I would consider it perfectly reasonable if a reader wanted simply to proceed directly to the frittata recipe: just scroll down till you see bold type. For those more interested in the framework in which a frittata is created at my house, I have provided some context.
It was a bright and stormy day. For a long time I have washed towels on Friday; and in this way alone, this particular Friday was unexceptional.
I brought a thermos of coffee to a friend and visited with her for a little while at her workplace before she began her shift. The coffee cheered her, but she is always cheerful, and she greeted and encouraged her coworkers as we walked about. Some hard things were coming up for her, but her sanguinity and gratitude for God’s uplifting help evidence a great portion of spiritual grace. I cannot even imagine the strength she has to live her life, and yet she considers me some kind of stanchion. The bond of Christ among his people is as mysterious, and yet at the same time, as effable, as the hypostatic union of the Trinity.
From my friend’s workplace, I went to a nearby health food store to get a tin of Tiger Balm and some tea. A pleasant man named Abdullah was hawking a line of organic cosmetics. I took a smidge from the eye cream tester, because the texture of the skin beneath my eyes resembles an orange peel. The product was too expensive for me to consider, and seemed no better than Burt’s Bees, and happily, I was rescued from engaging with Abdullah by the sudden appearance of someone calling his name, recognizing him as a colleague of twenty-some years ago. It seemed a good day for friends meeting friends at work.
At home, I made some ginger peach tea and went through the mail. My husband happens to be working on a case in which a Ford truck spontaneously combusted while quietly parked in its garage. In Friday’s mail was something from Ford. The recall notice, for that is what it was, included this charming prospect:
“Ford cannot be confident that over many years in service, a speed control deactivation switch installed on your vehicle will not leak brake fluid, posing the risk of a fire. This condition may occur even when the vehicle is parked or when it is being operated. This risk exists on vehicles equipped with or without speed control.”
It also says,
“Until you have the recall service performed, park your vehicle outdoors away from structures to prevent a potential fire from spreading.”
It is amazing how you can just go through life as if nothing is wrong, when your husband’s 2001 Ford pickup is sitting quietly in your driveway every night, just waiting to spontaneously combust and take your adjacent Audi with it, and probably your house and you and your husband and Cat, too.
My husband will disconnect the sinister, scheming vehicle’s battery while said vehicle is in our driveway to belay any combustion attempts on the part of said vehicle until the recall service is performed next week.
A cup of tea later, I was reading a portion of John Murray’s Principles of Conduct, in the chapter on the dynamic of the biblical ethic. I was trying to get my mind around Paul’s use of “the Spirit of Christ” as a hypostasis, and decided to start making a frittata for dinner. I made one last night, and my husband loved it. And here is my recipe, with a brief foreword.
Frittata is Italian for omelette. I have no idea why so many recipes call for baking or broiling a frittata. I find it simplest to cook it in a skillet on the stove. I was telling a friend today how much I missed the fabulous artichoke frittatas I used to get at C&M Deli in La Jolla during my otherwise unexciting junior high and high school years. She asked for my recipe and I sent it to her, but I forgot to mention the cheese. Do remember the cheese.
Frittata
You can use any vegetables, meats, or cheeses you like or happen to have on hand. I am simply relaying what I use because I almost always have these things on hand and we like them. This recipe serves 2 if you are having nothing else, and probably 4-6 as a side dish. I honestly cannot imagine what else you could need.
2 small zucchini
1/4 of a medium onion
4 eggs
3 tablespoons canned pumpkin
3 tablespoons crumbled Gorgonzola cheese
1/4 cup sliced cooked turkey or chicken
1/2 teaspoon each of garlic salt, oregano, and paprika (Italian colors!)
2 tablespoons cooking oil, preferably olive
Slice zucchini and onions in a food processor, or very thin. Heat about two tablespoons of olive oil in a non-stick skillet and briefly sauté zucchini and onions. Cover and let cook until tender. While this is cooking, beat the eggs; add pumpkin, cheese, meat, and seasonings. When zucchini is tender, pour egg mixture over it and spread evenly. Cover and cook on low heat about 15 minutes or until it seems dry enough to remove without making a huge mess.
A few perturbations have rocked my already tenuous orbit lately. Like most Americans, I’m aware that we have predictable terrorist events waiting to happen within our own country. Like most Americans, I live in a county, and the county is run by council members whose pragmatism and blatant willful ignorance of the law jeopardizes the operation of ordinary services for ordinary citizens. Like most Americans, I sometimes wish there were such a place as “away” to which to run. But there isn’t, and this is largely due to the legacy of Charlie Brown and the Little Red-Haired Girl.
