Silly Sister

My sister Chutney lacks my professional experience. Here she is supposedly posing for Martin, then at the crucial moment she sneezes and shakes her head vigorously from side to side. It's hilarious!

Poor Chutney. She isn't used to the camera, whereas I have appeared in an advertising campaign for the Cats' Protection League. I spent half a day in the studio with a top professional photographer called Paul Hampton. I got a bit scared and tried to hide in a film store for a bit, but I came out for my big shot. That was a few years ago now, but since then I was in a magazine - Annie and Mart were being photographed in the garden and I sneaked into the shot.

I'm semi-retired now, but you never quite lose your touch. Although in Chutney's case, there's no touch to lose.

Something fishy

Mmmn. There's something in the air and it's not just the bumble-bees visiting the clematis in our garden. Martin is slowly depleting the contents of the fridge-freezer again, and on Friday, he and Annie ate fish suppers from Jaconeli's chippy. These clues would normally herald an impending trip to the cattery for me while they go off somewhere to have fun, presumably by playing with some other cats. Surely they can't be off again? They've only just got back from Spain! Perhaps I'm being over-suspicious and they're just planning to defrost the fridge, but I'm not happy, I can tell you. I'll let you know.

Heat and Crusts

It's been so hot here this week that Martin has kept dinner simple, as he can't bring himself to slave over a hot stove. He has managed to make some bread, however, which gives me the opportunity to use the rather clever headline above (it's clever for a cat, believe me).

Over the last few days they've eaten some rather delicious-looking lamb steaks with garlic and rosemary, some big corn cobs, and four real German bratwurst sausages, all cooked over the barbecue in the garden. There was a crayfish salad, some kipper fishcakes, and a very English-summer-style dish of poached salmon with creamed leaks. Most of these were served with lovely Ayrshire new potatoes and salad. The big news this month is that Annie has suddenly started to like olives at the tender age of 48 (I think that's almost 170 in cat years). I remember when I was a kitten I liked to eat olives - as well as woodlice, cork and cellophane. Now it's just white fish fillets and Science Diet.

Although everyone's been going on about the heatwave, it's rarely been over 30 Celsius here, which is nothing compared to where A and M were in Spain last week. However it's been very humid, and as they say, it's not the 'eat, it's the 'umidity that gets to you. Fortunately I'm able to avoid all unduly taxing activities and can spend my days sleeping in my special hot-weather position, which differs from the norm in that I'm stretched out on my side rather than curled up in a ball. Chutney suffers from the heat more than me because she doesn't groom herself and hence has a very thick, overgrown coat. Martin combs her occasionally but she hates it and growls at him, rather ungratefully in my opinion.

I don't think the computer likes the heat, as the cable modem has packed in. As a result, I had to ask Martin to post this entry from the office, which is why there are no attractive pictures of me relaxing in the garden on the blog this week. As soon as I'm back on line, I'll rectify the situation.

Settling in back home

I don't know about you, but I always find travel tiring. Returning from the cattery in the back of Martin's Saab only takes about three minutes (or about eight in Annie's Renault) but when I get home, I have to run around the house, earnestly checking that everything is in its place and where it's meant to be. I also have to rub the sides of my chin and some other fragrant parts of my anatomy onto some hard furnishings - like table legs and banisters - to make sure they're still registered as mine. In an old and rather full three-storey house, this is more exhausting than it sounds. When I've ticked everything off on my mental list, I treat myself to a good lie-down. This is me relaxing on the top landing, where I can simultaneously snooze, absorb the sunlight from the cupola, and keep an eye open on the terrain below, looking out for antelope like a panther in a tree. (I don't know why I like to do this, as the only prey we get in our house is spiders. Must be an evolutionary throwback.)

A and M came back to a house almost devoid of food and haven't had time to do much shopping, so lunch today was out of a packet. They're both at home as today is Fair Monday, a local holiday in Glasgow, but M is back in the office tomorrow. As I understand it, they've been in Spain for the last week, where they have another house, or at least they will have when it's finished. I assume they will have two gatos in their Spanish house, because in my mind, two-cats-per-house is an EU legal minimum. When Annie and Martin are in Scotland, their Spanish cats must be in the carcel, and that's for at least 47 weeks a year! ¡Pobres gatos!

Anyway, here it's as hot as Spain, or perhaps hotter. Firstly, Scotland is basking in unusual temperatures of over 30 Celsius, and secondly something odd happened to the central heating system while they were away and it's been on full-blast for days.

Martin tells me he sent me a postcard from Spain, but it didn't turn up. Perhaps the people at the cattery will forward it when if finally does arrive.......

