Foodstuff Friday: Don't Eat Cats

On a lovely spring day five years ago I bought a skewer of grilled chicken ("chicken") at a street fair, took one bite and spit it out.

"Taste like cat?" a wise Greenwich Villager asked.

Cat?  Who knew what cat tasted like. I assume it would be weird and awful and this meat was weird and awful; the cat suggestion was feasible.  I spit some more and then again, and have never eaten street fair meat again.  I've had pineapple on a skewer, crepes, waffles, large plastic cups of sweet, fresh watermelon--none of it shocking, I know. No meat.

Today is Christmas Eve. The animals will talk at midnight, cats, dogs, farm animals.  I am not clear about animals in the wild.  Lions, wolves, anteaters, gazelles may speak tonight, I just don't know. It may be that only animals in Sweden and the Swedish diaspora (hah!) talk, but since I am of the Swedish diaspora in part, I've been hearing the conversations since I was a kid.

I'm not sure where we're going in this posting. I am:  a) extremely tired; b) catsitting; c) needing to get on with my evening. And committed to Foodstuff Friday.  Spending time with Willow (white cat who likes me to leave the bathroom faucet trickling the same way kids in summer like sprinklers or hydrants left flowing) and Squirrel (orange cat who has so much fur I think she she was a puffball fish in a previous incarnation) inclines me to Think Cat in the same way Jimmy Stewart, on his way to the Plaza Hotel for drinks and to meet his fate in North by Northwest, instructed his secretary to leave him a note to Think Thin.

Willow has chosen to sit on my lap. She was Queen Victoria in a previous life. There are many rules of decorum and protocol to having an audience with Willow (on my lap). I am allowed her presence but, when she sits on my lap, I am not allowed to pet her.  Once she's ashore, petting is again permitted, when it is permitted. You just never know.

Squirrel is inside the couch.  The cats scratched at its underlining and now hide in their couchy treehouse. I will investigate on the chance they have stored a journal or love letters I could, Nicholas Sparks-like, turn into a bestseller and blockbuster. They are both rescue cats with a past.

In the meantime, my only advise on the culinary this week is to suggest avoidance of cat.

Merry Christmas Eve.