The return of White-trash

Months & months ago, we had problems with a large white tom-cat. By we I mean ourselves & W***** next door.

We both have cats that live in our barns, but we treat as inside animals: unlike our neighbors, we get them spayed, we give them inoculations, in inclement weather we might even bring them inside for safekeeping, on a day-to-day basis we will probably talk to them, scratch them, hold them. Trust me when I say this is not the norm for our neighborhood.

We had caught glimpses of White-trash for months, but he mostly left our cats alone (it is hard to seduce a cat that has been spayed), but something made him come closer for a look & that is when he learned the astonishing truth about us: we put food in bowls on the back step. Cat food. For cats. It was like manna for White-trash.

First he tried muscling in at W*****'s, but after the first night, her cats united against him & he was driven off. Not before he had given one of them a puncture wound, though, that required a trip to the vet.

At our house things were both easier & more difficult. Katje & Bianca are not fussy who they eat with. More than once I have opened the back door to find two cats & an elderly possum waiting for me. We are quite sure the armadillos bring their babies through the yard most nights. More difficult because we actually check up on the eaters. If you are as people-wary as White-trash is, seeing a human face at the window can be quite alarming. White-trash decided he would prefer to eat next door rather than risk being seen.

The brawling with W*****'s former-toms was a daily adventure & we had to do something. The humane trap was cleaned out, a can of cat food was purchased & in the end, he was caught here. He had taken to lounging in the tea olive tree outside the front window, lolling around, putting his paws on the glass & looking serene & driving the dogs inside out of their minds. It was easy enough to set the humane trap & he was plenty big enough to spring it. & spring it he did around 4pm one afternoon.

At first he did not care much. An entire can of cat food was like a dream of heaven to him. He ate & ate & ate. He put his paws into it & licked them clean. He thoroughly cleaned the underside of all the edges. & when we was done, he turned around to go back out the way he came in & learned he was TRAPPED!

It was a long night. He yowled, he prowled & while he prowled, he rolled the trap with him. It was like an large angry hamster in an over-long, squared-off, cage-ball.

By dusk the whole neighborhood knew he was there. By bedtime, every animal he had wronged came to call. The cat-traffic through our front yard was too much for the dogs & no one got much sleep.

Around dawn, I met W***** at the top of the driveway to hand her the cage (she was dropping him at the vet on her way to the farm) . When she picked him up on the way home he was a new man. I set up a nest of old towels in the barn furthest from the house & put food out to lure him in; we wanted to be sure he had a safe place to rest up. I knew when he did spend the night there by the odor in the morning (did I mention he had a strong man-cat smell?). When he did come to the house, he ate & left no fighting, no courting. Eventually, we saw less & less of him, only glimpses of a large white cat sitting on a distant fence.

Until last week. The heat has peaked. It is 9:38am as I type this & only 69F. & White-trash has returned from his summer home & is lounging again in the tea olive tree. The dogs cannot take their eyes off of him. Or his buddy. He has brought with him another male cat I am calling Bib&tucker because he is all gray with a white bib & a small white stripe that wraps almost the whole way around his neck. Tuck seems like a gentleman & is quite clean & silky, so I am fairly certain he has a home & is just slumming for fun.

& what could be more fun than driving large house-bound dogs out of their minds?

Why I stopped making big family dinners

The thing about my In-Laws is they are from another country. And they are everything that means. They talk funny & eat strange foods & most of all know 1,000 people who all talk like they do & get sentimental about that food.

Food is often a stumbling block for us. It is not that they keep kosher, they do not. I have a suspicion I know the food laws better than they do. If they did wake up one morning & decide to keep kosher, that would be probably easier than the system currently in place.

The first time I made dinner for A's parents & aunt & uncle, I learned his uncle was a diet-controlled diabetic about three hours before they showed up. Apparently it was a secret so no one was permitted to discuss it. Everyone knew, of course, but it did not occur to them that I might not.