Free at last

As I suspected, Chutney and I were taken to the cattery the week before last. (As I have no real concept of the passage of time, it may have been a month, a year or a decade. However when Annie paid the lady, it was £110, and I think that's about 10 days, including the VAT.)

But today we came home and said goodbye to our friends in the slammer. There was a friendly and beautiful blue-eyed rag-doll cat called Louis (I say beautiful in a purely aesthetic sense. I may have had my tackle removed at an early age, but I'm unambiguously heterosexual.) Then there was a rather miserable old black and white cat called Oscar who occasionally bites humans, and these two Russian kittens, Dimitri and Ivan, who kept referring to the cattery as "the Gulag" and who tried to smuggle in a file embedded in a tin of Whiskas. (OK, that's not really true. I found their picture on a Russian website. And we didn't really have to wear uniform.)

Although I joke about the cattery being a prison, it's really more like a holiday camp. When we're there we spend most of the day asleep in our rooms, because we're not very sociable. Later on, when we've had our dinner and most of the other cats have gone to bed, we come out and stretch our legs a bit. Chutney can even open her own cage, jump out, climb on the dead tree-trunk in the recreation area, return to her bed and lock the door after her, all without any human help. Not bad for an old lady.

I mustn't forget that this is a food blog, so here's a little write-up: our accommodation was all-inclusive, with all the water you wanted served in proper bowls (you didn't have to hold your head under the kitchen tap or jump in the toilet). My breakfast and dinner was steamed white fish fillet and a little crunchy Science Diet on the side - comfortingly like the food at home but with that certain je ne sais quoi one encounters when one travels. Chutney tried some of the more exotic local dishes, including a memorable Felix Senior Recipe With Rabbit in Jelly. She tells me she liked it, although she wouldn't go out of her way to get it at home.

Ominous leftovers

This week has been big on leftovers, and I'm afraid I know what that means. I suspect our humans are going on holiday any minute, and Chutney and I will have to go to the cattery.

On Tuesday they tried hard to finish a variety of curries from the weekend; on Wednesday Martin went to London and ate courtesy of British Airways while Annie had another go at the curry; and tonight, Thursday, dinner was a chopped courgette sauteed with tomatoes and garlic, grilled chicory, cous-cous and deep-fried whitebait. While each of those ingredients has its charms - particularly the whitebait - the combination is a bit of a give-away. They're off travelling, the fridge is being prepared for defrosting, and we're away to the slammer tomorrow. I'd put money on it, if I was a gambling cat.

Still, a stay in cat chokey isn't all bad. A nice man who looks like Spike Milligan gives us our medicine, well-spoken teenage girls clean out our cells, and we meet some other cats, some of whom are even older than us.

But we wouldn't want to die in there without saying goodbye to Annie and Martin. When they drop us off, we don't know whether it's going to be a weekend, a month, or forever. Maybe this time they'll send us a postcard.

A change is as good as a rest

Tonight was pretty unimpressive on the dinner front. I had my usual coley fillet and Science Diet, Chutney had half a pouch of Felix , and Martin cooked a few sliced mushrooms with bacon, garlic and cream, serving it over tagliatelle with some salad on the side. There was home-made ciabatta, and Annie made one of her infrequent forays into the kitchen to stew some rhubarb, which she served with yoghurt. All a bit on the dull side, but it is Monday and M didn't start cooking until he got back from swimming on the way home from work.

One pleasant development; college has finished for six weeks and A is at home for much of the day. Today she cleaned the house, which is extremely disturbing when you're trying to sleep and you're a bit frightened of vacuum cleaners. When she's not working, Chutney and I have the run of the house instead of being locked in the kitchen, which is always nice. All we do is sleep on their big bed instead of our little ones, but a change is as good as a rest. Indeed in our case, a change is a rest, and so is everything else.

Maquereaux sans groseilles

Apparently this is the best time of year for both mackerel and gooseberries, which is why the French serve the two together in maquereau a la confiture de groseilles. Martin found the mackerels, but not the gooseberries. Last night he cooked a couple of the whole, cleaned fish quickly on a very hot ridged grill pan and served them with jersey royals. To start, they had another seasonal treat: some of the first English broad beans, cooked a la granadina with chorizo, garlic, red pepper, cummin, smoked paprika, saffron and sherry vinegar. (There should be artichokes in there as well, but like the gooseberries, these were beyond the scope of the local shops this weekend.) These beans were fantastic, with a lovely creamy texture - I know because one flew out of the pan and stuck to the cooker, and I ate it later when I was doing my rounds of the kitchen, looking for splashes of fat to lick.

