My Cat- the "Sous Chef "

I have many friends who have the pleasure of living with animals. Over the years I've heard countless, cooking-related horror stories of how one friend or another "just turned their backs for one second..." and their dog or cat, their eyes wide, and with crazed intensity, had jumped up onto the counter and taken a bite out of the meat, chicken, fish, etc. or ran off with the evening meal, the temptations of which proved too great for their furry little friends.

This has never happened to me.

We have two cats, we've had them since they were kittens, this year will mark their 14th year with us and yet they have never once jumped up onto the counter, or the table, or tried to steal food, nor have they ever knocked over the garbage and dragged out the contents. (There was an incident with a box of Q-Tips when Felix was 4 but that's not cooking related). One of our cats does however hold a great interest in cooking, I truly believe that if he were Human, he would be "into" cooking, and so I've jokingly dubbed him my Sous Chef.

Charlie loves being in the kitchen with me, his favorite spots are either under my feet, which can be quite disastrous, as I'm already a klutz without having the added bonus of a cat to trip over, or right in front of the area I need to be in at that moment. It's cute for five minutes, but more often than not Charlie gets banished from the kitchen.

He always comes back 5 minutes later.

A long time ago I noticed that if bags of groceries were sitting on the floor waiting to be unpacked they where always inspected by Charlie. He would circle, poke his head in a bag, sniff a few times, and move on. Whenever I open the oven to remove whatever I'm storing in there, Charlie runs over to "help", helping means staying as close to my feet as possible, (looping in and out), while I not-so-gracefully try to balance tins, cookie sheets, and pans and not trip over myself or him. I do find it interesting that when the oven is on, he stays farther back, as if he knows, that the heat can hurt him. When something gets thrown into the garbage, Charlie will run over, sniff a few times and then go back to sitting in a spot across the room, his interest in the garbage satisfied by 1 or 2 sniffs. If something falls on the floor Charlie will bolt over, look at it, smell it, even glare at you for being such a messy Human, (picture him rolling his eyes), he will even stand there until you pick it up. I think what attracts him to the kitchen is less about the food and more about the activity, something for him to watch while he lies on the floor, feet in the air, staring at me upside-down.

He does have 1 peculiar weakness.

Dried Spaghetti.

Dried spaghetti can never be transferred out of the box, into a container, or a pot without Charlie crying and circling my feet demanding his "spaghetti tax". His "tax" is one strand of dried spaghetti, which he immediatley chews down to half, then bats around the floor for a few minutes before he loses interest. Just shaking the box of spaghetti will make him come running from another room. If you don't give him the spaghetti he will cry, a loud scolding sound that will make your ears bleed.

It used to freak me out, Charlie's need to be in the kitchen, but now I've grown used to having his company. I've learned to look down when I move about the room, and I even get annoyed when on the very rare occasion he chooses to hang with Tom in the living room, rather than come cook with me. Lucky for me, all I have to do to get Charlie to come running is shake a box of spaghetti... Written by Deb on January 11, 2003 01:10 PM