How the cat shrunk

Art by Marlene Llanes, a surrealist artist based in Austin, Texas

Our cat is large.

His weight hovers around fourteen and fifteen pounds, and if a vet is meeting him for the first time at the local animal clinic, s/he will note the weight on his record, and expect to see a roly-poly feline, only to be confronted with a long and lithe leonine tabby, capable of knocking things from the counter with his hind paws on the floor.

We have always fed him carefully, but changes in routine over the past couple of years mean that the Resident Fan Boy has taken over the feeding regimen.  I had the dry food food bag set up nicely in a cupboard beyond the cat's long reach with an ancient metal measuring cup as a scoop - used because it is a) old, battered, but clean, and b) it fits into the bag. 

After a few months of feline-feeding, the RFB took the cat into the clinic for a routine pedicure.

The vet informed the RFB that the cat now weighed twelve pounds, not a bad weight for your average tabby, but rather too svelte for our puny puma.  The vet recommended, the RFB told me that afternoon, upping the dry food serving to a cup and a half from one third of a cup.

I gazed at him for a few incredulous seconds.

"Uh, one third of a cup?  The bag says "1 1/4 cups" for a cat of his size.  You've been feeding him one third of a cup per day?" 

The RFB shrugged sheepishly. "That's the measure that was there, and you said to cover the bottom of the bowl...."

"That was for kitty litter!!!!"

No wonder the cat has been eating the toilet roll.

(He's back to his normal weight now.)

The sorrow and the curry

Oh sweet heaven, elder daughter is having a curry week. I loathe curry and am sickened by the stench of it. Elder daughter and the Resident Fan Boy love curry and thus experience the smell as an aroma. Younger daughter has not expressed an opinion, nor seems to notice.

I had an inkling that this would be a problem from the get-go. When I cook the Christmas tourtières, the fragrance lingers for a week -- the thing is, nobody minds because to my children, it's how Christmas smells.

Elder daughter tried to mitigate the curry odour by cooking a week's worth of work lunches while we were out at a concert, but I was bludgeoned by the smell on our return. I spent the better part of an hour before going to bed deodorizing the kitchen drains with salt, vinegar and baking soda, then scrubbing out the burners and stove top. I even had the RFB take out the compost, and wiped out the container.

Still my eyes burned, and the back of my throat constricted. I took herbal sleeping aids to deaden my senses, but woke up with the stale ghost of curry in my mouth. Soon I was driven out into the misty morning, gulping in the rain-washed air, and half-wishing it would sprinkle inside our house. From the safety of a coffee shop, I cudgelled my brain for a solution. I am morally opposed to those so-called air fresheners that claim to clean your house of pet-smells and cooking fish-smells, but I was desperate, so marched to the supermarket, searched out the most neutral spray, and, opening windows throughout the house, went after the curtains, furniture, and carpets that I suspected of harbouring and prolonging the stink. It seemed to help a little, though I could still detect a stubborn whiff in the area of the stove.

Elder daughter went out to play board-games with friends (that's a thing these days), and texted her father, complaining about the spray I'd used, and would the smell be gone by the time she got home?

It was, but the curry carried on.

This morning, elder daughter reheated one of her curry dishes to pack it for work. The smell, as predicted, has lingered, but not with the acridity of the weekend.

I hate to deprive her of what is obviously a culinary delight, but I have to live here too, and it's not like I haven't had to make sacrifices over the years. Maybe she can go curry-crazy when I'm in Victoria for the summer?

Sydney Smith was right

Last night, I phoned Demeter and learned she's been ill for a few days.  She told me she's decided to stop flying out to Hades for Thanksgiving.  Today, we had freezing drizzle and ice pellets intermittently throughout the day, so that by the evening, I found myself picking my way down a sidewalk covered with what seemed to be tapioca, and every time I stepped into the street for surer footing, cars would zoom toward me, driving me back to the slippery pavement.

