pets animals

Roi pour toujours, éternellement

~ iamthesunking ~ 29 Comments

“It’s Christmas time. There’s no need to be afraid.”

Clearly Bob Geldof and Midge Ure had never met Louis Catorze; the last few days have been awful because of my flu, and the little sod has been nothing short of merciless in his demands for play. If I ignore him, he either chases his tail or attacks my blister packs of painkillers.

He is especially bad when Cat Daddy is out, snarling at his manly pink butterfly on a string the way vampires snarl when shown a crucifix. Then, when Cat Daddy comes home, he is either sound asleep or sitting in perfect porcelain cat pose, tail tucked around his neat paws, all cutesy-eyed and innocent.

He shouldn’t even be out at the moment. Black cats are for Hallowe’en and not for Christmas, right? Well, so I thought, too, until Cat Daddy and I went for our annual festive meal at our local pub (before I fell ill), and two of these were on our table:

I now realise that this was a warning.

The landlord and landlady are cat people, and they know that we are, too, so they had done this just for us. At the end of our meal, our server asked us whether the management had supplied the cats or whether they were ours. Oui, Mesdames et Messieurs: she thought we looked like the kind of people who would bring our own black cat decorations to a festive meal. (And, to be honest, the only reason I haven’t so far is because I didn’t think of it.)

Then Cat Daddy bought me this:

I will be wearing this today.

So, even at this time of year which is supposed be all Joy to the World and Peace on Earth, it’s all about Le Chat Noir. And not only do I suspect that that is exactly how Catorze planned it, but I’d go as far as to say it’s probably Phase 3 of the Chat Noir Plan for World Domination. Phases 1 and 2 are, of course, infiltrating our houses (CHECK) and mind-controlling us to do all manner of things for them (HELL, CHECK).

If Noël is your thing, I hope it’s a Joyeux one. We wish you and your furry psychopaths a wonderful day.

Happily making a nest on the present bag given to us by the Dog Family.

Mieux vaut un bon sommeil qu’un bon lit

~ iamthesunking ~ 23 Comments

If you have been following Le Blog for a while you will be aware that, if Cat Daddy sits down next to us, Louis Catorze climbs off my lap and onto his. Usually he does this in under ten seconds (and Cat Daddy has timed him).

Yesterday I’d had him on my lap for a good hour or so and, when Cat Daddy sat down with us, he said, “You know what’s going to happen now, don’t you?”

Me: “Yes but, to be honest, I could do with him getting up and leaving because I want to go and get a glass of water.”

And, as soon as those words were out of my mouth, that was it. Catorze wasn’t moving.

Twenty minutes later:

Me: “I can see his ears twitching. He’s preparing to move.”

Catorze didn’t move.

Forty minutes later:

Me: “I can feel his paws twitching. He’s preparing to move.”

Catorze didn’t move.

An hour later:

Me: “I’m actually really thirsty now.”

Cat Daddy: “You can’t chuck him off! He’ll be upset!”

Me: “…”

Should they find my body in months to come, dehydrated and lifeless on the sofa, you’ll know what happened. And, most likely, Catorze will still be on my lap, mainly to make sure that I’m really dead.

Not moving.

Le renard peureux

~ iamthesunking ~ 25 Comments

It’s the summer solstice. Usually, by this time of the year, we are not even close to hitting the heady heights of 28+ degrees – that tends to come in July/August – but this month has been a hot one.

However, the one good thing about it all is that cat mischief is inversely proportional to soaring temperatures; it’s simply too hot for cats to misbehave. And we imagine that Donnie has been feeling it, too, since he hasn’t been round in a while. Apart from, erm, last night, when he showed up and started a yowling match with Louis Catorze in front of our horrified dinner guests. And that time when a neighbour whom I don’t even know had to break up a fight between the pair of them. Oh, and that other time when I was awoken by that awful cat fight sound, and I looked outside to see their unmistakable forms on the fence. (Yes, it was definitely them. I know their silhouettes like I know my own name.)

