food

Quand les mouettes suivent un chalutier

~ iamthesunking ~ 16 Comments

I have just been screamed at whilst making, and eating, a tuna mayonnaise sandwich.

I don’t know where Louis Catorze was when I started making it but, as soon as I opened the can of tuna, it flushed him out of his mystery hiding place place and the noise started. And it went on. And on. AND ON.

If you have ever had a cat, known a cat or even glimpsed one from a distance, you will know that they like tuna. But this is Catorze, and Catorze is not interested in food for humans. I have opened cans of tuna at least 8,063 times since he was crowned Roi du Château, and he has either shown mild interest, only to refuse any scraps offered, or not shown any interest at all.

I tried to fob him off with some Orijen, but he wasn’t having any of it, clearly knowing that the tantalising aroma swirling through the air was something else. He wanted tuna. But, after The Great Salmon Grab and the highly stressful two-day hunger strike that ensued, I had learned my lesson; this time, I wouldn’t be offering him any scraps.

Finally, when I had finished, it dawned on him that he wasn’t going to get any tuna. So he settled on my lap, had a good wash and went to sleep. But it was a bitter wash, and a nap oozing with resentment.

What is HAPPENING? And what kind of a state of affairs is it when I don’t even blink at the more sinister, occultist Catorzian capers, yet him wanting tuna makes me question life, the universe and everything?

In his happy place with Cat Daddy.

Le printemps est inexorable

~ iamthesunking ~ 18 Comments

It’s official: Cat Daddy has banned the Spring Zing from Le Château. I’m not sure how to keep it out, but I imagine we’ll be covering the windows in tin foil and nailing the doors shut. It’ll be like The Mist meets The Purge, only much less fun because we’ll be sealing the antagonist inside the house with us.

Louis Catorze has lost the plot. On Friday morning he jumped onto Cat Daddy’s record deck and knocked one of our favourite ornaments onto the floor. It didn’t break (although it was already chipped from a previous fall – can you guess how that happened?), but now it’s rolled under the sofa and I can’t reach it.

Immediately after dropping the ornament, he did this:

What even is this? A victory dance? A goal celebration? Nobody knows.

That evening, the shenanigans continued. Catorze jumped onto the side table by the window in the living room, to inform us that he wanted to go out at The Front. He has done this 8,642 times without mishap but, on this occasion, his fat arse knocked Cat Daddy’s favourite mug* off the table, sending tea and broken china in all directions. Unrepeatable Expletives of the Worst Kind were yelled at Catorze (including that really bad one), and I mean YELLED. If you live down our street, you probably heard this. Sorry.

*I Googled it, to buy him another one, and it costs £24. Yes, for one mug. Gaah.

Me, to Catorze: “Aww. Your daddy didn’t mean to call you that name.”

Cat Daddy: “…”

Me, to Cat Daddy: “You didn’t, did you?”

Cat Daddy: “What do you mean? Of course I ****ing did.”

It’s also been kicking off at Maison Blue, although this is Cat Daddy’s doing, not Blue’s. Cat Daddy locked Blue’s keys in the house during one feed, so we couldn’t get in to do the next one. We had to resort to shoving handfuls of Orijen through the letterbox – again – until Blue’s human sister rescued the key and handed it back to us. And, although I have previously icked at the thought of cats drinking water from gross places, this time I’m actually glad because at least his mamma’s bird bath water kept him going.

All this, and it’s not even a full moon yet?

I also checked to see whether Mercury Retrograde was imminent, and it is. Very. Will Le Château even still be standing by then?

Not even Count Dracula, hanging behind Le Roi, can bear to watch the bullshittery unfold.

Des bonbons ou un sort?

~ iamthesunking ~ 23 Comments

Remember when Louis Catorze loved his new itchy cat treats?

Yeah, well, now he doesn’t.

The little sod ate the first couple with considerable enthusiasm, even though I’d just fed him, so I thought we were onto a winner. But it didn’t last. And, bizarrely, he doesn’t seem to have changed his mind about them; it’s more that he doesn’t notice them anymore. If I put them in front of him, he doesn’t see them.

