skin

Les rayons du soleil

~ iamthesunking ~ 30 Comments

Louis Catorze’s ears are starting to go bald again.

This happened a few years ago, for no reason whatsoever, and the vet was unable to provide any answers. Then the fur grew back again, so we didn’t bother pursuing it any further (not that we would have known what to do, had we wished to treat it).

Now the bald, piggy ears are back. They’re not fully bald, but a good 40% of the fur is gone.

Since they don’t seem to be bothering him, we don’t think it’s worth a vet visit just for that. But, now that the summer is approaching, it’s probably time to revisit the sunblock on the ears.

Now, please hear me out. It’s a thing. It’s more of a white cat thing, but a thing nonetheless. Because feline ears are so delicate, and because white fur provides so little protection from the sun, sunblock for cats was invented. And, of course, having no fur at all provides even less protection than having white fur so, for a cat who gads about outdoors all summer, we need to take action.

This is one of the many photos that prompted my decision to deploy the sunblock. Yes, he is, indeed, sleeping mostly in the shade, with THE ONE BODY PART THAT WE WANT TO PROTECT exposed to the sun:

‘Sake.

And here he is again, fully sunblocked. Predictably, the application process was pretty grim for both of us, from beginning to end:

Without the block you’d see daylight through these wispy ears.

For more Catorzian capers, please visit http://louiscatorze.com

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.

La poussière cosmique

~ iamthesunking ~ 27 Comments

Do you have any collections?

Louis Catorze’s fur collects everything, and I mean EVERYTHING, whether animal, vegetable or mineral. Part of the appeal of black cats is that their fur supposedly doesn’t show up the dirt in the same way that white cats’ fur does, but Catorze’s coat attracts crud just as a magnet attracts iron. Here is just one example of the delights that can be found within:

Ugh.

At the moment the crud du jour is, regretfully, dandruff, and, the more I brush, the more he churns out. It improved when he switched to the most expensive cat food on the planet (well, you’d hope so, wouldn’t you, since, gram for gram, Orijen is more expensive than cocaine and gold combined?), but now it’s back. And we don’t know why, although we strongly suspect it’s because his outdoor gadding about takes him away from the clean, crud-free environment of Le Château and into all manner of grossness that I daren’t even think about.

In the past the vet has suggested fish oil supplements, but the silly sod won’t eat them; we tried two types and it was a hard NON to both. We also tried blobbing it onto his fur so that he would groom it off, but he just left it to air-dry on his body, stinking out the entire Château in the process.

The next weapon in my arsenal is coconut oil, supposedly good for this kind of thing but without the smell of rotting fish guts. And, luckily, we have it in plentiful supply, since it’s my favourite cooking oil. The only thing is that we are supposed to rub it onto “the affected area” – so, erm, the WHOLE area? His entire rump?

EURRRGH.

I had intended to start with a fingertip of oil applied to the base of his tail, which seems to be the epicentre of it all. But now, naturellement, Catorze is nowhere to be found, despite having been right here a minute or two ago. So I guess I’m left with sitting here with one oily finger raised aloft until he appears, or alternatively I will have to conduct an intensive search of Le Château for him and hope that I don’t daub oil everywhere in doing so. Neither option is particularly attractive to me.

EDIT: I found the little bastard eventually, by which time the coconut oil had all sunk into my skin and/or just melted away. He had somehow broken into the spare room that I had just prepared for an overnight guest – and which I had shut to keep him out – and stomped/rolled both his dandruff and his dirty paws all over the once-clean sheets and pillows. Merde, merde and thrice merde.

La farine d’avoine

~ iamthesunking ~ 16 Comments

Louis Catorze’s dandruff has been deteriorating, and I noticed that it looked especially bad just before a friend was due to visit. We couldn’t have him looking scaly and gross in front of visitors so I tried to brush it out, but each brush stroke seemed to just dredge up more crud. I then decided to deploy the colloidal oatmeal powder.

This was probably the right idea. However, I should have executed it a lot better.

Rather than tipping out the powder and letting him roll around in it or his own accord, for whatever stupid reason I decided, instead, to tip it straight from the pack onto his body whilst he lay on my lap. Instead of the light dusting for which I had hoped, huge lumps of oatmeal fell out, each one breaking into a zillion pieces when it hit la personne royale. Each one of those zillion pieces then hit me, breaking into a further zillion pieces as they did so.

Extracting the oatmeal most certainly was not a piece of cake.