Charlie Brown and the Little Red-Haired Girl did not invent the terrorist-as-victim ethos, but I think they had a lot to do with defining it intelligibly. Charlie Brown’s secret adoration of the Little Red-Haired Girl was consistently thwarted by her sanguine indifference. I recall this fragment from one of the Peanuts books I read when I was twelve and my mother was trying to wean me from comic books:
Charlie Brown: ‘There she was, the little red-haired girl. I didn’t know what to say. I was all embarrassed and confused. So I hit her’.
Of course we empathize with Charlie Brown’s thwarted romance. But in his own small way, he was a self-styled victim-turned-terrorist. Charlie Brown is a gentle soul and no one’s idea of a terrorist. But in his frustration, he lashed out, and now liberal pundits wonder why Fort Hood (“alleged”) mass murderer Dr. Hasan didn’t receive help, why no one reached out to him, and why no one even questioned him closely, when there was clear evidence that he was maybe a tad testy, or at least potentially so. Allegedly. Probably no one seriously contemplated Charlie Brown striking the girl of his dreams, either. Each at his own level, Charlie Brown and Hasan had a peculiar notion that they were entitled to manifestation of their particular dreams. Other people failed to play their parts as Charlie Brown and Hasan thought they should, and the guys blew. In cartoons, damage is always reversible.
Charles Schultz showed real insight into the defects of human character. He likely understood the biblical concept of total depravity. Peanuts tracks the gospel, and a child can be mortified by Charlie Brown’s lapse when he decks the object of his thwarted love. Even Lucy, a paradigmatic fascist, rants against truisms in favor of some brand of ultimate truth. Linus exuded that soon all the birds would be flying south for the winter. Lucy seized the opportunity to burst his bubble and be the defender of truth. “Chickens are birds aren’t they? Did you ever see a chicken flying south?” At least she knew her logical syllogisms.
But something happened at some point to connive victim status from the vanquished and award it to the vanquisher. Relativism cloaked as fairness placed all human actions on a spectrum, and that spectrum was stripped of principles of conduct in favor of a “dynamic” state of existence. Principles always present tripwires to relativism. Dynamism is the fuel of relativism. A dynamic discourse need not make any sense. A principled discourse necessarily must make sense. Unfortunately, those who participate in relativistic discourse have lost track of what sense is because they have lost track of what principles are.
An example of relativistic discourse elevated to the absurd is presently before my county council. A judge who was convicted of a criminal offense resigned his seat. (Weirdly, he was under no clear statutory duty to do so.) The council decided not to replace him, citing emergency budget concerns. The council was informed by the county prosecutor that it had acted outside of its authority, because only the state legislature has the authority to set the number of judicial seats. With many litigants already waiting upwards of a year for trial because of a crowded docket, the county’s decision to reduce the bench by one member only aggravated the problem. One councilman’s response: “Sue us.” The County, prepared to sacrifice the interests of its citizens, is now the victim. And Dr. Hasan, sensitized by fantasies of spurious persecution and turned murderer, is now a victim because he was misunderstood; we failed to save him from himself in time. Unprincipled thinking often misplaces blame.
Unprincipled thinking co-occurs with abnegation of the absolute. This is a natural consequence of atheism, and Americans need to face that they live in atheist society, and that many Christians contribute to the problem when they insist upon fusing “God and country.” Principled thinking tracks the moral law of God. “Don’t murder” is a divine imperative. The relativist adds, “without some reason, even if it’s just an emotional thing. After all, we’re all in this together.”
And of course we are all in this together. And I can’t say Charlie Brown and the Little Red-Haired Girl changed history, but sometimes I wonder. What if the Little Red-Haired Girl had been honest and said, “Buzz off, I’m just not that into you.”?
I’m so embarrassed about this that the only thing I can do is blog about it. I don’t mind being self-deprecating. I don’t even mind being culturally illiterate. But I have found my highest level of incompetence in a very unexpected area. I cannot find out how to watch Oprah.
This seems to be a peculiar pocket of incompetence. Generally, I think I’m a pretty good online researcher. I always had a knack for legal research. I have found people who seemed fairly tucked away: my niece in an ashram, an acquaintance of nearly 40 years ago in an online church newsletter birthday list, and other people I have turned up in newspaper archives, for instance. But when I wanted to find out whether there would be an Internet webcast of the great Oprah-Palin interview, I encountered total blackout.