When they arrived, I had just returned from the grocery store & was only starting to prepare a second dinner. It turned out not to matter much: I had mentioned in passing that I needed the oil changed on my car & A, being action man, decided that dinner-delay was a perfect opportunity to do that chore. I was just glad I was able to get to the store & back before he began to pull out the filter & oil pan. Sometimes I toy with the idea of telling him some chore that needs doing during sex (telling him during sex, not the other thing), but I am too afraid.

The 2nd-to-last-time I made Thanksgiving dinner, I culled through the menu, eliminating anything that had caused offense previously (sweet potatoes), added what had been demanded when it was missing (bread; I had thought stuffing would be an adequate 'bread course'. It was not) & the only comment on the food I can recall is my father-in-law extolling at length about how much sweet potatoes revolted him. Those of you reading closely might have caught that I did not actually serve sweet potatoes. Their absence though, was not enough. They had been there the previous year & the memory lingered...?

I am sure everyone said thank you. I do not remember it, but they must have; they are not cave-dwellers, after all. They just have no idea how much their complaining makes me want to send them to a soup kitchen next time.

Some of their complaints start innocently enough: A's mother was on a strict heart-healthy for years & unlike his uncle, everyone was allowed to know. This meant, however that a separate portion of many dishes had to be made just for her (it really was that strict). I am still not sure how, but when they saw this, other family members decided that they would have preferred to have been offered a choice as well. Now we take them to restaurants.

In fairness, some of their food completely grosses me out as well. Not just veal (the idea of which repels me, although I did avoid talking about it, I just declined a serving). But also other traditional dishes, like mămăligă. I accept that thousands of people love this dish; I think it looks & tastes like hot vomit. A's mother has a special variation: she stirs in feta making it....hot vomit with cheese. I know A misses it & would love to have some; he can go to his mother's for that. Although, they tend to take us to restaurants as well...

//I have been reading quite a bit of Eudora Welty lately. Does it show?

Magnolia bombs

Our back yard has two large magnolia trees (Magnolia grandiflora if you are curious) & when they are both in bloom & the air is humid & heavy, it is overwhelming.

Now the blossoms are over & the seed heads are dropping & I can no longer sit in the swing underneath the northernmost tree. When those things fall, they make quite a clunk.

The taller of the two trees is in the yard next to the emu yard. I have seen it drop bombs on unsuspecting birds & that can be quite a show. Emus, while birds, do not observe the world in many multiple tiers (they pretty much have only two levels of observation: standing & sitting). They rarely leave the ground (& then only in ungainly, loquat-grabbing leaps). They do not look up.

& so when magnolia bombs fall, only the impact registers. One moment everything is dandy, the next a large, velvety-&-yet-somehow-prickly pod is resting in the divot it just made in your abdomen. That's right, the sky is falling.

The dogs have learned to listen for the rattle of the leaves. I am fairly certain they can even tell where the bomb will come down; I cannot, hence the avoiding of my favorite swing. Sometimes, though the dogs will run towards a landed bomb, expecting something else (perhaps a chicken, perhaps an egg; yes they will lay eggs while high upon a perch).

With all these bombs, we have never had a single seed sprout. I am told this is not unusual. Our neighbor had a tree that did not even flower for years (it had, interestingly enough been the result of the single seed that did sprout from a tree in her father's yard). Finally, one year it made one blossom. We lauded it. She pressed the flower & I soldered it between two pieces of glass to enjoy for years. Now it flowers like all the others; many bombs but no seedlings.

I do not know what it is about magnolia that makes them so reluctant to reproduce; I only wish they were so careful with their reproductive organs. Seriously, how would you like to be knocked unconcious by someone else's ovary?

Sunburst pie

The weekend before last, W***** mowed our big pasture again. She actually apologized for not having gotten around to it in the past few weeks. This past weekend, as a Thank You, I made her Sunburst Pie.

Sunburst pie is not my original recipe. It is based on a favorite quiche recipe from my favorite cookbook from a restaurant that will never be again. The changes I have made are not to the ingredients (I use more or less the same ones in the same proportion) but to the preparation.

