Nothing deters Cairo from a little snack. No plastic, no foil, and frequently not even ancient Tupperware can prevent the cat from wiggling his dexterous little claws into something for a tasty treat.
Cairo is non-discriminatory, so much so he is practically worse than the dogs. He will have a little taste of anything I let him. He even likes Sour Patch Kids, despite when the little demons get stuck on his sabertooth and just dangle there. Cats aren’t even supposed to respond to sugary sour and sweet flavors, but Cairo gets a kick out of them.
I guess you could call him a foodie. I avoid eating at the table alone because he likes to steal from my plate and the dog can’t jump high enough to scuttle him away. He drinks milk straight from my glass and, depending on the cup, will drink the whole thing if I’m not looking.
He likes spaghetti a lot, even when its plain and boring, like I like it. So you can imagine my surprise when I left some store-packaged gnocchi on the counter overnight Saturday into Sunday, and the eerie, lifeless face of a young girl holding potatoes had not been bitten into or shredded, and gnocchi wasn’t everywhere.
But Sunday into Monday, there was an attempted murder of the gnocchi girl. Her already lifeless face slashed in half with a single, long claw stroke, making her look even more eerie and disturbing holding all of those potatoes and blankly staring back at me. I put her in a zip-top bag.
Of all the things Cairo will smash and grab to snack on, apparently, he didn’t like the gnocchi. He sliced that terrifying little girl’s face only to turn up his Ptolemaic snout at the secret potato pasta noodles.
“This isn’t like spaghetti at all, Ma! What the heck did you buy it for?”
For a recipe that I most certainly did not cook correctly, little beast. Remember, the one that was too salty and had too much garlic and red pepper, so much even YOU kept your distance? That one.
“Oh, gross, Ma.”
Yeah, yeah, I know. I was trying to make something new and prove to the boyfriend I could be a little domestic. All we learned was that neither of he nor I really know much about cooking.
“Well I could have told you that you can’t cook. Remember all of those weird cakes you’ve tried to make me out of cat food?”
Shut up, feline.
“So sassy, who’s swishing their tail now, Ma?”
As a put up the failed gnocchi Saturday, I rinsed it twice and jammed it in a Lock n’ Lock. My hope is another rinse and I can reheat it, season it again, and not have it taste like it was cooked in seawater, then use the second package with the slashed gnocchi girl to try my altered recipe.
No word yet on whether or not Cairo will take a new interest in the pasta when I don’t ruin the recipe.
