Summer is here and that means several things for those of us in that special region of Hell known as the Ohio Valley: the bad - return of the All-98 weather (98 degrees, 98% humidity, 98 pollution index) and the good - berry season!I loves me some berries: cherries, blueberries, blackberries, strawberries (or, as a friend calls them, “evil little sponge fruit.”) And those of us berry fiends living in this area are lucky enough to have Huber’s Orchard and Winery right across the river in Indiana.
Saturday the Spouse, my parents and I ventured up to Huber’s for some fresh strawberries, wine and other tasty food tidbits. And I discovered a new addictive snacky thing: wasabi soy nuts. Oh, my, I could eat my own weight in these hot lil’ sumbitches.
One bad thing about wasabi soy nuts. One should really eat them in moderation. They produce a large amount of gas. I was pretty much jet-propelled all weekend.
Last night after dinner, instead of snacking on the wasabi soy nuts (I was pretty tired of feeling like a leaky balloon, altho fart humor never grows old in our house) I nibbled on some fresh strawberries instead.
Now our vicious cat-beast, Gilligan, always wants to know what we’re eating. Through his curiosity we’ve discovered he likes all sorts of chips, hard candy, candy corn, dried anchovies, ham, and various cheeses, Parmesan being a favorite.
Gilligan is so fond of Parmesan he insists on sitting at the dinner table with us whenever we have pasta in order to get a smattering. I am not making this up. He’ll sit in the vacant chair between myself and the Spouse and peer longingly over the edge of the table. I’ll then dump out a small amount of Parmesan on the table in front of him. He’ll happily lap up the little cheese appetizer, then hop down and leave us to our dinner.
So when I started enjoying the strawberries last night is was only natural that Gilligan come to investigate to see if what I was eating was something he wanted as well.
No here is where it starts getting interesting. Gilligan approached the couch to sniff the plastic container of strawberries and stopped just a few inches away. He didn’t just merely stop, he jolted to a halt. He took on distant sniff and his eyes grew large and alarmed. His ear tucked back and he jumped backwards about a foot.
The Spouse and I looked at each other like, “What the hell just happened?”
I then, very gently, took one strawberry and slowly offered it to the cat. He ran and hid between the recliner like I had just started up a chainsaw. As I picked up the container to put it back in the fridge, he saw me approach and darted further into the corner to hide.
Weird. Anyway, thinking last night was just a freak thing with the cat, I tried offering him a strawberry this morning at breakfast. Now normally in the morning, Gilligan is yowling and dancing circles at our feet begging for his morning moist food treat. Even if one of us has already fed him, he’ll yowl at the other, hoping to get a second breakfast. The cat tells lies, I tell you.
Well, Gilligan certainly did NOT want strawberries for breakfast. When I showed him a single berry he got that same scared look on his face and ran out of the kitchen.
Maybe he was attacked by vicious killer strawberries in a previous cat-life. Whatever, more for me. Let’s just hope he doesn’t discover the wasabi soy nuts. Bad cat gas - now THAT’S scary.