It started by accident because I have access to real farm-fresh, still-warm-from-the-chicken eggs. These eggs are bigger & have more moisture (not just because they are big but also they have not been bleached, oiled, shipped & stored). Unlike other eggs, it takes just the littlest bit of wrist action to fluff them high.

With these eggs, my quiches began to have a souffle quality. The secret to a souffle is easier than you think: eggs that have never been refrigerated (as in the coolest temperature they reach is the one on your kitchen counter) & spotlessly clean cookware. Everything else is optional. I say my pie has 'souffle quality' because that whole SPOTLESS thing still hangs me up (they look clean, they ARE clean, but there might be a little hard-water residue & that is all it takes to keep the souffle from scaling up the sides).

Then I started taking the broccoli stalks, peeling them, chopping the soft centers & adding it to the eggs.

Shredded cheese just was not fine enough. I grated a large block & then chopped that & added it to the egg&broccoli glop.

As a result, I could layer the vegetables in the pie shell & then pour the mix over them. Instead of sitting on top as another layer, it filled all the gaps. & when it cooked, it rose up above the edge of the pan & hung there.

& finally one day I was feeling snazzy. I made the pie & saved some of the ungrated cheese, cut into long rectangles. After I had mixed the dried herbs & waved them over the top, I put the rectangles on the surface & so they baked a sunburst into the top.

When I left the pie for W***** I did not go into the whole story, but I hope she thinks this pie at the end of a long line of lesser pies is equal to one days hard labor. Maybe I should have made more pies.

Saint Roch

Somehow, I do not know how, I missed the feast day of Saint Roch, the patron of dogs & dog lovers. It was August 16.

He is also the man you go to when you have been falsely accused, or have a skin ailment, or the plague. Further, he is the patron of bachelors. Yes, dogs & bachelors.

Finally, he is the patron of dealers in second-hand goods. This works for me, because all my dogs are second-hand. & while A was definitely a bachelor when we met, he was also a dog & therefore, arguably, second-hand himself.

Our first dog is still with us. She came from a shelter in Texas (we lived in Houston at the time). Unlike our subsequent dogs (& horses & goats & emus, oh my!) she had no real baggage; she was a puppy, born at the shelter with no history of abuse. Megan is without question the most disfunctional of all our pets.

Because of Megan's extreme lonliness, we got our second dog. Rather, she got us. Josephine followed us home, submitted to a bath, ate a healthy dinner & slept soundly for what was probably the first time in months. Farley also came from a shelter, Florida this time. He & one litter mate survived a nightmare situation; the rest of the litter & their mother did not.

Becca (horse) & Amy-dog (dog) both came as a result of divorces, Anton & Cleo (emus) because their owners were too old to care even for themselves. The Henriettas (the first batch of Rhode Island Red chickens) were found at a gas station in Georgia; they had fallen out of over-packed crates headed for a factory henhouse.

Golda & Black&tan (goats) were de-facto ours for years before they became ours. They belonged to our neighbor & came through our common fence to join our goats. Once together, they did not want to seperate. G*** had Parkinsons & was less&less able to live the way he wanted. One awful day he shot himself.

Coco (horse) was born at a pregnant mare urine (used to manufacture Premarin) collection facility. She was one of many foals sold for meat & shipped around the world.

Back to Saint Roch: there is some question apparently as to whether or not he is even one person. That is, more than one story seems to have morphed into his. Generally agreed upon is that he was released from prison, contracted the plague, gave away his substantial inheritance, was set-upon by his own relations & went to live in the woods in a hut he made himself, not necessarily in that order. A local nobleman's dog brought him food. The nobleman followed the dog, discovered Saint Roch & the rest is history. Or not, as the case may be.

The last thing you should know about Saint Roch is that he is not a saint. While there are churches in his name from Lebanon to Staten Island & Manila to Minsk, in the late 15oos someone dropped the ball & his official saint-hood was never confirmed.

& so he is, a not-quite saint, for anyone whose first chance does not have to be their last.