I know. It’s weird.

Cutting up the treats makes them crumble to pieces and release much more of their aroma than they did when they were whole pieces. But this still isn’t enough for him to notice.

I then put some of the dust onto his fur in the hope that he would groom it off. He didn’t. So, as I drank my morning green tea and mentally prepared for the day, I was stuck with a gritty, meaty-smelling cat on my lap.

Blue the Smoke Bengal, who is also an itchy cat, is now the beneficiary of the treats, and he certainly won’t let them go to waste. So at least ONE cat in TW8 will be less itchy.

Here is Catorze’s powdery, pulsing belly. You’re welcome:

Ugh.

Se gratter un bon coup

~ iamthesunking ~ 19 Comments

Usually, when Louis Catorze needs his next steroid shot, he will start scratching again, and this becomes more and more intense until we take him to the vet. The vet usually has plenty of availability, but occasionally we have had to wait. And, when the building housing the veterinary practice undergoes its long-awaited refurbishment, who knows how long we will have to wait? (In fact, who knows where we will even go?)

I recently had Nutri-Paw supplements pop up on my social media feed, and I decided to try out their itchiness and immunity treats, in the hope that it might make Catorze more comfortable between vet appointments. And, at £19.99 per pot (or a bit less, if we subscribe) versus £80 per steroid shot, it had to be worth a punt, non?

Yes to all of the above.

As we are all aware, Le Roi is a ludicrously fussy eater, and buying something that we WANT him to like is usually a guarantee that he won’t touch it. So I made sure that Blue the Smoke Bengal – who happily eats anything that isn’t nailed down – was on standby to receive the treats in the very likely event of them being rejected.

My plan was for these to feature in Catorze’s life as a Dreamies-type treat. Because I wanted him to like them but not love them so much that he refused his Orijen, I gave him one treat far away from his feeding station, in the hope that his silly brain would somehow register it as a different from his Orijen, rather than a replacement for it.

And, astonishingly, he ate one. Nobody was more surprised than I, that the biggest hurdle was cleared with such ease.

These will make the perfect snack for fending off the creepy staring, during those times when he acts hungry but we know that, if we go to his bowl and fill it, he will just sniff it and walk away.

However, despite being light as air, these things are too large to fit into the teeny-tiny Catorzian bouche, so I have to cut them in half. And they’re quite brittle and crumbly, so this is a messy task. I don’t mind it too much, but Cat Daddy will be swearing with every breath and turning the air blue with Unrepeatable Expletives if I ask him to do it. (That said, he swears about Catorze’s dandruffy fur, too, so he can’t have it both ways.)

Catorze has been looking rather scruffy of late and, when I brush him, rather than ridding his coat of dandruff, it seems to dredge up more. Let’s hope that I can manage the cutting in half, and have him looking glossy and chic in time for his birthday in two months’ time.

Oh, and let’s also hope they respond to my email to suggest, erm, a kitten version of the treat, suitable for little mouths.

If you’re interested in trying out Nutri-Paw, have a look here.

A calming treat, y’say? Tell me more.

Ni manger, ni vivre (Partie 3)

~ iamthesunking ~ 28 Comments

Saint Jésus et tous ses anges: Louis Catorze is eating normally. Nobody understands why he’s conceded, but he has, and we will happily take it.

I am so glad I didn’t follow the stupid advice of my friends – YOU KNOW WHO YOU ARE – who told me to just give him the Michelin-starred hot-smoked salmon. I have been determined to stay strong throughout this whole escapade, hearing Charles de Gaulle’s voice in my ear telling me not surrender under any circumstances. I wouldn’t object to giving him (Catorze, I mean, not Charles de Gaulle) the salmon if he were on his deathbed, but certainly not whilst he’s perfectly healthy and just taking the piss.

And now my efforts have paid off, because I just put his Orijen in his bowl and he eats it. I don’t even need to bother with the hot water anymore.

The question is: how long will this last? And will there be some new, unanticipated twist to this whole saga sometime later? Lobster bisque drizzled atop the Orijen, perhaps? Or hot scallop consommé misted over the Orijen from a diamond-encrusted atomiser?

