[Sca-cooks] Ideas for homemade holiday gifts - for cat owners

[Phil Troy / G. Tacitus Adamantius]

On Dec 19, 2008, at 2:35 PM, Laura C. Minnick wrote:

>> Actually, I was thinking one of those lovely raised English pies...  
>> and a substantial pie it would have been, too!
> Is your oven big enough?

With ears and tail suitable folded down, probably. Such pies cook long  
and slowly, anyway, as a rule, so they can be in there for a long time  
without burning.

>> There was an unfortunate roadkill incident in front of my apartment  
>> building this summer, and for various reasons it fell to me to  
>> decently dispose of some animal remains. As I recall, what was  
>> noteworthy wasn't how nasty the whole experience was (and it was),  
>> but my ability to look with a certain professional detachment on  
>> the resulting hairy pancake and say, "Hey, look, Falschehasse...  
>> that'd be lovely with some red wine, some peppercorns, and a few  
>> juniper berries..."
>>
>> Adamantius

> Around here that would be 'Flan de Rocky J. Squirrel'... (And remind  
> me never to eat 'mystery meat' at your place... I want to see the  
> supermarket packaging!)

That could be a problem. A lot of our meat either comes from the  
butcher's, wrapped in white or brown paper, fish I caught myself, and  
mysteriously labelled objects from the Chinese grocery, such as the  
beef tendons unaccountably labeled as "cow penis". Which, on a number  
of levels, is inaccurate. But since the most-requested-by-Oregonians  
specialitie de la maison seems to be meat loaf, we could probably  
assuage your fears with a supermarket hamburger-meat package...

But there's no kitty in fridge or freezer. I was merely noting the  
resemblance of the muscle tissue, which I had no choice but to look at  
for a moment, to things like rabbit and hare. The _other_ other white  
meat...

I don't understand how people can eat squirrels, after they've been  
properly obliterated with a suitable shotgun. It's not a matter of  
picking out the shot; it's more about putting together their component  
molecules if they've been properly destroyed in the first place... if  
there's a discernible chunk of flesh in the remains, you should know  
you haven't been violent enough...

> I was at Walgreens the other day and saw a dog toy- a fluffy grey  
> squirrel. I'm still thinking about getting it for our kitties to  
> play with (I'll have to fill it with 'nip and take the squeaker  
> out), particularly in view of the war our Fluffy Grey Kitty, Shadow,  
> has going with the grey squirrel that lives out front of the house.  
> Said squirrel likes to play right in front of the picture window in  
> the dining room, and has been known to moon the cat. Cat  
> occasionally forgets about the nature of glass and we hear the *  
> bonk! * when he smacks his head on the glass.

Squirrels are possessed of an alien, and purely malevolent,  
intelligence...

> In a food-related note, I'm told that the red tabby helped eat up  
> the last of the turkey carcass... as you noted, she luves her some  
> poultry...

Yes, she does. Contrary to popular belief, I rather like the red tabby  
in question, when she's not busy trying to consume some of my oldest  
and dearest friends. Once that was established, we got along just  
fine. She's not a squirrel, right?

Adamantius






"Most men worry about their own bellies, and other people's souls,  
when we all ought to worry about our own souls, and other people's  
bellies."
			-- Rabbi Israel Salanter