Sa Maj has been flopping languidly around Le Château and Le Jardin, spending inordinate amounts of time at his Rodent Duty station (the gap by the fence separating us from the Zone Libre). He was outside with Cat Daddy the other day, happily pitter-pattering around, when the birds in the Zone Libre started screeching.

Now, we all know full well that, when birds screech in unison, it’s never good. Anyone with any brains would run in the opposite direction. So, naturellement, Catorze decided to run into the Zone Libre to investigate.

It was Foxy Loxy.

Cat Daddy was powerless to help on the other side of the fence, and all he could do was stare (and curse the fact that he didn’t have his phone to take a picture). Then, unbelievably, Foxy Loxy took one look at Catorze … and fled.

This is not the first time we have seen this; in fact, Cat Daddy has seen THREE foxes run away from Catorze. Obviously it’s no bad thing that a predator who could finish the little sod in an instant would choose, instead, to retreat. But we are puzzled and terrified that the birds’ screeching, something we thought to be a universal sign of abject peril – yes, known even to a dimwit like Le Roi, surely? – would send him running TOWARDS it.

Is there anything we can do about this? There must be some kind of training or lessons, like teaching kids the Green Cross Code? (Younger followers: ask your grandparents.)

“I hear danger! I must interfere for absolument no raison whatsoever!”

Les fissures de la fourrure

~ iamthesunking ~ 14 Comments

I am going back to school this week. (Please note: “back to school”, not “back to work”. I have been at work this whole time.) Although I am looking forward to a little normality, I will to have to relearn the following:

– Driving

– Wearing shoes

– Using a pen and paper (teachers and students: remember pens and paper?)

– Talking to people without yelling at them to mute

– Styling my whole hair, as opposed to just styling the front bits that people see during video calls

Speaking of hair (kind of), Louis Catorze’s fur cracks are becoming more and more pronounced. I love cats’ fur cracks. Explaining what they are is absolutely impossible, so I have attached a photo of the ones that Catorze has always had on his weird tail:

It’s not normal. We know.

Nobody quite knows what makes some cats’ fur crack and others’ not but it seems to be a plushy cat phenomenon, rather than one affecting sleek cats. I had always believed that fur cracks, like energy in Physics, could not be created or destroyed – a cat either had them or didn’t – but not so anymore: Louis Catorze used to only have fur cracks on his tail, but now he has them on his body, too, and his fur appears to become much thicker when he is on the steroids. It’s all very strange, but then we have come to expect “strange” as far as he’s concerned.

Here are Catorze’s drug-induced bodily fur cracks, looking more peculiar than ever as they pulse up and down with his breathing and making him look like some Vernian monster from the deep. As with the above photo, please excuse the dust; either he had rolled in crud, or he was shedding crud, or possibly both:

I want to stop looking but I can’t.

On a dépassé cinq cents!

~ iamthesunking ~ 37 Comments

Sainte Marie, Mère de Dieu: Sa Maj has reached the incredible number of five hundred – yes, FIVE HUNDRED – followers. This is quite something given that, when I began Le Blog all those years ago, I thought perhaps my mum and about a dozen friends might read it (and that most of them would get bored after a week or two).

Back then, the original aim was to reach out to other humans with allergic cats, in the hope of finding someone who had a cat like Louis Catorze and perhaps even finding a cure for his allergy. I never did find that cure, and I certainly didn’t find another cat like Catorze (which is probably just as well), but Le Blog has introduced me to lovely people from all over the world, and their wonderful furry overlords.

I have lost the odd follower along the way, most notably the group of bodybuilders who started following when I added the key word “steroids” to my tags. Unsurprisingly, when they came to realise that this was actually a blog about a silly black cat and not about performance-enhancing substances, one by one they fell away. I can’t say I’m surprised, as Catorze has that sort of effect on people. But how delightful that the hardcore among you have hung on in there. If you’re still here, MERCI BEAUCOUP, especially if you have been around since the beginning.

Here is the very first photo of Catorze, taken in his foster mamma’s garden on the day we brought him home in July 2014:

A bit rough around the edges.

And here he is now (taken yesterday):

Not really any improvement, but tant pis.