I had seen M preparing the shiny silver-and-black fish in the kitchen earlier in the day, but I didn't get too excited. I learned my lesson last week when they taunted me with sea bass fillets only to eat them all themselves. Clearly the only fish I'm ever going to get is frozen coley. Ah well, at least there are no bones to worry about...

Cybercurry

Last night was a curry night. Martin cooked mutton keema with karela, a buttery dhal made with urid lentils - the little white ones that taste a bit like mashed potatoes - and cubed kohl rabbi stir fried with panch phoreen. There was a little salad of tomatoes, onions, cucumber and coriander leaves and some yoghurt, and they ate it all with some large, very thin nan, which was more like Arabic khoubz than the usual fluffy Indian nan. The mutton and karela curry was as hot as - well the best metaphor I can think of, being a cat, is as hot as a tin roof.

I just had my white fish and biscuits though. I didn't fancy the curry anyway, as I had a slightly upset tummy.

Anyway afterwards, we all sat down and watched Doctor Who. The Cybermen were on and I was so scared I had to watch from behind the sofa.

Home alone

Over the past few days, I've had coley and Science Diet for dinner every night. Chutney has gone for the option of Felix and Science Diet, and most nights I've managed to muscle in to her bowl for a bit of variety. So nothing out of the ordinary, then - although it's been less routine for our humans. On Wednesday Martin stuffed some round courgettes with minced mutton. He fried the chopped flesh from the inside of the vegetables with the meat and added garlic, pine nuts, cinnamon, cummin and fresh mint before stuffing it all into the cavity of each courgette, which had been parboiled for about three minutes beforehand. They went in a hot oven for twenty minutes with a bit of cheese on top. They looked delicious and created a distinctly Middle Eastern aroma of rich meat and sweet spices. Unfortunately he only made enough for him and Annie; there was nothing left over for us.

On Thursday, Martin went to London to some swanky party in the gardens of Chelsea Hospital, where, he tells me, he drank Pimms and ate barbecued sausages. The rest of us were left to fend for ourselves. Annie ate the last of the prawn curry with some pitta bread, and complained that there wasn't very much of it. (She could have had something else as well, but that would have involved cooking, so she just went hungry.)

Then on Friday evening Martin returned, somewhat dishevelled, and from limited provisions put together another of his simple regular dishes, a Hungarian pasta dish called Turoscsusza (no, they don't call it that in our house. They just say "that Hungarian pasta dish".) To make this you boil some pasta until it's al dente - it's meant to be small, irregularly shaped flat squares like broken lasagne, but you can use anything, and farfalle are good. While it's cooking, put the oven on to 190C or thereabouts, chop some bacon, preferable unsmoked streaky, and fry it in its own fat. Mix the cooked, drained pasta with the bacon, and add enough cottage cheese and sour cream to produce a nicely coagulated mass. Put the lot in a gratin dish and bake until it browns a little on top. In Hungary it's often enriched with eggs, but that makes it a lot heavier. Of course you can add something like chopped flat-leaf parsley, black pepper or paprika if you want to enliven it a bit, but go easy on the salt as the bacon will be salty. It's very good, in my opinion, and it's interesting how different it tastes from any Italian pasta dishes I know.

Martin told me about the first time he came across this dish, in Budapest. He and Annie were eating at a beautiful old restaurant called Kispipa, which is apparently a favourite of Tony Curtis, who at that time was helping to fund the restoration of Budapest's main synagogue, in the same street. (You'll be thinking that this is a lot of detailed information for a cat to recall, but Martin repeats all his stories so often that it sinks in, even if you only have a little brain like me.) The dining room was lined with dark wood panelling and mirrors, a pianist played a concert grand on a small stage, and smart waiters clicked their heels as they took orders. It felt like a location for a Cold War spy movie. Martin ate venison and tarragon soup which came to the table in a huge terrine, followed by roast goose. (This was largely down to luck as the menu was in Hungarian and he, Annie and the waiter shared only a few dozen words of German, some of which were "I live in Railway Station Street".) Naturally Martin wasn't particularly hungry after soup and goose, but he wanted to try something else because the food was brilliant, so he scanned the menu and chose the cheapest thing there for dessert, reasoning that if it was cheap, it would be small. For about thirty pence, he got an enormous dish of Turoscsusza. He made a dent in the vast expanse of pasta, cheese and bacon because it was delicious, and because he didn't want to offend the staff at this lovely restaurant by leaving too much of it, but he then found it rather difficult to get up and walk back to the hotel. He's been making it at home ever since, but has not to this date served it after roast goose.