The next twenty minutes or so were spent chasing a white cat around the living room and attempting to brush/beat the oatmeal out of him. It only half-worked. When my friend arrived, rather than being dandruff-free, Catorze was still grey in some areas and peppered with both dandruff AND oatmeal, and I was worried that his attempts to groom it off would leave him with stomach cramps or constipation. Luckily this turned out not to be the case, and, because our friend knows the little sod very well, she didn’t bat an eyelid when we said there had been “an oatmeal incident”.

Post-groom mess.

We can’t think of any reason why Catorze’s skin would suddenly deteriorate and, as with the mats, we will check with the vet just in case. Happily, Le Roi is utterly unfazed by it and is continuing to live his best life.

La peau de chagrin (Partie 2)

~ iamthesunking ~ 12 Comments

Louis Catorze’s skin problem is returning.

The fur around his eyes is thinning, and this is the familiar, telltale sign that all could turn to merde if we aren’t careful. In fact, it could very well turn to merde even if we ARE careful. Since we don’t know what causes it, we are still at a loss as to what we’re supposed to do.

We had a feeling that this would happen since he only had a short-acting steroid shot the last time, but that doesn’t make it any less frustrating. He wasn’t allowed to have a steroid shot within two weeks of his surgery, nor too close to his Loxicom, so we have been waiting until the earliest opportunity, which was yesterday (as advised by the vet). I was stuck at work so Cat Daddy took Catorze, and the vet, who hadn’t seen the little sod before, called him a “noisy boy”. TRUST US, WE KNOW.

At least now he’s done … just in time for the full moon next week, which isn’t ideal as we could do without double the level of psycho, but Cat Daddy and I are just going to have to stock up on vodka and ride this one out.

If you have ever had a black cat in your life, you will know that the their eyebrow area can look perfectly normal from certain angles, and almost bald from other angles, and Catorze is no exception. The two pictures below were taken by his chat-sitteur last weekend, and they look very different indeed, so it’s hard to know from taking photos whether or not he is improving. However, if he’s eating (check), drinking (check), screaming (check) and being a complete and utter pest (HELL, check), I think we can be reassured that he is fine.

Looking a bit scruffy and threadbare here.
Not looking too bad here.

Le Roi Blanc

~ iamthesunking ~ 17 Comments

Cat Daddy: “Oh my God. What’s happened to Louis’s fur?”

Me, imagining the horror of a Code Brun situation: “Erm, why? What’s wrong with it?”

Him: “It’s gone all weird.”

Me: “???”

Him: “Like tiger bread.”

Me: “???”

Him: “Come and look.”

It turned out that the cause of Cat Daddy’s alarm was Louis Catorze’s fur cracks. Now, they’re nothing new, and we are frequently marvelling at the weirdness of the tail ones, in particular. However, what struck me about this particular set was how pale Catorze’s skin is; underneath all that black fur, the little sod is white. Not nature-white which, in fact, is not white at all but more like an off-white. Sa Maj is bright paper-white.

Bright white skin peeking out from under that fur.

This makes him the, erm, polar opposite of polar bears, who have black skin under their white fur. (Thank you, Lizzi, for telling me about this and sending me down a Google Image rabbit hole from which I can never climb out.)

I expect that the white skin is something I knew anyway, on some level, but now I can’t stop thinking about and am unhealthily obsessed with exactly what we’d be left with if Catorze had no fur. I imagine it would be something like this, but whiter and with much larger fangs:

Picture taken from Pinterest.

And, when the little sod sleeps on my lap, I can’t resist parting his fur to peek at the paper-whiteness. (He is not a fan of this, as it’s also what I do just before giving him his flea treatment.)

We are shocked, but not surprised, to STILL be discovering weird things about him, all these years after he first came to torment live with us. Life with Catorze truly is beset with labyrinthine twists and turns.

La poudre à cheveux

~ iamthesunking ~ 29 Comments

I have bought some dry shampoo powder for Louis Catorze, since his bath in our neighbours’ building dust had such a lovely effect on his fur. So, just like the proper French aristocracy back in the day, the little sod will be strutting around his Château with powdered hair.

Because Catorze is so sensitive, I decided against a ready-made product with a long list of ingredients and, instead, I’ve chosen a pure colloidal oatmeal powder. I have no idea what “colloidal” means but it sounds medicinal enough without being TOO medicinal, if you get what I mean. (Cat Daddy: “Not really.”)

The only thing is: how do I apply it? When he went to our neighbours’ house and came back caked in dust, I imagine he rolled it in of his own accord rather than having the builders rub it into him – although the latter would have been funnier – so I am more inclined to scatter it on the floor and wait. Yet all internet advice about dry-shampooing cats suggests putting poor kitty in the bath (!) and assaulting him with handfuls of powder, which would be absolutely hellish for all concerned.