He’s still a bastard cat.

Ni manger, ni vivre (Partie 2)

~ iamthesunking ~ 44 Comments

Although The Great Salmon Grab was ages ago, its effects have been hard-hitting and far-reaching.

Louis Catorze is eating, but there is something strange about the way he’s doing it. I once described it as “reluctant”, but that implies a certain – albeit very low – level of cooperation, and this isn’t really what’s happening. It’s more “resentful” than “reluctant”. Maybe even “bitter”. Can one eat a meal “bitterly”? Well, Catorze can and does, presumably to protest about the fact that no further Michelin-starred hot-smoked salmon has been forthcoming.

“Feed moi. With saumon fumé.”

Whilst he can take or leave his own food, he’s obsessed with ours. Since The Great Salmon Grab, he has lunged for the following:

⁃ Avocado

⁃ Peanuts

⁃ Salmon pâté (ok, I guess I was asking for trouble with this one)

⁃ Blueberries and kefir

⁃ Home-made salted caramel sauce

⁃ A cup of silver tip white tea

It’s over, isn’t it? The joyous, golden époque when we were able to eat whatever we wanted without incident, and even leave food unattended, is no more. We are now forced to deal with bullying and intimidation at the hands of this tiny, toothy despot.

Coincidentally, Catorze’s cat-cousin Otis seems to have received the same food memo: my sister caught him on the kitchen worktop the other day, tucking into the leftover apple pie. The bastards are all at it.

Every time I prepare a meal, I look for Catorze to try to determine whether I’ll be eating in peace or batting him away like an annoying wasp who’s after my orange juice. And my mind drifts to how those few careless seconds have permanently altered our existence. Oh, and Cat Daddy still blames me. In fact, if I appear annoyed with him about anything, he retorts, “Just because YOUR dinner got stolen by a cat, don’t have a go at me.”

Catorze has ruined everything and, furthermore, he’s made it all look like my fault. What a horrid beast he is.

Ni manger, ni vivre

~ iamthesunking ~ 22 Comments

If you could un-invent something, what would it be?

Hot-smoked salmon. I’m not joking.

We have had a trying few days here at Le Château. Since The Great Salmon Grab, every time I headed for the kitchen, Louis Catorze would pitter-patter after me and sit expectantly by his bowl, hoping beyond hope that some hot-smoked salmon would appear in it, or that Marcus Wareing would knock at the door and serve something fit for a Sun King.

Neither of these things happened.

The abject disappointment that ensued triggered the most mournful and gut-wrenching whining I had ever heard. When I filled his bowl with food, and he saw that it was disgusting Orijen slop and not Michelin-starred hot-smoked salmon, he would walk away.

On one occasion, when I filled his bowl, I said, “You’d better not just walk away.”

He didn’t; he RAN away. And I mean raced off at top speed, as if I had served him live scorpions.

Cat Daddy: “He’s a ****. He won’t ****ing eat any of it. He wants salmon. And, God, that noise. That stupid ****ing whining noise.”

Catorze, very quietly and sadly, and with the pitch starting high and finishing low: “Maooooou!”

Cat Daddy, animatedly, pointing at Catorze: “Yes, THAT noise! I’m ****ing sick of it.”

Friends even suggested just giving him the salmon, but I didn’t dare; Cat Daddy was already blaming me for this whole thing, firstly for “giving him the salmon in the first place” (this wasn’t quite how it happened, but tant pis) and then for not grabbing the plate away quickly enough and therefore “letting him think that the salmon was for him”, so it was probably best not to make things worse. However, he later added that, gram for gram, the salmon was probably still cheaper than the Orijen.

After two days of hunger strike I was almost ready to take Catorze to the vet and beg for help, even though we had only recently been and the vet had confirmed that there was nothing wrong and he was just taking the piss*.

*Not the actual words used by the vet.