We don’t have a TV, and I have no idea what stations air on what channels in my area, or what station airs Oprah. My computer came with an antenna, but I would have no idea how to tune in Planet Earth’s number one program. All this is notwithstanding my pastor’s recent admonition to the ladies of the congregation that watching Oprah does not count as a hobby. I daresay.
I went to Oprah’s website and Sarah Palin’s website and turned up no clue as to whether there would be a webcast on November 16. I fruitlessly searched various news agencies. I would not insult any of my friends by imputing to them the desire to watch this program, so I would not ask to watch it with them. However, I do have a neighbor who styles herself as “ga-looed to the television” whenever anything is coming down. This would include major events from tomorrow’s weather forecast to the assassination of President Kennedy.
Okay, so I don’t know how to watch Oprah. We all have our spheres of incompetence. I can always catch the spin after the fact. By today’s reckoning, that’s probably the height of cultural literacy. As I said, I’m so embarrassed about this.
Lauren and Grace collaborated on this Diablog. Both have Addison’s disease.
Lauren: When Grace landed on my blog while doing a search for “how to live while living with Addison’s disease,” her quest and her use of language immediately resonated with me. An e-mail marathon ensued, and I invited her to co-author a chronicle of the pre-diagnostic, diagnostic, and management phases of our Addison’s journeys. We both live in the U. S.: I live in the Pacific Northwest; Grace lives in the Northeast. We are the same age, 58, both married, and we both believe that all events transpire not by random coincidence, but through the sovereign providence of God.
Lauren: The most remarkable detail I experienced a few months prior to my diagnosis of primary autoimmune Addison’s disease was that I knew I was dying.
Grace: For the two years prior to diagnosis I thought I was just getting old and slowing down. I’d joke, but it wasn’t really funny for me, that Wednesdays now felt like Fridays- I was running out of steam. If only I had known how true that was-I was running out of the stuff that drives the human engine, cortisol.
Lauren: I have a bloodline imperative that becoming an invalid is not an option. I have a routine. I have certain tasks that I do the same day each week. I have fibromyalgia and arthritis, so I budget my energy with the routine to try to belay total crashes that can last for days. I have certain rules that I follow to maintain my routine and to prevent stress. One of these rules is that I don’t go to bed during the day no matter how tired I am. If I fall asleep reading, that’s okay, but I don’t go to bed unless I have a fever and a serious acute illness, something that very seldom happens.
Grace: There was one rule growing up in our house-sickness was a personal weakness to be avoided at all costs. Not having a stoic personality, I earned an undeserved reputation for being a slacker. To combat this, and to help put food on our table, I developed an insane work ethic: I valued myself on the basis of how much money I was able to bring home. My career as a RN started out at the same time I became married and a new mom-at the tender age of 21. I thought crazy amounts of stress were normal, when in reality it was all I had ever experienced growing up. It took me close to four decades to realize what a nearly-deadly lifestyle I had embarked on.
Lauren: In the summer of 2007, I became faint walking to my laundry room. I was unable to stand for any length of time. I hyperventilated trying to speak. I simply had to lie down, sometimes after being up only a couple of hours in the morning. I recalled the humiliation and misery I experienced with doctors who did not believe in fibromyalgia. “There’s nothing wrong with you,” rang again, loud and clear.
Grace: Over the past two years I had begun to call out frequently on Thursdays and Fridays because I thought I was falling asleep at the wheel — in retrospect, I was having pre-syncopal (pre-fainting) episodes. Only by the grace of God I did not actually pass out and potentially injure someone else. I know of a woman who was diagnosed only after she passed out — at the top of her steps. She fractured multiple vertebrae and spent most of the next year in the hospital and rehab.
Lauren: I researched my symptoms, and came up with “adrenal fatigue” as a match. Unfortunately, naturopathic sites promoting adrenal fatigue can be a great disservice. I settled for this diagnosis, took extra vitamin C, and figured I would tough it out five or six weeks. If my symptoms didn’t resolve by then, I would see an endocrinologist.
Grace: By the grace of God — yet again — I had a MRI done as part of a workup for migraines in 2007. The results were normal except for a partial empty sella, and that was the first clue that something physically may be wrong with me. The sella tursica is a bony cavity in our head, located at the base of the brain, and that contains the pituitary gland which is one of the most critical glands in our body. The pituitary is the endocrine system’s “Grand Central Station”; it sends out chemical signals that control the function of multiple glands such as the thyroid and adrenals. We each have two adrenal glands, one on top of each kidney. The adrenal is composed of two portions; the inside part, or medulla, makes adrenalin; the cortex, or outside portion produces many hormones, one of which is cortisol. If the cortex no longer produces cortisol, this creates a condition known as Addison’s Disease. It used to be fatal before steroids were invented — timing is everything! Good thing I wasn’t born 50 years earlier.
