Merci à Dieu et à tous ses anges: Louis Catorze is eating food. And it’s food that I want him to eat, not some heinous, cheap, 90%-sawdust rubbish that he’s chosen just to spite me.

It’s been a couple of days since we started putting half a portion each of new and old food into his bowl – sometimes with the halves top and bottom with a horizontal split, like the Earth’s hemispheres, sometimes with a vertical split and the halves left and right, and sometimes in a pleasing yin-yang formation, just for fun – and he has eaten every portion served. And, the other day, when Cat Daddy was drunk and accidentally served him the new food on its own, he ate that, too.

I cannot even BEGIN to articulate how happy this makes me. Unless you have been through it, you will never understand how stressful it is when a cat won’t eat, especially when they’re not even ill (which can be cured) but just being a shite (which can’t). And it’s even worse when you have helpful folk on the sidelines saying things like “He’ll get hungry enough eventually”* and “I don’t see why you can’t just keep giving him his old food”**.

*No, he won’t.

**Which part of “His old food is discontinued” don’t you understand?

I appreciate that some cats will eat absolutely anything put in front of them. If you have one of those, lucky you. We don’t.

The two foods are still served in distinct piles, and I haven’t dared to mix them because this failed the last time, after weeks of us believing it to be going fine. I don’t want the little sod suddenly realising on Day 14 that there is a new food in his bowl and then being difficult. So, after every meal, I go to his plate and re-sort any mixed bits into separate piles again. Yes, it must seem somewhat over the top. But I would rather do this than have Catorze abort the mission at the eleventh hour, and then we would have to start this tedious process ALL OVER AGAIN.

Anyway, Catorze remains utterly unconcerned by the trouble he has been causing. Here he is, having just, erm, ripped a page out of Cat Daddy’s old road atlas and fashioned it into a pillow for himself:

Plan A has come to an end, and it has been somewhat mixed. (Non-Brits: if your British friends ever use the adjective “mixed”, it’s bad news and you should make them some tea immediately.)

We tried for almost a week for those three days of happy eating and, regretfully, what Catorze demonstrated was more like occasional, reluctant nibbling; of the dozen tasting menu portions served over the week, the little sod only ate two at the start and then no more.

When Plan B arrived I hand-fed him a couple of pellets as an experiment, and he ate them. When I did the same thing with some Plan A pellets immediately afterwards, he refused. Which was pretty conclusive proof that he just DOESN’T LIKE PLAN A.

At that point we decided to bin it and move to Plan B.

Cat Daddy’s Helpful Comment of the Day, to Catorze: “Poor Louis. Life’s been hard for you, hasn’t it, with two bowls and two foods to choose from? It must be confusing for an old, thick boy like you.”

Catorze: “Mwah.”

Anyway, Plan B is Canagan Scottish Salmon, which claims to “excite even the fussiest of felines” (please, Goddess, let this be true). The recipe also calls itself “perfect for your feline friend”; obviously Catorze considers himself my imperial sovereign and commander rather than my friend, so we haven’t told him about that bit.

I sense chaos, anarchy and more sleepless nights ahead. We will keep you informed of our progress (or lack thereof).

We are so lucky to have such wonderful friends: Louis Catorze’s ami, Sammypuss, has very kindly sent the little sod another bowl to replace the evil black saucer. So Le Grand Changement can now continue with two bowls that Catorze likes, rather than with one that he likes and one that he hates.

I spent ages trying to find another matching bowl by myself, but I was only able to find it in two places: one was eBay, priced at £16 for the bowl and £20 for delivery – and it was just a single item, so I couldn’t buy multiple bowls to get full value for money from the delivery charge – and the other was some place that I can’t even remember anymore, priced at £200 for a set of twelve. Neither option appealed, and luckily Sammypuss was kind enough to lend a hand to his troubled comrade, with the help of his amazing Cat Daddy, Alex.

Cat Daddy’s Helpful Comment of the Day: “But he used to eat perfectly happily from that black saucer.” That was YEARS ago. We cannot reasonably expect a cat as silly as Catorze not only to recall what he did in 2016 (or whenever it was), but also to repeat it when we want him to.

Anyway, removing Satan’s saucer from the equation surely cannot do any harm? Sincèrement merci, Sammypuss et Alex.

According to the PDSA, the cat must have “happily eaten the new food for at least three days” before moving onto the next stage involving increasing the amount of new food and decreasing the old.

I assume by this that Catorze needs to have eaten most, or all, of the Thrive served over a three-day period. Cat Daddy, however, thinks it just means SOME consumption on each of the three days. My sister says “Whatever is normal for your cat” which could mean anything or nothing, since Catorze wouldn’t know “normal” if it kicked him up the arse.