Then, suddenly and inexplicably, either the gods relented and decided to stop torturing us, or the planets shifted into a more auspicious alignment, or Catorze simply couldn’t be bothered to keep up the drama anymore, and SOMETHING happened. He just ate. Merci à Dieu: he ate. He didn’t eat much but, at this point, we didn’t care about quantity and were grateful for anything at all.

So now we no longer have an anorexic cat, and Cat Daddy is about 0.1% less cross with me and Catorze. All is not quite fully well with the world, but this is better than the torment of the last few days.

Communing with Satan to say, “How did I do, mon pote?”

Le roi pêcheur

~ iamthesunking ~ 28 Comments

What is your favourite animal?

Not cats. Not anymore. Not after this.

Bastard cat. I’m going to put him in an Uber and send him to someone’s house. I don’t know whose house. I don’t care whose house. It could be yours, so watch out.

I came home on Wednesday night absolutely exhausted from work, and I was about to sit down and eat my dinner when I saw that Louis Catorze’s water was running low. So I put my plate on the coffee table, picked up his water glass and went to the kitchen to refill … and, when I returned, I was met with this absolute horror show:

Saint Jésus.

Now, before you berate me for leaving my food unattended, I have done so around 8,632 times in the past and Catorze has never behaved like this, not once. I used to joke to fellow cat freaks that I would put my dinner on the floor and leave the room, just because I could. However, those glorious days have clearly melted away like frost in the morning sun, and now we are never going to be able to trust the little sod around food again.

This is a life-changing event at Le Château.

“You stopped to take a picture?” Well, what would have been the purpose of whipping away the plate at this point? I certainly wasn’t going to eat the food after this (although Cat Daddy, who is cross with me for “wasting food”, says that he would).

After he’d gorged himself on my dinner – hot-smoked salmon sourced from a fancy place which supplies high-end hotels and restaurants – Catorze was no longer interested in the boring Orijen that I’d just served him. He sniffed it, walked away, then sat on the stairs, looking pleased with himself, thinking about what he’d done and, no doubt, knowing that he’d do it again in an instant:

The devil himself.

My friend, when I told her about the incident: “What’s the moon doing right now?”

The moon:

Holy shit.

Manger pour vivre

~ iamthesunking ~ 39 Comments

What snack would you eat right now?

Clearly nothing. Bastard cat.

Cat Daddy and I can’t abide food waste. So it really hurts us to be throwing away perfectly edible Orijen – especially as it’s more expensive than cocaine and gold combined – just because a certain little shit doesn’t like the way we’ve served it.

One of the benefits of Louis Catorze was that he didn’t have set mealtimes. So not only were we able to give him food if we were going out, knowing that he would happily eat it later when he was hungry, but we could tell chat-sitteurs to feed him when it suited them, not upon his command. However, if you’re having to pour boiling water onto his food, he doesn’t like it if it’s been left to soak in for ages. Once the food has absorbed too much water and gone soggy, he’s not interested.

The obvious answer to this would be to feed him only when he looks hungry. I thought this was a pretty foolproof method when it came to minimising waste: just wait until he’s circling his plate like a hungry saltwater crocodile and screaming bloody murder, right? Well, so I thought … until he looked at my labour-intensive offering, sniffed it, walked away and went outside.

He’d just been screaming for me to hurry up, SECONDS BEFOREHAND.

Cat Daddy noticed the same thing, and wondered whether Catorze just liked to know before going out that there would be food there when he returned. I can’t imagine how any animal would have evolved to think this – after all, leaving food unattended in the wild would mean some impinger taking advantage, non?

So now we can’t feed him if he’s not asking for food, nor can we feed him if he IS asking for food.

We don’t understand this animal. Someone, please, help us out here.

Weird little beast with Photoshop-effect alien eyes.

Garni de l’eau chaude

~ iamthesunking ~ 29 Comments

This is the current status for each of us here at Le Château:

Me: boiling a kettle in order to serve 0.3ml of boiling water to a cat.

Cat Daddy: shouting at me for boiling a kettle for such a minuscule amount of water when there’s a global energy crisis.*

Louis Catorze: enjoying his life of hot meals and chubbing up nicely, merci for asking.

