affronted that the cat’s name is Willow (sweet and delicate) whereas the Bidens’ dog is called Commander (authoritative and strong). After all, it will be a cold day in hell before any self-respecting cat allows themselves to be commanded by a dog. However, don’t be fooled. This is clearly a ruse on Willow’s part, to trick us with her dainty, pretty name before unleashing her malevolence onto the world.

I’ve seen this kind of thing before. The most evil cat I have ever known was Missy, one of my childhood/early adulthood cats: prissy name, minuscule size (smaller than Catorze, which takes some doing) and a barely-audible, breathy squeak of a meow, yet with the kind of psychopathic mind that would make most serial killers shudder. I still have the remains of a scar on my wrist that I repeatedly had to explain throughout my late teens because it looked like a self-harm mark.

Missy also used her nefarious ways to brainwash her feline counterparts. Her long-term consort, Rambo (younger followers: ask your parents), was a docile cuddlebug and a non-hunter when he first arrived but, after Missy’s Mansonesque indoctrination, he changed. My sister once caught him on our upper floor landing, crunching the headless corpse of a huge rabbit twice the size of Missy and which she would never have been able to drag through the cat flap alone. Had they been humans, she would have been the criminal mastermind and he, the brainless muscle who dutifully buried the bodies and scrubbed down the crime scene.

Rambo (tuxedo) and Missy (tortie cult leader), pictured in July 1994.

Commander the dog may be commanding in name, but Willow the cat is the one we need to watch. Would you trust a cat who had access to both The Mothership AND the nuclear launch codes?

Just Biden her time (picture from today.com).

Les chat-parents sont de retour

~ iamthesunking ~ 19 Comments

Cat Daddy and I are back from our trip to the south coast. We had a marvellous time despite the fact that not a drop of alcohol passed my lips due to the antibiotics, and it was lovely to catch up with family and old friends.

Barney and Bandit (below) were the surprise hit of our few days away. We are cat people, they are DOGS and never the twain shall meet, and so on, but, after the initial barkathon calmed down, they were affectionate, playful and, most importantly, DID NOT SLOBBER ON US. They loved the treats that we brought them, although I donned a plastic glove in order to dish them out because I didn’t want to touch the gross chicken feet. (I know, I know: if I’m happy to touch chicken breasts when cooking, I should be equally happy to touch chicken feet. But I’m not. Make of that what you will.)

Barney and Bandit, with their favourite toys.

Upon our return we found Le Château sparklingly clean and in perfect order, and a cat who greeted us with utter insouciance. To be honest we stopped expecting burning embers, wailing sirens and circling ravens a long time ago, because we know by now that Louis Catorze behaves utterly flawlessly for others. This is great, because it means we are never short of people who want to look after him despite his antics on Le Blog, but it’s also irritating as hell because it makes us look stupid when we complain about his behaviour.

Not only was he the perfect angel for our chat-sitteur, with the pair of them cosying up to watch films together, but he also posed for the best pictures with her. This one below was taken on Boxing Day, but wouldn’t it have made a great Official 2021 Winter Solstice Portrait? I’m pretty sure he’s saying, “Merci for looking after moi”.

You can’t beat a bit of creepy French horror. And the film was quite good too.

Le parc à chiens

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I have just had the last of my set of cycling lessons with Cat Daddy’s friend Gerard. (It was supposed to happen ages ago, but then I had appendicitis and somehow I haven’t got around to rearranging it until now.)

We usually choose Monday morning as our cycling day, because there are fewer people in the parks than on a weekend. However: DOGS. Mon Dieu. Cycling in a park with dogs is like cycling in and out of moving land mines.

The horrors we were forced to endure during our last session included the following:

1. A russet-coloured sausage dog who sat stone-still in the middle of the path whilst his human was on the phone*, then sprang out in front of me just as we attempted to overtake him. The human did apologise but it was a dismissive kind of “Sorry” … and she remained on the phone.

2. A large, honey-coloured Labrador-type beast who chased us, barking, whilst his human was on the phone*. Gerard decided to bark back at him, which scared him witless and sent him packing.