Lauren: My symptoms worsened, and I had been presumptuous in assuming that an endocrinologist could see me within four months. At that point, my husband and I both knew I wouldn’t make it that long. He moved a few mountain ranges and somehow got me in to see an endocrinologist within the week. I saw the doctor, was tested for everything imaginable the first day, returned the second day for an ACTH-stimulated cortisol test, and heard back from the doctor the following evening. Chronic adrenal failure. Addison’s disease. Impossible. It’s funny how I could know I was dying but never suspect I had a chronic disease.
Grace: My type 2 diabetes was not under great control, so in early 2009 I made an appointment to see an endocrinologist for the first time in my life. I took a copy of the MRI with me, and told him not only the information about my diabetes but also what had occurred 29 years earlier during the birth of my last child. I had a rare complication of pregnancy and suffered severe post-partum hemorrhage requiring about 15 units of blood. Because of this, my BP was critically low for the better part of a full day. When I was conscious I asked my nurse what was my systolic BP (top number)- with a hesitant voice she told me-40. Not good. Not good at all. Weeks later my OB doc told me this much hemorrhage can cause damage to the pituitary gland, because it was deprived of its own blood flow. After the MRI result, I began to wonder what had really happened to my pituitary-if it was functioning properly it should have taken up the entire space of the sella tursica. But my MRI showed an empty space where the pituitary should have been. What happened?
Lauren: As far as work issues, I had already put careers as an epidemiologist, journalist, and attorney behind me and had been happily at home for nearly 10 years when I was diagnosed with Addison’s. Consequently, I was fortunate to have no upheaval in my life concerning whether I could continue working. Life goes on pretty much as normal, even if normal is never the same again.
Grace: Summer of 2009 I was formally diagnosed with secondary Addison’s Disease and started on a lifetime of oral steroids to replace what my body no longer made. It was easier to replace the steroid than it was to repair my lost sense of self — I had always worked fulltime, with overtime. Sadly, I had once defined myself by my money making capacity and now was unable to work. Who was I, really?
Lauren: I am not so sanctified as to have no resentments. To name a few: my life depends on the stable production and distribution of a controlled substance, and on the continued existence of endocrinologists, and the necessity of living within driving distance of them. I become excessively indignant with people who push naturopathic remedies for Addison’s (there’s no such thing!) because they believe hydrocortisone must somehow be “hard on me.” But I have learned to simply respond, “When you say that, all I hear is ‘drop dead.’” Hydrocortisone replaces cortisol, nothing else does, and cortisol is necessary to life.
Grace: My last job was as a university hospital-based nurse case manager, primarily dealing with insurance and discharge planning issues. It had become extremely stressful during the past year, in no small part due to the recession and increased needs of the patients. As a nurse case manager, had been able to get doctors to do pretty much what I asked of them, including filling out forms and writing prescriptions as I instructed. Now I was (drum roll please) a patient. Roles reversed. I have to tell you-it sucks to be the patient . Now I have to plead with doctors to get my paperwork done, especially for disability. People tease me how ‘lucky’ I am to be able to stay home now. You have got to be kidding me — lucky? But maybe I am lucky — lucky to be diagnosed, to have a loving and supportive family. Lucky to not have been born before Dr. Addison figured out what this disease was. His wife had the disease, and it killed her.
Here is a non-technical and very palatable pumpkin soufflé-like comfort food for people who cannot have piecrust or sugar. These things become an acquired taste with discipline, but this is actually very good.
Faux Pumpkin Pie
1 29-oz can pumpkin — not pumpkin pie filling
4 eggs
1 teaspoon each of: ginger, cinnamon, nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon each of: cloves, salt
Separate eggs into two bowls. Whip egg whites until frothy and stiff. Combine pumpkin and spices with egg yolks and mix thoroughly. Fold in egg whites. Butter a pie pan — a silicon brush works wonderfully well for this — and pour in pumpkin mixture. Bake at 350° and begin testing for doneness after 45 minutes. My oven took an hour.
Faux Pumpkin Pie works as a breakfast or lunch entrée, or as a dinner side dish, or as a dessert.
