Three days after our friends’ visit, Louis Catorze’s dandruff miraculously vanished. His fur is now glossy and beautiful, without a single pesky white flake in sight. Although I cannot prove it, I know he has done this on purpose.

My friend Lizzi: “I told you he’d do this! But he’s pulled it off even sooner than I thought.”

Whatever. You’re not helping.

In other, equally odd news, it seems Catorze is enjoying his Orijen so much that he’s been bringing it up to bed. Oui, Mesdames et Messieurs. When changing the sheets the other day, I found this underneath the covers, at the pillow end:

I was actually relieved to discover that it was Orijen and not some other heinous substance. But how did it get there?

Theory 1: It was caught on Catorze’s paw. But how did it stick? How did it not fall off on the way upstairs?

Theory 2: It was caught on my clothing. Again, how did it stick?

Theory 3: Catorze brought it in his mouth to save for later. Frankly this is the weirdest idea of them all, as it takes far more effort to bring one piece all the way upstairs than to just eat it from his bowl, but I wouldn’t put it past him. After all, this is the same individual who thought to drop a slug onto my pillow in the middle of the night.

Are there other treasures being squirrelled away in there? (And do I want to know what they are?)

A few nights ago I prepared some fish with a potent herb, spice and salt rub, then I washed my hands and went to cuddle Louis Catorze.

With hindsight, I should probably have done those tasks the other way around – maintaining the hand wash in between, naturellement – because my hands clearly still smelled of the rub and Catorze was confused by this.

His actions and facial expressions were as follows:

1. “Je voudrais des cuddles!”

2. “Merde, it’s her. I didn’t want her. I wanted mon papa.”

3. [Sniffs hand] “What the absolute merde is this?”

4. [Glares] “Does the rest of her smell like this, too?” [Sniffs whole arm]

5. “What even WAS that?” [Goes back to hand again]

7. [Accepts cuddles in an insincere and resentful fashion, in the same way that I do when small children offer me pretend food from their pretend café and I’m secretly wishing it were real food]

This wasn’t quite as bad as the time I decided to make my own green curry paste, and the bashing of the pestle and mortar outraged him beyond belief. But it still serves him right; after those torturous months of having to water his Orijen, throwing away countless portions which didn’t meet the required standard, it’s about time the tables were turned and that HE was inconvenienced by the preparation of OUR food.

A couple of days ago, Cat Daddy and I spent the afternoon in separate rooms watching different television programmes; I didn’t want to watch whatever dull sports thing he was watching and he didn’t want to watch gruesome documentaries about serial killers.

Naturellement Louis Catorze chose to sit in the kitchen with his papa but, after a short while, he came into the living room, where I was, to creepy-stare at me for food. It wasn’t long before I felt so uncomfortable that I succumbed to his sinister mind control, like a brainwashed cult devotee.

Me, to Cat Daddy, as I opened the Orijen tin: “I can’t believe you’re sitting in the same room as the food, yet he came to creepy-stare at ME. Why didn’t he creepy-stare at you?”

Him: “He did.”

Me: “What? And you didn’t feed him?”

Him: “No. I just ignored him. That’s why he went to you.”

Me: “For goodness’ sake. It would have been so much less effort for you to do it. I’ve just had to get up and move rooms.”

Him: “Well, that’s your own fault. You give into him too easily.”

Me: “…”

I have friends who get up at 5am to feed their cats because they can’t stand the physical bullying and intimidation, and I used to think they were pathetic. Yet here I am, being given the runaround just because this tiny, toothy little despot LOOKS at me in a certain way. He doesn’t make a sound. Mainly because he doesn’t need to.

What a look, though. I challenge anyone to remain in the same room with this (see below, with bonus tongue on this particular occasion) and not be desperate to make it stop:

Louis Catorze is an eating, screaming machine, and we can see and feel him chubbing up. Cat Daddy even saw him in the garden the other day and thought he was another cat.

To mark this auspicious occasion Catorze has done the Chubbing Up Dance, which involves Cat Daddy bouncing him on his lap whilst singing “You, are, chub-bing up, say you are chub-bing up!” to the tune of Oops Upside Your Head. (Younger followers: ask your grandparents.)*

*About the song, I mean, not about the Chubbing Up Dance. They will probably look at you very strangely if you ask them about the Chubbing Up Dance.

Gone are the days of minuscule portions of Orijen sprinkled with exactly the right amount of boiling water. These days Catorze is guzzling down generous scoops of dry food and loving it. He still prefers freshly-served Orijen to food that’s been sitting around for a while, naturellement, but, at a push, he will eat slightly stale food eventually. Whereas if his food had absorbed too much water, he would quite literally starve himself rather than consume a single pellet.