Le trésor enfui

~ iamthesunking ~ 37 Comments

It seems I must have been on the Naughty List, because Santa’s gift to me was a positive Covid test result. To add insult to injury, the text message came through in the early afternoon of Christmas Day, when I was in the middle of opening my presents. I suppose it’s sort of funny now.

Cat Daddy is not remotely amused; in fact, he’s livid that he’s now stuck indoors with me for the next few days and can’t go on any walks or bike rides. The isolation time is ten days from when symptoms started so we don’t have THAT long left although, bizarrely, I had none of the classic symptoms: no temperature, no continuous cough, no loss of sense of taste or smell, just what I believed to be an especially brutal teacher-cold. I only bothered to take the test because a family member had also tested positive in mid-December, with cold-like rather than text-book Covid symptoms.

In short, Louis Catorze is the only one of us who is allowed out. And he is making the most of this by, erm, burrowing deep into his winter igloo.

In other, equally rubbish news, our glorious outdoor winter wonderland has been vandalised by the depraved squirrels, so we can’t even enjoy that during our period of house arrest. They’ve chewed through our solar-powered outdoor lights, and the other day we caught one red-handed/pawed/clawed (no idea what one would call whatever squirrels have on the ends of their creepy little arms, and I daren’t Google to find out) trying to make off with one of our baubles:

Not really in the festive spirit.

Some of the baubles have been fully unhooked from the virginia creeper; in fact, we watched in horror as this chunksome thug did exactly that, before flinging it into That Neighbour’s garden. Other baubles have been snapped off, leaving the gold wires and the little clasp things dangling pointlessly on the bare twigs. It’s hard to say how many we’ve lost but it’s four that we can prove, and no doubt countless others that we can’t prove … at least, not until our neighbours do their springtime planting, when they will wonder what the heck’s been going on when they dig through the soil and unearth thousands of buried baubles.

Now, are the squirrels so dozy that they think the baubles are food? Or perhaps they are just feeling the magic of the season and want to make their dreys look pretty? Either way, Cat Daddy refuses to dismantle our display because he’s “not giving into bloody vermin”. He has installed a Squirrel Stick by the bifold doors at The Back, to pick up and poke threateningly in the direction of the thieving varmints when they come by.

Luckily there is a cat who has noted the problem and who is doing something about it. Sadly it’s Blue the Smoke Bengal and not Catorze.

Here is Blue (below), doing his civic duty. Catorze, meanwhile, has been in his igloo, doing sod all.

Blue on Squirrel Watch.

Mourir debout ou vivre au genoux?

~ iamthesunking ~ 7 Comments

Cat Daddy and I could not be more relieved that Louis Catorze’s recent problems were caused by his patellar luxation and not by some other heinous thing. That said, having now researched his condition, we are not quite sure what we will be able to do about it on a day-to-day basis.

For the moment, the recommended treatment from our vet is just pain relief. And – merci au bon Dieu – because he is eating his Pill Pockets quite happily, this has not been a problem so far. However, online advice also recommends “limiting exercise and access to running and jumping”.

I don’t tend to take online advice and, if I did, I would only have three words for this particular snippet: Not. Gonna. Happen.

Now, if Catorze were a normal cat, he would be taking it easy at his age and trying not to do too much. But he’s not. Quite the opposite. Everything he does is everything that’s inadvisable for his condition and, short of locking him up, I don’t know how we can stop him.

Apparently surgery could be an option, although the advice is “the sooner the better”. Now, if they’re referring to the severity of the patellar luxation, Catorze would probably be a good candidate as he is only at the lowest level. However, if they mean age, at ten years old I fear it might be too late. Catorze is an old boy with the constitution of a swatted gnat, so I can’t see him recovering well from surgery.

Plus: six weeks of cage rest? Catorze, sitting quietly in a cage? Nope. We would need ALL THE SEDATIVES. And maybe we would even give some to him.

Anyway, he still looks frightful with bald patches and crusty eyes. But his knee has behaved itself well since last weekend and has only caved in once (for about four seconds). And Cat Daddy had to eat his lunch standing up the other day because Catorze was being such a pest – clambering all over him, purring, screaming – so I guess this means the little sod is doing ok.

On his favourite lap.