When I was in law school, we used to encourage one another with these words: “there’s always beauty school.” This is not a faithful saying, nor is it worthy of any acceptance whatever. Most of us never would have made it through beauty school. But beauty school was code for a refuge for the kind of dumb.
I have had several hairdressers over the years who were reasoning beings, as well as a few who were possibly employed a little above full capacity. I can say the same for the population of lawyers I’ve known over the years.
Now, the woman who cuts my hair is a good woman. And what, you might ask, covert nuance of character am I trying to suggest with this epithet? Is even “good woman” code? This good woman was a bit under the weather today, but very cheerful as always. She was surprised to learn that I have a diabetic cat; she is surprised to learn this every month. I went through the drill again: layered ends, keep enough length that I can pull it all into a ponytail; you know, I’m just trying to maintain the same length. I hate change. She asked whether she should take the same two inches off that she trimmed last month. She asks this every month. Hair grows half an inch a month. If she trimmed two inches off every month, within a year, she would be out of a job, and I would have no more worries about a crooked part.
But she’s a good woman, and I like her a lot. When she asked if I had read anything by John Hagee, I brought her a copy of Arthur Pink’s The Sovereignty of God when I came the following month. The month after that, I asked how she was liking Arthur Pink. She said she liked him a lot. I think this good woman likes everyone a lot. She’s still reading John Hagee’s book; she can’t put it down.
In praise of this good woman, I have to say that she is probably trying to urge me toward a bit more style. I think she thinks Seattle Grunge becomes me. Today, she finished up my trim, but didn’t happen to comb my hair back out of my face. She handed me a mirror, and I said I couldn’t see. She’s a good woman; she handed me my glasses. So I re-created Cheryl’s new style for me for the purpose of this one exclusive photo op.
Note to Heidi: I am not trying to copy your house-Mufti look! This was an original created just for me. :-)
Ebed-Melech did not live at a time when thousands of members of the media would have shown up to cover his amazing rescue of the prophet Jeremiah. If he had, he would have been all over international television, satellite radio, the Internet, and the Schenectady Gazette, and everyone would have known his name and remembered it for at least six hours. I have brushed by his name, immediately forgetting it, on every prior reading I have done of the book of Jeremiah. But this time I followed a cross reference, thinking, ” who is this guy”?
Ebed-Melech’s name is probably a tripwire on Bible trivia quizzes. In fact, his name itself is rather a horror. It means “servant of Melech.” But how fortunate that his pagan Ethiopian parents permitted him to live and receive the name instead of passing him through the fire as a sacrifice to their idle idol Melech. Who knows what sorts of aspirations they had for him or what his childhood was like; all we know is that in the providence of God he was assigned a great and gracious destiny.
Ebed-Melech actually made it to the big time, for a slave. We meet him as an adult, a eunuch in the court of King Zedekiah. The king had consigned Jeremiah to the miry dungeon because he prophesied doleful things like the conquest of Israel by Babylon, the captivity in Babylon of the people, and the wasting and burning of Jerusalem. “The Chaldeans are coming! The Chaldeans are coming!” fell somewhat short of cheering the king’s heart. Zedekiah was one to prefer good news to God’s truth, and cast the prophet from his sight. Ebed-Melech spoke up to the king on behalf of Jeremiah:
My lord the king, these men have done evil in all that they have done to Jeremiah the prophet, whom they have cast into the dungeon, and he is likely to die from hunger in the place where he is. For there is no more bread in the city. (Jer. 38:9) NKJV
The king conceded to his servant’s request, and Ebed-Melech took with him men and rags and made a rope for Jeremiah to tie around himself, and they pulled him up from the dungeon. Thus Ebed-Melech, a pagan-born Ethiopian eunuch, approached his king, advocated for Jeremiah, devised and implemented a plan to rescue him, and saved the life of God’s great prophet. If Ebed-Melech’s life was otherwise uneventful, the magnitude of his service to God in saving Jeremiah is imponderable.
Nor did the favor go unrequited. God blessed Jeremiah with the commission to return to Ebed-Melech, and announce to him the glad tidings of his salvation.
Go and speak to Ebed-Melech the Ethiopian, saying, ‘Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: “Behold, I will bring My words upon the city for adversity and not for good, and they shall be performed in that day before you.
“But I will deliver you in that day,” says the LORD, “and you shall not be given into the hand of the men of whom you are afraid.
