Recent Feline Depredations
I'm sorry it's been so long since I posted.
Recent Feline Depredations:
1. A few weeks ago I made a tortilla casserole. It was pretty good, but I thought it would benefit both from some kind of vegetarian meat substitute and from about double the number of corn tortillas, since they are so nice when they have soaked up a lot of enchilada sauce. I accordingly bought some Gimme Lean mock sausage at the Linden Hills Co-op, and a couple of packages of corn tortillas from Coborns Delivers. I ended up keeping the corn tortillas on the unheated front staircase; in the weather we were having, it was more than cold enough there. The sausage I put into the freezer.
On Tuesday evening, I decided to make the casserole. I accordingly removed the sausage from the freezer and put it into the refrigerator; and I took the brown paper bag holding the corn tortillas from the staircase and left it on an armchair in the cat-sitting room. This is actually the upstairs dining room in the view of the people who designed our duplex, but we have it full of cat furniture, regular furniture that cats have clawed, and cat toys; and we sit there with cats.
When I was going through the crisper finding the vegetables I needed for the casserole, I realized that the vegetables I'd gotten for the stir-fry were looking a little limp, and decided that it would be better to make the stir-fry that evening and the casserole the next. I put the sausage back in the freezer, but I forgot about the corn tortillas. I made the stir-fry, which was very good. After we had eaten it I remarked that it was odd that cats had not been plaguing us, especially Cassie. I went to look for her. She was meatloafed next to the radiator in the library, a favorite place of hers in cold weather. Before her in pride of place was a somewhat mutilated package of corn tortillas; around her, as Raphael discovered with a more careful examination, was a scattering of gnawed tortilla bits. I had removed the tattered package to the trash when I first noticed the situation. Raphael decided it would be best to clean up the crumbs, and told me that Cassie was killing them -- picking them up in her mouth and shaking them vigorously to break their little corny necks -- but did not seem inclined to actually eat them.
The second package of corn tortillas was unmolested, and I put it into the refrigerator.
2. On Wednesday evening, I actually made the casserole, though obviously I had to do without extra corn tortillas. While I was assembling it, Saffron came tearing into the kitchen with her neck fully extended, chirruping and sniffing and chittering. She considered jumping up onto the stove, decided that the stove was too cluttered, and leapt instead onto the wooden cart we keep the microwave on, and thence to the top of the microwave, talking a mile a minute and sniffing madly. "There is no meat in this food," I told her, which is a remark I frequently make to both cats. "Please get down off that cart." She jumped down and ran around the kitchen, sniffing and commenting; finally she shot off into the library on one of her regular tears.
We ate the casserole and I put the leftovers away without further feline interference. But when I went into my office before bed to check email once more and put the computer to sleep, the wrapper from off the mock sausage was lying on the floor in there, licked extremely clean. Since Cassie's method for getting things out of the trash involves tipping the can over, I assume this was Saffron's doing.
3. When I was placing the online order that included the corn tortillas, Coborns had a big banner up on the website saying that they strongly recommended that people be at home to receive their groceries if the groceries were being delivered on Monday, and that groceries should absolutely be removed from the outside within thirty minutes of delivery, at the worst. I dutifully went down when the doorbell rang, and took the groceries from the driver and brought them into the warmth.
The bananas were extremely green and are now turning black while still being rock-hard, so I wonder if they froze despite their little foam blanket. I haven't really investigated them yet. The soy milk was partially frozen. Everything else seemed all right. This afternoon Saffron showed a strong interest in some of the canned and packaged goods that we keep on the built-in the dining room, since there is not enough storage space in the kitchen. She seemed most intrigued by a bag of co-op cereal, so I removed it from under her nose, and she was affronted and went off casually to show that she really didn't care about the cereal at all. Or so I thought at the time. However, later this afternoon when I came upstairs from moving laundry along, on the floor of the cat-sitting room I descried a tattered plastic produce bag and two baking potatoes. The bag, though it had not been actually closed, was well chewed. The potatoes looked quite damp. This was not, fortunately, because they had been licked by cats, but because they were starting to get rotten. They must have partially frozen too. I could smell the typical rotten-potato smell when I picked them up. Saffron could obviously smell it much earlier and thought it was less awful than I do, though not actually good enough to cause her to eat the potatoes when she got a good sniff of them.
I will try to follow this with something more actually resembling content, but I thought it would be good to break the ice. Or do I mean freeze the potato?
Pamela
Recent Feline Depredations:
1. A few weeks ago I made a tortilla casserole. It was pretty good, but I thought it would benefit both from some kind of vegetarian meat substitute and from about double the number of corn tortillas, since they are so nice when they have soaked up a lot of enchilada sauce. I accordingly bought some Gimme Lean mock sausage at the Linden Hills Co-op, and a couple of packages of corn tortillas from Coborns Delivers. I ended up keeping the corn tortillas on the unheated front staircase; in the weather we were having, it was more than cold enough there. The sausage I put into the freezer.
On Tuesday evening, I decided to make the casserole. I accordingly removed the sausage from the freezer and put it into the refrigerator; and I took the brown paper bag holding the corn tortillas from the staircase and left it on an armchair in the cat-sitting room. This is actually the upstairs dining room in the view of the people who designed our duplex, but we have it full of cat furniture, regular furniture that cats have clawed, and cat toys; and we sit there with cats.
When I was going through the crisper finding the vegetables I needed for the casserole, I realized that the vegetables I'd gotten for the stir-fry were looking a little limp, and decided that it would be better to make the stir-fry that evening and the casserole the next. I put the sausage back in the freezer, but I forgot about the corn tortillas. I made the stir-fry, which was very good. After we had eaten it I remarked that it was odd that cats had not been plaguing us, especially Cassie. I went to look for her. She was meatloafed next to the radiator in the library, a favorite place of hers in cold weather. Before her in pride of place was a somewhat mutilated package of corn tortillas; around her, as Raphael discovered with a more careful examination, was a scattering of gnawed tortilla bits. I had removed the tattered package to the trash when I first noticed the situation. Raphael decided it would be best to clean up the crumbs, and told me that Cassie was killing them -- picking them up in her mouth and shaking them vigorously to break their little corny necks -- but did not seem inclined to actually eat them.
The second package of corn tortillas was unmolested, and I put it into the refrigerator.
2. On Wednesday evening, I actually made the casserole, though obviously I had to do without extra corn tortillas. While I was assembling it, Saffron came tearing into the kitchen with her neck fully extended, chirruping and sniffing and chittering. She considered jumping up onto the stove, decided that the stove was too cluttered, and leapt instead onto the wooden cart we keep the microwave on, and thence to the top of the microwave, talking a mile a minute and sniffing madly. "There is no meat in this food," I told her, which is a remark I frequently make to both cats. "Please get down off that cart." She jumped down and ran around the kitchen, sniffing and commenting; finally she shot off into the library on one of her regular tears.
We ate the casserole and I put the leftovers away without further feline interference. But when I went into my office before bed to check email once more and put the computer to sleep, the wrapper from off the mock sausage was lying on the floor in there, licked extremely clean. Since Cassie's method for getting things out of the trash involves tipping the can over, I assume this was Saffron's doing.
3. When I was placing the online order that included the corn tortillas, Coborns had a big banner up on the website saying that they strongly recommended that people be at home to receive their groceries if the groceries were being delivered on Monday, and that groceries should absolutely be removed from the outside within thirty minutes of delivery, at the worst. I dutifully went down when the doorbell rang, and took the groceries from the driver and brought them into the warmth.
The bananas were extremely green and are now turning black while still being rock-hard, so I wonder if they froze despite their little foam blanket. I haven't really investigated them yet. The soy milk was partially frozen. Everything else seemed all right. This afternoon Saffron showed a strong interest in some of the canned and packaged goods that we keep on the built-in the dining room, since there is not enough storage space in the kitchen. She seemed most intrigued by a bag of co-op cereal, so I removed it from under her nose, and she was affronted and went off casually to show that she really didn't care about the cereal at all. Or so I thought at the time. However, later this afternoon when I came upstairs from moving laundry along, on the floor of the cat-sitting room I descried a tattered plastic produce bag and two baking potatoes. The bag, though it had not been actually closed, was well chewed. The potatoes looked quite damp. This was not, fortunately, because they had been licked by cats, but because they were starting to get rotten. They must have partially frozen too. I could smell the typical rotten-potato smell when I picked them up. Saffron could obviously smell it much earlier and thought it was less awful than I do, though not actually good enough to cause her to eat the potatoes when she got a good sniff of them.
I will try to follow this with something more actually resembling content, but I thought it would be good to break the ice. Or do I mean freeze the potato?
Pamela