So the pack of colloidal oatmeal is just sitting in the cupboard until I decide how to use it. Any suggestions would be gratefully welcomed.

“Bathe moi if you dare.”

L’alpha et l’oméga

~ iamthesunking ~ 25 Comments

Louis Catorze’s skin has been looking scaly and dandruffy lately, so the vet recommended an Omega 3 supplement called Nutramega. I was sure Cat Daddy would disapprove but, when he saw the information leaflet, he asked me why on earth we hadn’t bought them before.

To be honest, I don’t really know why. Over the years there have been so many things going on with Catorze – the worst being tail-chewing to the point of drawing blood, requiring through-the-night attention – that, perhaps, a glossy coat seemed a luxury rather than a priority. Plus the thought of adding another pill to his arsenal of medication didn’t appeal, especially as he is so awful at taking them. But at least we have them now, and we are determined to give them a shot.

The supplements, although not huge, are too big to encase inside a Pill Pocket for tiny Catorze. So I have to make a hole with a cocktail stick (younger followers: ask your parents), squeeze half of the fishy, gel-like contents into the well of a Pill Pocket, like a vol-au-vent (younger followers: ask your grandparents) and reserve the part-squeezed capsule to do the same thing again the next day.

The vet knows what Catorze is like so, initially, I bought ten days’ supply as an experiment. Having seen his reaction to two bowls, I needed to be sure that he wouldn’t go bonkers at the sight of two Pill Pockets, too. But – MERCI À DIEU – he ate them. This is right up there with stigmata and weeping statues in terms of miracles.

Cat Daddy, in a deadpan voice and without looking up from his gardening catalogue: “Amazing.”

I now have to open FIVE packs for him every day, the others being the Pill Pockets, the Prednisolone pills and, of course, the two different foods. But, despite everything, the little sod is worth it.

In this photo he has just discovered that the Nutramega information leaflet smells of vet:

Not impressed.

Gratter, c’est gagner

~ iamthesunking ~ 17 Comments

Cat Daddy and I started Dry February this month, so now we can’t turn to alcohol if Catorze’s behaviour drives us to despair. Or perhaps I should say WHEN, not IF: he ruined my online staff meeting on Wednesday by headbutting my laptop and screaming, and on Thursday he slept all morning, went outside at lunchtime but was back at 15:00 on the dot to annoy my Year 11s. YES, THAT SAME CLASS AGAIN.

Luckily he wore himself out and had nothing left to give for online parents’ evening, which is just as well because I really didn’t want THAT turning to merde too. However, instead, the obligatory embarrassment took the form of a scantily-clad lingerie model, who randomly appeared on a pop-up ad when I was sharing my screen with a student and his mum.

Sadly Catorze has started scratching again. He is very sneaky about it and usually does it when we’re not around so, short of ensuring that he is permanently escorted around the premises like a dangerous maximum security inmate, we don’t really stand much chance of stopping him. In the event that we catch him at it – last week I caught him scratching on the tips of my knitting needles which were sticking out of the bag – we can take measures to stop him from accessing that particular thing, but then he just goes and finds new things. Anything with a pointy end or a corner will do.

The other day, the little sod rubbed his face against the corners of Cat Daddy’s vinyl records (younger followers: ask your parents), so I covered the rack with a blanket, being sure to properly tuck in the edges to stop Le Roi from shimmying underneath.

The next day the blanket was in complete disarray, and the irresistible sharp corners of the records were exposed. I was shocked but not surprised.

Cat Daddy took this picture last week of Catorze’s face. Luckily the light makes it look worse than it is, plus it has since improved so there’s no need to feel too sorry for him (especially as he caused it), but Cat Daddy is still threatening to deploy Le Cône “as a circuit-breaker”. Let’s hope that we won’t have to go there, and that the increased dose of two steroid pills a day will suffice.

Silly boy.

La peau de chagrin

~ iamthesunking ~ 8 Comments

It’s been a tricky week here at Le Château.

Louis Catorze’s scabby facial skin condition, from which he has been free for YEARS, has suddenly returned, turning him from moderately scruffy to FrankenRoi in a matter of days.

Despite our best efforts, we still don’t exactly know why this happens to him. We can only imagine that, this time around, it’s due either to some foul substance with which he has come into contact outside, or to his recent penchant for sleeping in a dusty old gym bag under our bed despite having an extensive selection of anti-allergy beds at his disposal.