“For I will surely deliver you, and you shall not fall by the sword; but your life shall be as a prize to you, because you have put your trust in Me, says the LORD.’” (Jer. 39:16-18) NKJV
My pastor’s sermon yesterday was therapeutic, convicting, and vindicating. He pointed out that the thirteen years between the birth of Ishmael and the birth of Isaac record no events of significance in the life of Abraham. The message was that life is full of protracted uneventful times. I realize how much I covet events for the sake of events themselves. I think of myself as being “perfectly spontaneous as long as nothing upsets my routine.” But the truth is that I require upheaval even though the stress in its wake is destructive.
I suspect that much event-seeking is largely cultural. Americans are calibrated to elections, holidays, school years and summers, distinct phases of childhood, advanced education, career, family, home purchases, retirement, & c. We are exposed to events of life and death, to media events, shopping events, cultural events, political events, and cardiac events. Clearly, it is typical for people to require events to mark time, or to feel useful or purposeful.
I don’t know whether or not my need for events is more extreme than other peoples’. Perhaps my uneventful phases are so markedly uneventful that I require fairly meteoric events to make up for a sense of “lost time.” It’s time (for instance) to move to France! But in the Providence of God, we have a Cat who will brook no event generation if he can possibly help it. Coolidge is the very model of a serenely uneventful life. He marks time, whether consciously or not, by the opening of cans, the administration of shots, and the presence or absence of his people in his abode. He tends to be more active when he has admirers to whom to demonstrate his prowess. I can’t honestly say that my life is very different from his. I can honestly say that I am able consciously to desire alternatives, which is perhaps a habit of gainsaying God’s providence.
We are conscious beings, and consciousness is always eventful. In a sense, we make our own gravy. I’m not talking about imagining alternatives to our present realities. I’m referring to the fact of consciousness as an ongoing event. Life is never uneventful even if it remains undisrupted or not particularly busy. This I find specifically vindicating. I don’t have to generate events or look forward to events or wish for major events to happen. I can remain conscious, write, absorb things that I read, and encourage a friend while scarcely realizing I am doing so. I prepare meals, clean bathrooms, do laundry, take out trash, pay bills, and essentially maintain an organized household routine. My husband and I shatter our morning fast with coffee, a pleasant event. I make cups of tea throughout the day, each one a mini event and an opportunity to appreciate something. I suppose my thought is that events do happen, even if they do not approach the magnitude of taking out four kings or negotiating with God to save a city. This implies that consciousness of our particular events should direct us to contentment .
Does this mean that contentment should preclude entirely the need to drum up intercontinental relocations? I’m going to posit no on this. Contentment is not resignation; contentment does not displace aspiration. I believe that consciousness must beget aspiration as well as contentment. The apostle Paul was content in bounty and in trial, but he always aspired to keep up the good fight in the service of Christ. I think this is the model for event management in a Christian’s daily life. My work then, is to aspire to conform my aspirations to God’s gracious will, while knowing that I can only aspire to contentment.
Noting no correlation between spider consumption and obesity...
My Cat, a direct attitudinal descendent of Orion and Nimrod, slew a spider last night between 3 and 4 AM. How do we know this? I have to admit our epistemology is based on pretty raw sensory data. We heard him munching something near our bed after jumping up onto the bed and down again twice, the second time mistaking my tenuously located scapula for a launching pad with the full force of whatever foot tonnage his 18 pounds musters. He has a munching sound specific to spiders, mayflies, and moths: he chews with his mouth open and emits a sound like “nyar nyar nyar nyar.” But before snagging mayflies and moths, the Cat makes a little batlike chirping sound. For some reason, the Cat does not chirp in anticipation of nailing a spider, probably because it isn’t airborne. In any case, his pride obliges him to leave dispositive evidence behind when he captures a spider. He never eats all the legs. And judging from the four black jointed legs he left on the floor next to the bed, last night’s kill was a trophy spider.
Once we were up, I made much of the Cat for rescuing us from the alarming arachnid. He kneaded my lap in self-infatuation and returned to the crime scene, where he now had the bed all to himself.
But there was something terribly wrong, and the terribly wrong thing was on the dining room floor, and that thing was the late spider’s evil twin, huge and terrible on the dining room floor. I called to the Cat, who looked very alert, but who was too fat and happy to bother. Noting my rigid spider-in-the-room stance against the wall, my husband dispatched the spider, which ended its world tour in the sewer system with a summary flush, and has no doubt by now contributed its atoms to an EPA Superfund site. Ecology has nothing to do with my dining room floor.
