silver

L’argenterie royale

~ iamthesunking ~ 51 Comments

Louis Catorze is continuing to enjoy his mix of wet and dry food. However, he still expects the wet food, which is already in small pieces, to be cut up into EVEN SMALLER pieces for him. If we don’t do it he just leaves the food to go dry and gross, and this makes it much harder to clean the bowl.

(And, no, I have no idea how it is that he manages to rip the heads off rodents, yet he can’t bite into a small, soft piece of cooked fish unless humans cut it up for him.)

With this in mind, one of my friends sent Catorze some antique Louis XIV silverware (yes, SILVERWARE, not “cutlery” – merci, Google, for correcting me). What an unbelievably lucky Roi he is.

Oh. Mon. Dieu. Merci, Cathie!

Cat Daddy’s initial reaction: “What the f***? What is wrong with your friends?”

Cat Daddy’s follow-up reaction, upon discovering that Louis XIV silverware is a real thing and not something that I made up: “Ooh. That must be worth a bit!”

Naturellement, being special silverware, we can’t just sling it into the dishwasher alongside our own plebby stainless steel. Care instructions are as follows:

Separate the Metals

Never wash silver-plated flatware with stainless-steel flatware in the same dishwasher load. The silver and stainless steel chemically react in the presence of automatic dish-washing detergent, causing silver ions to disassociate from the silver plate and transfer to the stainless steel. This leaves pits on the silver plate and may cause spotting of the stainless steel, especially if the metals are touching each other.

Safe Way To Clean

Hand washing with a mild dish-washing liquid is the safest way to clean silver-plated flatware. Wash the flatware in hot sudsy water right after the meal is done. Rinse them with cool tap water and immediately dry with a clean, soft cloth.

Oh dear. Cat Daddy was already unhappy about how much hard work it is to wet-feed the little sod, with the cutting of the food and the frequent bowl changes, so he was not pleased at all to learn that we now need to hand-wash Catorze’s antique silverware. The Unrepeatable Expletives rang out through the air on that fine morn like the chimes of Big Ben on New Year’s Eve (except going on for considerably longer).

Sitting in proud admiration of himself, knowing that he deserves decent serving implements.

Here I am (below), having just used antique Louis XIV silverware to mash up already-soft Cool Cat Club cod and salmon pâté on Catorze’s Necoichi tilted stress-free (I’m not joking; it really is called that) cat bowl, adding a garnish of Orijen. Meanwhile, I am eating cheese on toast from a chipped Wilko* plate.

How did it come to this?

*Fancy followers: ask your more downmarket friends.

Marcus Wareing would be so impressed with this presentation.

Felina non grata

~ iamthesunking ~ 1 Comment

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Does your cat have friends outside of your own household? And should I be concerned that Louis Catorze has none whatsoever?

When we lived at Le Palais he had heaps of buddies popping over. Some cats were positively welcomed (such as the delightful Cookie, aka The Chubby Siamese or Chubs, pictured here), others were merely tolerated, yet nobody was rejected outright, leading me to the conclusion that Louis Catorze is one of those cats who gets on well with other cats. This sounds like it ought to be inevitable but, trust me, there are some cats who don’t like any other cats at all. Our first cat, Nimbus, didn’t even like her own biological mother or siblings, and she used to hide round corners and jump out at them (in an “I want to kill you” type of way, not for fun).

But, since we moved to Le Château, and, despite us seeing a few cats during our visits when the renovation work was going on, Catorze has had something of a manque d’amitié. Obviously we’re glad that no unwelcome intruders are giving him hassle (apart from his mysterious adversary at Le Fight Club), but it’s peculiar to think that, in a street full of cats*, nobody seems to want to be Catorze’s copain. Luckily, because he’s thick, he doesn’t know this.

*Our neighbours include:
– Pensioner Pickles, a remarkably well-preserved calico cat in her 20s, who hates all other cats (including Louis Catorze)
– Titus the Biggest Cat in the World, an orange Maine Coon the size of an ox
– Catus Interruptus, a grey tabby who rudely barges between people trying to talk in the street and demands attention
– Rocky the Racist Ginge, who only gets along with all-black and tuxedo cats and who beats the crap out of other-coloured ones (including Titus)

Interestingly, when trying to explain to others what Louis Catorze’s skin condition looks like, Cat Daddy has always – completely unintentionally – pronounced it as “pariah-sis” instead of psoriasis. C’est une coïncidence?