We were all set to take him to the vet but, inexplicably, he was dramatically better the next day, so we didn’t. But then, mid-week, he looked worse again, even though we had taken great pains to reinstate the Code Rouge État d’Urgence measures as follows:

1. Daily brushing (for reasons unknown, despite the fact that we only brush his body, it appears to improve his facial skin too)

2. A ban on Catorze entering our bedroom unsupervised (when he is likely to creep under the bed unnoticed)

3. At least an hour a day spent in a room with an air-purifying beeswax candle (and, thanks to Cocoa the babysit cat’s mamma, who makes them, we have a healthy stash)

Anyway, Cat Daddy took him to the vet on Thursday, where he was given a week-long steroid shot and instructions to return for a month-long one if there was no improvement.

Unfortunately steroid shots are known to turn cats absolutely manic and, as you are aware, Catorze’s starting point is already somewhat concerning. I came home that evening to frenetic, up-tailed pitter-pattering around and off-the-scale screaming, and Sa Maj wolfed down his dinner in one sitting without a single crumb to spare. This has never happened before.

Please send him both get-well and behave-yourself vibes, in equal measure, so that he is back to his majestic self in time for his Official 10th Birthday Portrait sittings.

A little poorly, but still a massive pain in the arse

La brosse infernale

~ iamthesunking ~ 7 Comments

We are usually only obsessively meticulous about brushing Louis Catorze during the warmer months, when he moults and scratches a lot. But, because his skin and fur are generally much healthier when he is brushed regularly, we decided to step up his grooming régime a few weeks ago, at around the same time that we started the hot water steam thing.

The good news is that handfuls of fur come off his body when he is brushed, which surely HAS to make a positive difference to his skin health, yes? The bad news is that he still loathes being brushed, which means I have to grit my teeth and adopt the Stranglehold of Death before I can get the brush anywhere near him. Needless to say, these now-daily sessions of torture leave me drained, pained and bleeding from the eardrums, and I wish we didn’t have to do them.

My mum told a long time ago that, when you brush your cat, you should leave the brushed-out clumps of hair in the garden because birds use them to line their nests. This didn’t seem very likely – after all, my mum also tells me that you can get cancer from plastic water bottles that have been left overnight in the car – but a couple of reliable fellow cat freaks have confirmed that it is, indeed, a thing. So, much to Cat Daddy’s disgust, I have been doing my civic duty by emptying the contents of Catorze’s brush outside, and the very thin silver lining to the dire grooming sessions was that at least the birds would benefit from it all.

Below is a picture of a clump of Catorze’s brushed-out hair from at least two weeks ago. Oui, Mesdames et Messieurs: IT IS STILL IN THE GARDEN. I really thought that there would be a few takers for some warm kitty fur, given that we remain in the depths of winter. But it seems not.

Cat Daddy: “Ha! The birds of TW8 would rather freeze than go near his shitty fur. Not even the rats want it.”

Oh dear. It’s a good thing Sa Maj is utterly unaware of his fur not meeting the exacting standards of the local wildlife. And, even if he were aware, I don’t suppose he would be remotely bothered.

De l’eau pour tous

~ iamthesunking ~ 11 Comments

After a suggestion from one of my lovely blog followers, I have been putting a bowl of hot water in each of the rooms most frequented by Sa Maj in the hope that the extra moisture in the air might help his eyes. 

When we first adopted him we were told that he only drank from glasses, and that under no circumstances would he drink from a bowl. “I’m sure he’ll use a bowl eventually, when he gets thirsty enough,” I replied cheerfully. He didn’t. So we had no option but to provide him with his own special glass. (Well, it was either that or have him randomly drink from any receptacle that he came across, which is asking for trouble.)

Naturellement, after a lifetime of refusing to drink from a bowl, the sudden presence of bowls from which we DON’T want him to drink has made him decide that he might be interested after all. And the only thing that stops him from doing it – apart from me taking my phone from my pocket to catch him in the act – is using hot water straight from the kettle which, despite being the best for adding moisture to the air, comes with its own, obvious problems. (Don’t worry: we are fully aware that Sa Maj is stupid enough to scald himself, so we ensure that we are around to keep him under Suicide Watch. Once the water has cooled and he is no longer under surveillance, no doubt he has a good old slurp and renders this experiment a complete waste of time.)

Cat Daddy has also kicked and/or threatened to kick more bowls of water than I can count. So, between the two of them, the men of the household are doing their best to make sure that this whole thing fails dismally. 

Me: “We could always buy him a plug-in air humidifier?”

Cat Daddy: “[Hysterical laughter followed by unrepeatable comments peppered with rude words.]”

