Karl Lagerfeld Spoils His New Kitten, Choupette; Has No Cat Couture Plans (Photo)

Chanel’s Karl Lagerfeld is getting paternal in his old age. The designer, 78, proudly posted photos on his Twitter of his Siamese kitten, Choupette, playing with its iPad with the words “My clever kitty.”

She has apparently become his constant companion. “She has lunch and dinner with me on the table, with her own food. She doesn’t touch my food. She doesn’t want to eat on the floor. She sleeps under a pillow and she even knows how to use an iPad.’ he told WWD.

When he’s away on some particularly important fashion business, he has hired two personal maids to provide Choupette with round-the-clock care and keep a diary of her moods, movements and eating patterns when he’s not with her.

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“She is beyond spoiled,” he says. We would expect nothing else for Herr Lagerfeld’s animal alter ego.

Lagerfeld’s French model muse, Baptiste Giabiconi, gave him the purebred kitten in January and she has become his primary preoccupation, which is something that all new (and old) pet lovers can identify with.

The difference is that Lagerfeld, who has amassed almost 600 pages of her activities, thinks it could be amusing to make a “little book” of Choupette’s diary — and probably will. The rest of us have to make do with pet photo albums on our Facebook pages.

It somehow makes sense that Lagerfeld would have a cat, rather than a dog. Dogs are effusive and obvious in their affections, whereas most cats keep their own counsel and can be more aloof. They dispense intimacy only when they feel like it, a trait that we suspect Lagerfeld identifies with.

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Don’t hold your breath for a line of Choupette kitty clothing. Lagerfeld sniffs at such costumes, dismissing people’s penchant for humanizing pets by dressing them in cute little jackets and sweaters as “circus-like.”

Lagerfeld is not the only designer who is madly in love with his pet. But as far as we can tell, he’s the only one with a cat. Valentino had five pug dogs and traveled with them around the world in his private jet.

Click here to see a gallery of other designers — including Isaac Mizrahi, Thakoon, Alberta Ferretti, Donatella Versace, Angela Missoni, Donna Karan, Dries van Noten, Tom Ford, Michael Angel, Lela Rose, Roberto Cavalli and Roland Mouret — with their canine companions.