As we didn’t seem to be making progress with Plan A, I decided to make arrangements for Plan B. And, whilst purchasing Plan B, I took the liberty of also acquiring the wherewithal for Plan C, after a MONUMENTAL search to find one website that sold both. Trust me, this took some doing, given Sa Maj’s very exacting requirements.

Cat Daddy said I should have waited until seeing the results of Plan A before investing the kingly sums of £5.99 and £6.99 respectively in Plans B and C. However, had I done that, as well as paying twice for delivery, we would have been rapidly running down our last pack of Lily’s Kitchen Marvellously Mature – of which there were precious few left in the world the last time I dared to look – in the time it took for each Plan to arrive.

Anyway, within hours of me placing the order for Plans B and C, naturellement Catorze decided that he would comply with Plan A after all.

Plan B and Plan C will arrive tomorrow and, most likely, will just sit uselessly in Catorze’s food cupboard. That said, we know full well, don’t we, that the minute we donate them to nicer less fortunate cats elsewhere, Catorze will stage a brand new French Revolution and stop complying with Plan A.

And, to add to our woes, the little sod’s skin is looking worse than ever, so he was back to the maximum dose of two steroid pills per day as from yesterday. We don’t know how this could have happened. We have been doing EVERYTHING right.

I know, it’s exhausting to read all this. Imagine how we feel having to live with it.

Incidentally, I’m still not drinking; after the success of Dry February and Dry March, I’ve decided to try for Dry April, too. I’m not sure whether a couple of bottles of Crémant would make this situation worse … or much, much better.

Merci à Dieu: the Easter holidays are here!

As from last Saturday, Louis Catorze was switched down to the lowest dose of pills (one every other day). And, five days later, the silly sod scratched himself. So he is now back up to one pill per day.

However, he is eating from the bowl gifted by his cher ami Sammypuss. This is good news. Cat Daddy, might I add, is not helping matters with remarks such as, “Poor boy. You’ve had to deal with so much since SOMEBODY broke your favourite bowl.” (Cat Daddy has broken 724 things in the house whereas I’ve only broken about three, but tant pis.)

I have sought bowl-fussiness advice from a number of friends and the general theme of replies has been, “My cat only cares about the food and doesn’t give a hoot about what it’s served in.” With the exception of a few cats who aren’t keen on plastic bowls, absolutely none of my friends have had experience of a cat being so particular as to hesitate to eat their familiar food from a different vessel. This makes me very nervous indeed, because I had hoped to try out the PDSA’s idea of serving the old and the new food in two – TWO – separate bowls.

Most advice regarding changing a cat’s food suggests mixing the old and the new together and progressively increasing the proportion of the latter, but this didn’t work the last time. However, the PDSA’s plan is different, the idea being “to introduce them to the idea that this strange new substance with a different smell and texture has something to do with food”:

https://www.pdsa.org.uk/taking-care-of-your-pet/looking-after-your-pet/kittens-cats/changing-your-cats-food

I can see the logic in that concept; perhaps Catorze didn’t eat the previous mixture because he didn’t understand why his familiar old food suddenly smelled different. I don’t like to think of him being SO stupid that he didn’t realise it was still edible but, regretfully, I think he actually is.

However, my decision to try this out took place before the destruction of Catorze’s favourite bowl and the lawlessness that ensued. I now have to make the decision of whether to put his new food into his Sammypuss bowl and the old food into a(nother) different one, or vice versa. The first option makes by far the most sense, but then I am also trying to second-guess the most illogical and mercurial mind ever to exist.

It’s utterly nonsensical that I even have to think about this, but then “utterly nonsensical” is exactly what he does.

Louis Catorze is nibbling from his black plate with considerable caution, the way a hungry person would if they were handed their favourite food in the world and told “It might be poisoned, or it might not”.

When he’s not eating, he sits by the plate and stares as if it were some strange alien being. But at least he’s eating SOMETHING. And – merci à Dieu – not only is he taking his pills, but he seems to be doing fine on his new dose of one a day.

Cat Daddy: “He’s not happy. Maybe he doesn’t like the look of his plate because the pellets are all over the place. It’s a mess.”

Me, sarcastically: “Are you suggesting that we arrange the pieces into a more aesthetically pleasing fashion?”

Cat Daddy, without a hint of irony: “Well, it wouldn’t hurt to try.”

Reluctantly, I pushed all the pellets together into a pile in the middle of the plate, to see if it would make a difference. Catorze sniffed the pile, then walked away.

We really don’t need this right now, what with Le Grand Changement de Nourriture only a few weeks away. But at least someone in the household seems to be having fun with it: