Posts Tagged ‘cats’

So You Want to Talk about Cats:
Flammkuchen with Shaved Fennel
& Asparagus

So I had been planning to write about cats. Specifically, the cat birthday I was going to throw for Rum Tum light of my life, who turned two on April 8. He’s got a friend staying with him for a month and a half, and in these pandemic times, when you get to be in the same place as a friend, it’s already a party. My human friends with cats were going to Zoom in. I’d organized a Champagne-colored satin dress to borrow. (The aesthetic I was going for was one of those old oil paintings of royalty where everyone’s wearing light blue and pink satin and holding a silky-looking lapdog.) I’d purchased a sparkly gold party hat and a pink bowtie for Rum Tum, two tins of pate cat food – the good stuff  – which I was going to stick with a cat-head party topper and maybe candles, and a pack of milk-flavored cat snacks. Alas, two days before the big day, my human co-conspirator and photographer got corona.

Like my bag of 50-count deflated metallic balloons, I put my cat party dreams on the back shelf of the cabinet, to be dusted off in tamer times. When I finally do it, it’s going to be even bigger, even more absurd, and my cat will still care zero much.

When I finally do it, it’s going to be even bigger, even more absurd, and my cat will still care zero much.

In the meantime, I continue to enjoy the joys and annoyances of having two cats for just a few more days until my friend returns to Berlin to take my godchild away from me.

Universe and the German government, if you’re listening, please make it so that I can spend more time with people again.

But cats.

Zami has taken a while to settle in. » Continue reading this post...

Feeding Kittens

Celine and Ja'mie (Eat Me. Drink Me.)

This might seem off-topic, but the most cooking I’ve been doing recently is reconstituting tablespoon after tablespoon of KMR for two five week old kittens that I rescued from Tybee Island off the Georgia coast. Cooking for kittens is nothing glamorous. I’ve gotten good with a whisk and my mental math is certainly improving (if one cat weighs one pound and one cat weighs one pound two ounces and each cat gets four teaspoons per pound and four teaspoons equals one tablespoon and one teaspoon of powder – ). My hands smell faintly of babies and milk.

The first time I met the kittens, I was sitting in front of the TV, mesmerized by the slab of mayonnaise Paula Deen was putting into potato salad, when a wet, orange ball of cat, looking miserable, was plopped down on the couch next to me. Who wouldn’t have picked the whole thing up in one hand and pressed it to her chest?

A neighbor had found the litter huddled under a wall. One kitten was dead, another missing and presumed dead, the mother totally uninterested. Only two kittens, the orange one and a white one, survived. We kept them in the closed-in porch and fed them cat’s milk, which turned out to be a bad idea, since kittens can digest nothing but their mother’s milk – or a formula replacement – during their first six weeks of life. I found that out after a few days of cat’s milk, as I’d become worried about their excessive and runny stool production. (That’s a nice way of saying shit was everywhere.)

Sleeping (Eat Me. Drink Me.)

I’ve come to enjoy watching the kittens eat. About half an hour before a meal, Celine and Ja’mie (don’t ask about their names, it’s a long story) begin to synchronize mew. Like the smallest bells in a handbell choir, they ping in alternating bursts until finally, they reach a simultaneous mew and having heard how loud they are together, mew as a unit until I give in to the pitiful sound. » Continue reading this post...