2 posts tagged with "the-family-cats"

Whenever I used to cook mince for pasta sauce, a cat would appear. Kipper was the most on to it with figuring out that me cooking mince in the kitchen would often result in it getting a few precious morsels of half-cooked beef. Bob, however, never quite got it but was usually moseying around the kitchen at some point during the cooking process. I found it quite useful; if a piece of mince was flung out of the pan due to careless spatula work, I could put it on the floor to be cleaned up. And maybe some pieces of mince might have made their way out of the pan on purpose. Who knows.

It's sad cooking mince now. I seem to have made careless spatula work a habit over the years. No noisy Kipper or clueless Bob around to clean up after any pieces of carelessly spilled beef.

My parents' house had quite a long driveway; and, when I would come home from school, Kipper would come running up to me to meet me halfway down the drive – meowing all the way as if to say "you're home! you're home!" When we finally met, Kipper would walk all around and in between my legs and would make sure I was caught up with all the daily gossip.

"meowmeowmeowmeowmeow! meowmeowmeow!"

Which I, obviously, understood as:

"Ugh! You would not believe what that nasty cat from the Taylor household did today – she tried to claim some of our garden for herself. Well. I chased her off, alright. And that new dog next door is making a terrible racket. Keeps howling and wheezing at every passer-by saying "Oh, oh please play with me – please" sounding like some old broken chew toy…"

Once I had been caught up on all the important goings-on of the day, it was time for belly rubs. Kipper would flop on the ground, rolling from left to right expectantly awaiting a well-deserved petting after a hard day of work. And, of course, who could resist?