3. A brown and white spaniel-type thing who offered us his stick, whilst his human was on the phone*. Gerard picked it up and threw it just a fraction of a second before his brain informed him that doing so was a legally-binding contract and that, from that moment onwards, he was obliged to keep throwing the stick forever more. We then had to cycle extra fast to get away from him.

*Do you see a pattern emerging here?

Cats, surely, are less trouble than this? Well, ok, Louis Catorze isn’t. But most normal cats are, right?

Catorze can be seen here, pondering that question and also wondering exactly who these “normal cats” might be:

Sa Maj says “normal” is overrated.

De nouvelles aventures

~ iamthesunking ~ 20 Comments

We have some very sad news: last week we said au revoir to the Dog Family, who have moved away. I might add that this was not because of Louis Catorze. Well, that’s what they told us, at least.

Living next door to them was the best thing in the world, and I feel quite bereft without them. We had so much fun together, especially during the first lockdown with our over-the-fence barbecues, and the riotous Full Moon Hallowe’en when they came to our outdoor party dressed as Catorze (yes, all three of them, dressed as Catorze, fangs and all). Luckily they are still local and close enough for us to walk to their new place, but not so close that Catorze could find out where they live and go over to annoy Disco the dog.

Sa Maj will truly miss Dog Sister, who was his best buddy and who would always take his side during altercations with Disco’s predecessor Oscar the dog, even when it was Catorze’s fault (which it always was). He knew her voice and would respond to it before he could even see her; in fact, if she was out in the garden, he would sometimes hop over the fence and have cuddles with her. So that she can keep getting her vampire kitty fix, we have given Dog Sister this – whatever “this” may be – to keep her company:

The resemblance is quite striking.

I know. You’re speechless, right? She was, too.

We wish the Dog Family every happiness in their new home, and hope that we will still continue to be regular visitors to each other. We also hope that their new neighbours have well-behaved pets who mind their own business.

Les premiers jours de Disco

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Mesdames et Messieurs, this is Disco, the new addition to the Dog Family’s household:

Sweet boy.

He is every bit as cuddly as he looks. And, when we got home from meeting him, Louis Catorze sniffed me and gave the same look that he gives when things smell vetty: https://louiscatorze.com/2021/04/20/lalpha-et-lomega/

Naturellement the Dog Family are overjoyed to have Disco join them, especially Dog Sister who finally gets to be a BIG sister. We used to tease her about having to respect her elders and do what they say (because Oscar was older). However, she remains younger than Catorze so there is still some mileage in that.

Curiously, the day before Disco’s arrival, it was as if the feline contingent knew something was afoot. Donnie swung by after several days’ absence to make an urgent and loud announcement to Catorze, after which the chats noirs held an emergency COBRA* meeting in Le Jardin.

*Cats On Bumper Red Alert

“The age of a new foe is nigh, mon gars. We must assemble our armée.”

On Disco Day itself, Sa Maj popped next door to, erm, welcome his new neighbour. We didn’t witness the encounter for ourselves, but we had to stand there squirming with shame whilst the Dog Family – who DID witness it – told us all about it.

Not only were there raised hackles and glaring on Catorze’s part, but there was also a demonic Hallowe’en-cat yowl (not very gentlemanly given that he was the one who was trespassing). Then the Dog Family watched him snake along the fence into our garden and come in through the newly-secured and impinger-impenetrable Sureflap, so I couldn’t even pretend that it might have been Donnie.

Oh dear.

I hope that, once Disco has settled in, he and Catorze might eventually become friends. But I fear that Oscar may have left Roi-specific instructions on invisible Post-It notes for his little brother, saying, “Bark first, ask questions later.”

Ça commence à beaucoup ressembler au solstice d’hiver

~ iamthesunking ~ 8 Comments

2020 really is the year that keeps on giving, right to the bitter end: our tree was supposed to have been delivered last week but, the day before the scheduled delivery, the supplier called to let us know that their shipment of trees wasn’t up to standard and therefore they were very sorry but they wouldn’t be delivering.

Now, compared to what we’ve already experienced of this cirque de merde of a year, no tree is hardly the end of the world – at least, not for us. But, for the poor tree man, this is just the worst thing ever; as well as his business being royally shafted, he was having to call every customer to let them know that Christmas was ruined, and I can imagine one or two of them being quite bratty and princessy about it.