*It’s not great, but it’s better than running the hot tap for ages until it reaches the required temperature, non? And I make a cup of tea for myself from the same kettle of water, so as not to be wasteful. Yes, that’s right: even if I don’t really want a cup of tea at that moment, I have one anyway just to be able to tell myself that I haven’t put the kettle on just for my cat.

Feeding Catorze is now quite the Herculean labour. Sometimes he sits by his plate, waiting patiently. At other times, he circles me like a hungry saltwater crocodile, screaming and screaming. And, of course, sometimes the pellets soak up too much water for Sa Maj’s liking, so we have to throw them away. But the little sod is eating, so we have, at least, achieved our objective.

However, we can’t help wondering what on earth made him decide to stop eating normally in the first place.

Are his teeth giving him trouble again?**

Did he want hot food because it’s cold outside (and, if so, how did he know that going on hunger strike would do the trick)?

Is he losing his sense of smell in his old age and finding that cold food just doesn’t have much scent-appeal, whereas hot food smells like a fine dining tasting menu?

Is it an evolutionary thing, whereby hot food more closely resembles a freshly-killed mouse or rat (eurgh)?

Was he bored of his food?

Or did he just think, “I wonder what the pathetic humans will do if I starve myself?”?

I shall await your suggestions as to which option might be correct …

**UPDATE: a trip to the vet has confirmed that there is nothing wrong with his teeth.

Hark! Is that the sound of a kettle boiling?

La nourriture qui réchauffe

~ iamthesunking ~ 41 Comments

Louis Catorze hasn’t been eating much lately. We had initially put this down the fact that he does nothing all day but, one morning, I came downstairs to feed him and his bowl wasn’t empty. In fact, it was three-quarters full and, judging from what Cat Daddy later said about how much food he’d given him before bed, the little sod hadn’t touched it all night. I then wondered if something could be wrong.

He doesn’t look as if anything is wrong: he’s perfectly wide-eyed, energetic and vocal. But he’s a huge liar and con artist, so we couldn’t trust him as far as we could spit.

Psycho kitty.

On that particular occasion, I emptied away his old food and gave him a new serving. He sniffed it, then looked at me and let out a disappointed whine, as if to say, “And what do you call THIS shit?” Then, when I poured a spoonful of boiling water over half of the food, he guzzled down the lot, with audible “Nyom nyom nyom” sounds.

Oh dear. So we’re back to this again.

The last time around, it was because his teeth were troubling him. This time, because he ate the dry pieces of Orijen as well as the watered ones, and because he hasn’t been eating messily, which is usually a sign of tooth bother, I’m inclined to think he’s just taking the piss. Not that it makes any difference because, even if this is the case, Catorze is SUCH a massive sod that he will starve himself before eating less-than-perfect food (or perfect food served in a less-than-perfect fashion).

At least he’s eating. And, thanks to one of his lovely pilgrims, he has his own antique Louis XIV silver spoon with which I can measure out the boiling water. But what a pain in the arse.

UPDATE: a couple of hours after guzzling his first breakfast, this is what Catorze did:

1. Requested a second breakfast.

2. Five minutes of parkour around the house, skidding on the floorboards like Bambi on ice (younger followers: ask your parents).

3. Escaped out at The Front.

4. Screamed bloody murder at the window for me to let him in, startling a dog walker in the park.

5. Third breakfast.

6. Rodent Duty in the snow. IN THE SNOW.

He’s fine, isn’t he?

It’s bloody freezing. He doesn’t care.

Noël, que du bonheur

~ iamthesunking ~ 32 Comments

I don’t have many memories of childhood Christmas celebrations, but the one thing that stands out is the time when cat shenanigans caused utter chaos.

My aunt had just made the brandy butter to accompany our Christmas pudding, not imagining that it would have the slightest cat appeal. She left it unguarded for 0.3 seconds and, when she looked back again, our cat, Misha, was on the worktop with his head in the bowl, eyeball-deep in that heady mixture of everything that was bad for him: dairy, sugar and alcohol.

