Currying Feline Favour: How it Isn’t Done

There’s nothing quite like waking up to a cat being pointedly ill on the bedspread. This after we had deported her the previous evening from the master bedroom, where she was improving upon someone’s good, grey coat.

It was like this. We were sitting down to tea, when a summons came up the stairs with the terrifying words, ‘You must see what the cat is doing. She isn’t moving.’  It’s not as if, come Advent and Christmas we harbour a perpetual fear that the Marschallin-Cat will asphyxiate, choke, strangle or otherwise do away with herself by means of tinsel, poinsettia, or Christmas bauble, so these were well chosen words. Allowing for the fact that we do, in fact, anticipate all and any of these things at a given holiday moment. Left to our own devices there would be no ornaments within striking distance of the Magnificent Paws, and no lights. We’ve won a victory against the poinsettias, and tinsel is, happily, not a Canadian fixture.

Anyway, off we went, only to find Miss Marschallin was very much moving. Flip-flopping, in fact, side-to-side. Stretching luxuriantly across the grey wool coat, exposing her underbelly to anyone who happened to be passing. Miss Marschallin never exposes her underbelly to passers-by. We only get to stroke it on extra-special occasions when she’s half-asleep with unbridled contentment. Anyway, the owner of the grey coat got within a foot of that particularly vulnerable spot, put a hand out, and thought better of it. They further declined to go to bed via the other side of the bed, which was vacant, because really, why adjust one’s life to a cat.

What can we say? They haven’t lived with cats long. Miss Marschallin’s predecessor was only with us eleven years and loved a good tummy rub. Chalk and cheese, these two felines. All the while, there was the Marschallin-cat beautifying that grey coat with her lovely ginger fur. There is nothing not improved by ginger fur. Also, this way the coat’s owner could now do a credible impression of some fur-clad ’40s movie star. Heddy Lamar, Garbo, maybe. We don’t know.

 

Neither of them was budging, so in the end there was nothing for it but to swoop Miss Marschallin up into her very particular hold and transport her elsewhere. You could practically hear the indignation radiating from her. And really, we don’t blame her. To be taken away from a comfy place to sleep for no better reason than the fact of one’s being portable and the sleeping place of choice being someone else’s property…well, it doesn’t bear thinking about.

Which, we’re tolerably sure, is how we came to be the loving recipient of this morning’s pointed gift. It’s not as if there were wooden floors going spare, or anything. Here’s a poem for you by way of apology to Her Nibs, Filed-Marschallin, Empress and Queen of Dawlish.  We first found it in the Opies’ Oxford Book of Children’s Verse. Perusing it as an adult, it’s one of the rarities that isn’t supremely dogmatic and moralistic. But also, whoever wrote it, unlike that coat owner, spoke Cat.

The Mysterious Cat 

Vachal Lindsay

I saw a proud, mysterious cat,
I saw a proud, mysterious cat
Too proud to catch a mouse or rat—
Mew, mew, mew.

But catnip she would eat, and purr,
But catnip she would eat, and purr.
And goldfish she did much prefer—
Mew, mew, mew.

I saw a cat—’twas but a dream,
I saw a cat—’twas but a dream
Who scorned the slave that brought her cream—
Mew, mew, mew.

Unless the slave were dressed in style,
Unless the slave were dressed in style
And knelt before her all the while—
Mew, mew, mew.

Did you ever hear of a thing like that?
Did you ever hear of a thing like that?
Did you ever hear of a thing like that?
Oh, what a proud mysterious cat.
Oh, what a proud mysterious cat.
Oh, what a proud mysterious cat.
Mew . . . mew . . . mew.

Supposedly it’s a chant for a pantomime. If it is, it makes an abnormal amount of sense for panto material. But not unlike the cat, we wound up disdaining our tea this evening. It’s not that we require anyone to be kneeling beside us while we drink it, stylish or otherwise. It’s that tonight’s tea was undrinkable. It goes by the prosaic name of Ginger Turmeric Tonic, and while undoubtably it’s supposed to be wholesome, it tastes appalling.

Someone – we’re unclear who – had the clever idea to pair the ginger and turmeric with green tea, which goes about as well as you’d expect. The green tea, left to steep, goes bitter. The ginger, meanwhile, has it’s usual sharpness. And But none of this matters because all one can taste over the lot of it is the numeric. And all that while the tea smells shockingly of anise. We stuck it out about a half-a-dozen mouthfuls before calling it a bad job, so can’t really comment on steeping grade, or anything like that. And we’ll freely own that our using numeric six ways from Sunday to make a curry probably doesn’t help.

We don’t think that’s the root problem though, because we’ve quite happily partaken of teas flavoured with cloves, cardamom, and any number of spices that swisher between sweet and savoury in our cooking. We’ve even known them to translate well to tea. This is not one of them. No doubt it’s a rigorously wholesome thing. Good for colds. But for our money, we’re much happier sticking to hot lemon and honey. Maybe a lemsip. Possibly even the odd dose of ginger. The calendar can keep the turmeric.