He sounded so upset and frustrated, and we felt so bad for him, that we told him not to worry about refunding us. And, instead of our usual outdoor tree, we have decorated our bare virginia creeper skeleton with baubles and lights. If you followed Le Blog last year you will know that one of our household traditions is for Louis Catorze to have his own indoor tree, so we have brought in our potted bay tree from The Front for him, just in case you were concerned about him being treeless this year.

Cat Daddy: “Literally nobody was concerned about that.”

So we have our outdoor winter wonderland at The Back, Catorze’s bay tree in the living room, and a stunning wreath made for us by Puppy Mamma at The Front. And, whilst we were putting it all up, somehow the Yuletide spirit seemed to give Sa Maj a much-needed burst of energy after a day or two of slumpy inactivity (most likely powering up for his next bit of mischief) and, throughout the whole process, he pitter-pattered around us, bug-eyed and screaming.

We are so looking forward to the winter solstice and to the lighter days which will, we hope, bring a happier year.

Catorze’s special tree, with bespoke decorations.
Puppy Mamma’s super-stylish handmade wreath. She managed to keep the dogs’ chops away from it this time.

Le bal masqué

~ iamthesunking ~ 14 Comments

Cat Daddy: “What were you ordering from Amazon at 7:30 this morning?”

MERDE. I keep forgetting that the order notifications go through to his phone and not mine.

Me: “Erm …”

Him: “???”

Me: “Erm … ahem … Hallowe’en costumes for [Puppy Mamma]’s dogs.”

Him: “[Unrepeatable expletives]”

Me: “…”

Him: “Does she know that you’re buying them?”

Me: “Yes. She was going to buy some anyway.”

Him: “So why couldn’t you just let her be stupid on her own? Why did you have to be stupid as well?”

[Silence, tumbleweed, crickets]

Anyway, when he saw the photos he laughed. And, as we all know, once laughter takes place it automatically invalidates the right to criticise.

Here are the Nala the dog and Gizzy the [insert name of species] trying out their costumes. Louis Catorze, of course, is smug in the knowledge that he doesn’t need a costume because he’s scary enough as he is.

Photo created by Puppy Mamma – and she couldn’t resist including an evil-looking, fanged Catorze.

Le repas du chien

~ iamthesunking ~ 8 Comments

When I started planning my blog posts for October, I decided that I’d like to write about my horror movie nights with Louis Catorze. This was supposed to be that very post. Sitting in the living room and watching horror movies together is something that we both find great fun. However, instead, it’s a post about this:

Yum.

You’re welcome.

Oui, Mesdames et Messieurs: someone has broken into a store of dog food, brought some back here and dumped it on the outdoor sofa in our garden.

Now, my prime suspect was originally Foxy Loxy. I was so sure that I didn’t even consider any other culprits. However, as Cat Daddy has since pointed out, and having now thought about it, we have neither seen nor heard him/them for some time, plus I can’t imagine it being his/their style to leave food behind. Quite the opposite, in fact: foxes eat anything, and I could tell you toe-curling stories of vile, medical-waste-grade stuff that they’ve eaten from our bins over the years.

Catorze is an unlikely suspect but he should not be eliminated from our enquiries, as he is more than capable of pulling a stunt like this. That time that Cat Daddy found a desiccated, curly-haired rat in EXACTLY THIS SAME SPOT was startlingly similar: https://louiscatorze.com/2016/08/14/a-bon-chat-bon-rat/

Our initial thoughts were that someone in our neighbourhood must have an outdoor store of dog food, but then Sa Maj is more than adept at breaking into people’s houses using teleportation and/or his Cloak of Invisibility: That Neighbour has found him screaming on his landing at least once (that I know of), and our previous neighbour from W13 once thought she had mice but, when she investigated the scrabbling sound under her bed, she discovered that it was Catorze.

When I told the good folk of TW8 (via social media) to pay greater attention to their stores of dog food, the general consensus of those that know him was that Catorze could well have done this. I try to tell them that it can’t possibly be him because he doesn’t like food that much and he’s not well, but I wonder if I sound like some deluded fool who is just trying to convince myself.

Here is the little sod, not at his best health-wise but apparently well enough to break into other people’s property and steal a dog’s food just for fun:

“It wasn’t moi.”