So it was just as well we were booked for a "Family Dinner" at Table 40 which, fortunately for us, is at the end of our block.  We've been going to them for about four years now, roughly once a month, so they know us.  The menu is set, and you serve yourself from the platters brought to your table.  Tonight, it was broccoli and leek soup with parmesan popcorn to sprinkle on top of the greenest soup ever, short ribs served with creamy scalloped potatoes and warm cherry tomatoes, salad with greens and cucumbers and crunchy stuff on top, and finally, apple fritters.

I don't think I've ever had apple fritters before.  (The picture above is of beignets, which are close to what we had, except our fritters were brown.)  They're rather like really chewy Tim-Bits with apple in the centre and they were served with cups of chocolate sauce and raspberry coulis for dipping.  Each bite seemed to light up the pleasure centre in my brain.

By the time we were picking our way home in the gathering darkness, I felt better.

They don't call it comfort food for nothing.

Party Rats

My horoscope for this week tells me, rather sagely I think, that it will be an up-and-down week and whatever happens is going to happen. However, we can choose our choice of response. This is where we have control in our lives. I've been getting quite a taste of that already and today's a Full Moon so heaven knows what may happen by day's end. I figure if I'm going to blog on the positive, I better do it now...

I succeeded in surviving younger daughter's party. I planned it. I organized it. I ran it. And I did it while pre-menstrual.
Twelve little girls attended, not including birthday girl. I've taken up the rash policy of inviting all the girls in younger daughter's class, with the idea of skirting little-girl-class-politics. This policy seemed less rash two years ago when there were nine girls in the class. There are now seventeen. So I sent out the rather fiddly invitations two weeks ago and waited for responses, half-terrified that I'd only get two (which did happen three years ago when younger daughter was at her previous school), and even more terrified that all seventeen would accept as we usually only get one refusal per year. This year we got four, one last-minute due to a family emergency. Also three last-minute acceptances accompanied with profuse parental apologies and they'd been so busy... And no one else is? Actually, my favourite was from the single dad (not that this is relevant) who told me he was sure his daughter had passed on the acceptance at school. (To whom? The over-worked teacher who knew nothing of the party? My daughter with her memory challenges? What did he think the phone number and email on the mailed invitation with the letters RSVP were for?)
Anyway. We had a Ratatouille party. With real ratatouille. I found two simple recipes, chopped up the ingredients, bagged them and labelled them "Ratatouille 1" and "Ratatouille 2", divided the girls into teams, and crowded them into the kitchen in our semi-detached, where the team captains were passed the baggies to sauté in two saucepans. We then played a kind of team Pictionary game where they drew collages of song lyrics and had the other teams guess while the stews simmered. The girls did a champion job and we had ratatouille for dinner for two nights. I called the activity "Rate-atouille" and the first recipe won out marginally over the second. I think only half the girls volunteered to taste it; the rest tackled "egg-rats" (which you can see in the bottom of the third picture), veggies and dip, crackers and French cheeses, and of course, totally demolished the various bowls of chips. Fine dining indeed.
We had begun the party decorating cupcakes, and finished it with younger daughter blowing out curlicue candles on the backs of ice cream rats with licorice tails and jelly ears. Then she sat down and opened way too many presents. For some reason, the tradition in this neighbourhood is to give three to five presents in one gift-bag, which I suppose is really looking a gift horse in the mouth, but this meant younger daughter received about thirty gifts. She was getting rather overwhelmed by this point, but held it together admirably, although I had to ramp up the prompting toward the end.

Each girl then politely approached me for her goodie bag, thanked me for inviting her, and departed with the appropriate parent. It's a very courteous neighbourhood (except the drivers). I sat down at the computer and waited for the earliest illegal showing of the latest Doctor Who.

I've been planning theme parties for my girls for the past dozen years. For four or five of those years, the girls overlapped and I had to plan two parties within the space of one month. I sincerely hope next year is the last. I mean, each one is a real learning experience, but it's time for the tee-shirt, doncha think?

Afterthought: Re-reading this, I really come across as an ungracious hostess. The girls were pleasant and cooperative, and the usual little guardian angels took turns guiding younger daughter over the social hurdles. I also forgot to mention that the Resident Fan Boy and elder daughter availed themselves and filled in so many gaps, so I could supervise and take pictures. Do I sound a little less peevish now?