Assuming the little sod doesn’t randomly change his mind again, this could be an absolute game changer for chat-sitting here at Le Château. And, in equally magnificent news, it’s exactly a month since his last steroid shot and, astonishingly, he has shown no sign of needing the next one as yet. Usually, after three weeks, we are counting down the days to that calendar month marker but, right now, he’s looking and feeling good.

Could his birthday at the end of the month be his happiest and healthiest yet?

We have survived Storm Eunice and Storm Franklin and emerged on the other side, triumphant and victorious. Our only casualty was part of the fence separating us from That Neighbour, which means Louis Catorze will now find it easier than ever to pitter-patter over there and annoy him.

Meanwhile, Catorze’s food weirdness remains as it was after his last dental surgery.

Every time we feed him, we are forced to choose between letting the tap run for long enough to heat the water to his satisfaction, or boiling a kettle in order to use just 15ml of the water. Cat Daddy tends to choose the former whereas I choose the latter. And, if someone else is feeding Sa Maj, we say, “Do you prefer wasting water or wasting electricity? Feel free to choose how you want to destroy the planet on his account.” In fact, when we go away and leave others in charge of him, this is exactly, word for word, what we tell our chat-sitteurs.

The Gabapentin, which was supposed to indicate whether Catorze was in pain, hasn’t really told us much, so his dental surgery is booked for tomorrow. Ideally I would have done it much sooner in the year, but there was zero availability in January (despite me enquiring in late December), and we needed to time it to land away from his steroid shot.

Luckily for us all, the little sod isn’t acting like a cat in pain or distress: he’s playful, noisy and loving life. Let’s hope he keeps up his high spirits through this second dental procedure, and that he won’t need any further treatment.

Merci à Dieu et à tous ses anges: after a few months of being out of stock, Louis Catorze’s Orijen is back.

Cat Daddy opened a new pack the other day and, for the first time in ages, the little sod wolfed down a whole scoop, without leaving a single crumb. Cat Daddy, assuming I hadn’t fed him that morning (I had), served two more scoops, which were promptly eaten. Later that evening Cat Daddy put down an extra generous scoop to keep Catorze going whilst we were out for dinner, and he wolfed that down, too.

Cat Daddy: “I think he likes it better when it’s a freshly-opened pack. Maybe we should buy smaller packs more often? This one is designed for people who have, like, ten cats.”

This probably makes sense; anything that results in fewer Catorzian rejections, and therefore less food waste, is fine by me. However – and you knew that there would be a “however”, didn’t you? – the smaller pack isn’t such good value for money. At a nose-bleeding £20.55 per kg, the 340g pack costs almost £4 per kg more than our already-expensive regular 1.8kg pack.

Cat Daddy: “[Unrepeatable Expletives of the Worst Kind]”

I once said that the only thing more expensive than Orijen was more Orijen. I was wrong: the only thing more expensive than Orijen is LESS Orijen. But as long as the Dark King is happy, we should be able to hold off the apocalypse for a short while longer.

A few updates from us at Le Château:

I am still alive. This is good news, although I still think death would have been kinder because I now have to live out my days knowing I have indirectly had cat arse in my mouth. And our holiday apartment hosts have emailed Cat Daddy to thank him for leaving the place clean and tidy, and have said he is welcome to return anytime. This is also good, if surprising, news.

However, Deliveroo, having pocketed the £100 cost of the order that never came, have still not refunded Cat Daddy and have closed the case because he “failed to respond to their emails”. (He DID respond, multiple times.) This is not quite such good news.

And, in even less optimal news, Louis Catorze has taken his food-driven creepy staring to another level. As well as staring from a distance, staring from close up, and the more passive-aggressive sitting by his bowl looking dejected, he has now begun to creepy-stare whilst we watch television in the dark.

Now, having him stare in the dark may not sound that bad, since a black cat in a dark room is technically invisible. However, this is what we’re faced with:

I know. It’s just not on.

I fear that the little sod may be channelling his big brother Luther, who practically INVENTED food-driven bullying and intimidation. If his pleas for food were ignored and his creepy staring didn’t work, he would take to sliding objects off the table, with his eyes fixed unblinkingly upon mine. If that didn’t work, he would jump up on top of the television and dangle one limb down over the screen, then another limb, then his tail. And if THAT didn’t work, he would pad about on top of the television and find the power button to switch it off.

Because Catorze is considerably less bright than Luther, it has taken him seven years to get to this point. But the fact that he’s got this far is alarming (our expectations were pretty low).

I know that the only solution is not to look at him. But, just like those people who can’t tear their eyes away from a horrible car accident whilst passing, we can’t help it.