Fortunately Catorze continues to remain in good spirits and is utterly unbothered by his condition. In the meantime, we shall keep topping up the boiling water in the hope that it does him good. 

553ED97B-602B-49B6-B38E-B951986A1FBC

La panacée du Roi

~ iamthesunking ~ 2 Comments

“What a pity January is almost over, just as things were getting good,” said absolutely nobody, ever.

It’s a difficult month at the best of times, even when the sharply cold temperatures and bright white frost give a kind of feeling of newness and freshness. But this January, far from being sharply cold or frosty-bright white, has been especially grim: grey, damp, clammy and sluggish. I can’t wait for it to end.

Louis Catorze, however, couldn’t give a hoot either way.

All is going phenomenally well in his little world, which means, at least, that someone has had a positive month. His black cat mojo is bursting at the seams at the moment and he looks magnificent. Cat Daddy usually lets out a snort of contempt when I say this, deriding Catorze’s “drug-addled state” and muttering something about him only appearing attractive if you look from a long way off and squint a bit. But I don’t care how far away you have to stand or how he got this way: I’ll still take it.

Here he is, looking menacing and demonstrating the right hook that (possibly) knocked out his mystery opponent at Le Fight Club:

image

It’s not just his physical appearance that has improved: everything about him just seems easier when he’s well. Even the medication and the Advocate, whilst not exactly fun, aren’t so bad, with the Post-Meds Sulk seemingly a thing of the past; whereas previously he would run away afterwards and hide for hours (or for the whole day, as he did on his first day with us when I crunched his tail under my knee by accident), now he comes back for cuddles.

He’s had a fair few visitors throughout January and he’s been on fine form for them all: sociable, affectionate and even happily allowing 3 kids aged 5 and under to simultaneously manhandle him. Poor Luther would have walked through hellfire to avoid such a thing – in fact, most normal cats would – but we all know, don’t we, that Louis Catorze is not a normal cat?

He’s due at the vet’s for his next steroid shot in a couple of weeks. I really hope this run of good luck holds out until then.

Le miel des rois

~ iamthesunking ~ 6 Comments

image

If you choose to be the slave to a special needs cat, one of the things you come to expect is life being brilliant one minute, then disintegrating into crud the next.

It’s been a tough week at Le Château. The return to work after Christmas and New Year is always difficult but I’ve been working very late every night, Cat Daddy has been working even later, and we didn’t see each other at all from Monday through to Friday. Louis Catorze has been wonderful company but, once again, because I’ve been leaving the (not brilliantly-lit) house in darkness and coming home in darkness, it’s been hard to keep track of his condition, although I’ve been aware of increased itching and fidgeting during the night. When I finally got to look at him properly in daylight on Saturday morning, I could see that the little sod’s chin area was bald and raw again.

It seems that the steroid shot, whilst undeniably improving things, isn’t the faultless magical potion that I wanted it to be, and that it has its limitations. Whereas his first injection gave him excellent results for a whole month even though it was only supposed to last a week, the second hasn’t been quite so effective. You know how a drinking session can get you completely plastered, but, the second time around, you need more booze to get to that same level? Well, this looks set to be exactly the same, except much less fun.

To make matters worse, having agreed that we would take Louis Catorze to the vet after we got back from the football, I realised too late that I’d got the vet opening hours completely wrong and that it was closed until Monday. Our options were to rush him to the emergency vet or sit it out until after the weekend, so we decided to go for the latter because the wound looked unpleasant but not horrendous, and because Catorze is still active, vocal and up-tailed, which I’m assuming means he doesn’t feel that bad.

I have received a lot of advice about what to do with him during the wait for the vet appointment, and one suggestion – which has also cropped up in the past – was to apply honey to the sore areas (thank you, Lisa). With Catorze being the way he is, this needed to be a very well-planned and strategic move, so I took my chance when he came in this morning from his all-nighter and scurried upstairs to join his daddy, who was still in bed.

And, naturellement, the only honey we had in the house was organic artisan New Zealand manuka honey. We’re talking honey that only rock stars and lottery winners could afford to buy, and we, being neither of those, only had it in our cupboard because Cat Daddy happened to meet the supplier at a trade show and they very kindly gave him a free sample. Gram for gram, this stuff costs more than cocaine or gold – and there I was, smearing it onto the skin of a wriggling, kicking, ungrateful little bastard of a cat.

Oh well – Louis Catorze is a king, I guess, which means that supermarket blended honey just won’t do. And, after the initial indignity was over, he was immediately happy again. Let’s hope this is enough to keep things under control until the vet visit.