Clearly time passes differently on Planet Chat because that fraction of a second, although short to us humans, gave Misha all the time he needed to get absolutely wasted. My aunt carried him back to the living room, his limbs all splayed and floppy, and dumped him into his cat bed to sleep it off.

After his nap, Misha was fine. And I have an awful feeling that the cat-tainted brandy butter was not thrown away but simply, erm, “rearranged” (don’t ask).

Back in the 1980s, we all thought this was funny. These days, of course, such an incident would constitute a vet emergency of epic proportions, since cat-freakishness has escalated over the years. Not only do we whisk our furry overlords off to the vet at the slightest sniff, but we monitor what makes it onto their plates in the same way that sports coaches monitor elite athletes in the weeks leading up to a big competition. This is especially the case if they have allergies; eating the wrong thing, at a time when every vet is closed, could be catastrophic.

Louis Catorze’s festive treats have, therefore, been limited to the following:

1. His usual Orijen Six Fish.

2. A teeny fingernail-sized scoop of, erm, Fortnum and Mason salmon pâté. (Cat Daddy was, and still is, absolutely livid that I did this.)

Not cat food. (Well, ok, today it was.)

There would also have been some organic aged Comté and some jambon de Bayonne but, for the former, I missed the ordering deadline from the cheese deli. (There was Marks and Spencer Comté available but, as you know, Sa Maj won’t eat that.) As for the latter, there appears to be a general dearth on Ocado, but Catorze has been so busy attacking magpies and thrashing around in our box of presents that he doesn’t seem to have noticed yet.

Christmas is ruined.

I hope you and your furry overlords have a wonderful day. And, even if you think you can trust your cat, have a look here just to remind yourself of some of the ways that the little sods can ruin our festivities.

Planning his next piece of bullshittery.

Un mauvais œuf

~ iamthesunking ~ 29 Comments

Oh. Mon. Dieu. Louis Catorze has just eaten two tiny fragments of crisps. And they weren’t just normal crisps. They were fried egg-flavoured crisps.

I know. I know exactly what you’re thinking:

1. Yes, fried egg-flavoured crisps are a thing (and, unbelievably, they are delicious).

2. Catorze doesn’t eat human food (or so we thought).

3. Fried egg-flavoured crisps are as far along the human food spectrum as can possibly be, on the extreme right (or the extreme left, depending on which end you think is good and which is bad).

Naturellement my efforts to capture this on camera yielded nothing but the rather disturbing photo below, snapped just before he headbutted the phone out of my hand. So I have no actual proof. But we can file this under “Too absurd to have been made up”, non?

Red circle = piece of crisp shrapnel.
Red arrow = Catorzian eye.

L’âge ne compte pas sauf si on est un fromage

~ iamthesunking ~ 41 Comments

Every time I look at Louis Catorze, I think, “Aww. Our little boy has a heart murmur.” And he looks back at me, most likely thinking, “Oh, it’s you. Why are you still here?”

People have been asking after him and feeling quite sorry for him, but his symptoms so far have been screaming, demanding play and generally being a shite. During one especially energetic play session, he dug his claws into my foot and was utterly unrepentant even when I squealed in pain. But what completely floored me was catching the little sod lick my plate, from which I had just eaten tuna (10/10 for cat appeal) with soy sauce, chilli and lime (0/10 for cat appeal). And, later that same evening, he lunged for Cat Daddy’s plate of cheese.

Catorze has always been implicitly trustworthy around human food, to the point where we could even leave him to guard the cheese board if we had to pop out of the room. We knew not only that he would leave the cheese well alone, but that he would very kindly warn us about any approaching bugs, by doing the bird-chatter sound. (Yes, he makes this sound at any flying creature, including bugs.)

Now, it seems, we are going to have to watch him around food. Which is quite the opposite of what we expected to be doing for an older cat who has never shown any sign of giving the slightest shite about our food.

All those years of laughing at my cat freak friends who have to eat their dinner standing up on a chair, whilst their cats circle below like hungry saltwater crocodiles, have well and truly blown up in my face.

“Feed moi. Non, not with my food. YOUR food.”