Long green things

[desperance]

So I was standing there at the chopping-board slicing up a courgette, as a man very well might who was planning on making a courgette-and-manchego tortilla for his lunch; and Mac was getting excited, stretching up and trying to claw himself a piece (I swear he's grown, since he arrived; he didn't use to be able to hook a paw over the edge of the chopping-board, I'm sure), and we had this whole conversation about how courgette is not cucumber, and I know he likes cucumber but a courgette is not the same thing at all, for all that they may look alike to an eager little cat, and didn't he have a nose, couldn't he smell the difference...?

And like that; and then of course a piece fell on the floor because that just always happens, and -

Yup, you know what I'm going to say. You have always known it.

Nom-nom-nom.

Add courgette to the list of Mac's Favourite Veggies. Actually, you can add zucchini too, that may be cheating but it'll give us something beginning with z, which is always a thrill.

Comments

[mizkit.livejournal.com]

Every time my cats want to investigate some unlikely piece of food--like an apple--I say to them, "*Carnivore!*" in much the same tone Jack Sparrow said, "Pirate!" or Elizabeth Swann said, "King!" but it never seems to stop them from wanting a sniff.

They don't usually eat whatever it is, though. :)

[fidelioscabinet.livejournal.com]

Did he not get the "Obligate Carnivore" memo sent out from headquarters on 22 March inst., or did he get it and not read it? Or did he just think they were having him on?

[farwing.livejournal.com]

I think it is hilarious that your cat enjoys eating veggies. My cat always went after bread. If you left a really nice challah on the counter she would take great chunks out of it. We stopped leaving bread on the counter.

[desperance.livejournal.com]

Yup. Both my boys are mad for bread. And cakes, and crumpets, and croissants. Any kind of baked goods. I had to buy a new bread-bin with a tight-fitting lid, and I'm fairly sure one of 'em will crack that before long.

[fidelioscabinet.livejournal.com]

I was told this is from early exposure to the grain content in dry cat foods. I do not know if that's true or not.

[desperance.livejournal.com]

Really? Isn't that interesting... Certainly the girls were much less keen on bready stuff (tho' partial to toast, esp when spread with butter and Gentleman's Relish); I know nothing about their early diet, they were about three when they came to me, and too much dry stuff tended to upset Sophie's stomach. The boys, on the other hand, I've had since they were a year old or thereabouts (Mac is still only about eighteen months - oops, maybe twenty by now: where does the time go?), and they've been inhaling kibble ever since. Again I don't know what they had before, but there was none of that nonsense of a gradual introduction; their only grumble is that I never give 'em enough...

[julesjones]

Wouldn't it be quicker to list the vegetables that Mac *doesn't* eat?

[desperance.livejournal.com]

Onions, garlic, any of the alliums (allia?).

Umm...

You're right: definitely quicker. I'll try him with green beans tonight, see how those go down.

[devonellington.livejournal.com]

It's always something when a cat eats healthier than I do1 ;)

[footlingagain.livejournal.com]

I have a vague recollection of Ernest Hemingway writing about his favourite cat loving veggies - and mango, and pawpaw and suchlike.

Maybe it was Mac in a previous incarnation.

[desperance.livejournal.com]

Ooh, do you think they reincarnate? As well as having nine lives per iteration? It hardly seems fair, somehow...

(I used to amuse myself greatly by asking my Buddhist friends what I had to do, to reincarnate as a kitten next time round. Alas, they could never tell me...)

[esmeraldus-neo.livejournal.com]

I will spend the next eight months meditating on it.

Sometimes I have a plain bowl of something green and leafy, and I set it beside my laptop. Malcolm will come and fish the leaves out with his nasty little claws.

"Okay," says I, "you can have THAT one." But he doesn't eat them.

Cat reincarnation

[footlingagain.livejournal.com]

I'm sure it happens. I suspect the main issue is that, once you've been a cat, you never want to be anything else.

Some cats I'm sure remember being worshipped in Egypt - my mother's cat seemed to. She took being waited on every second of the day as no more than her due.

She was also very nervous, though, so I think somewhere along the way she may have been mixed up in witch trials or something nasty to do with wicker baskets, too.

Re: Cat reincarnation

[desperance.livejournal.com]

something nasty to do with wicker baskets

Ooh, now - I bought myself a wicker laundry basket a couple of years back (oddly - or not so oddly? - during a briefly cat-free period), and since The Boys moved in on me, they have quite separately taken it upon themselves to destroy it. Baz had a good year of chewing at it, and Mac has now taken on that mantle with a vengeance. D'you suppose...?

Re: Cat reincarnation

[footlingagain.livejournal.com]

Ooh - sounds feasible. Most cats hate wicker, in my experience, which I'm convinced gives even more weight to my theory.