Music and Cats

As I’ve noted once or twice in the past month or two, I’ve been working too much. This takes the form of both going in to work early and staying at work late. The net result of all this work is that I haven’t spent nearly as much time in our new kitchen as I’d like. I’ve done a bit of unblogged baking, some barely blogged preserving, and some not-even-photographed (horrors!) soup-making, but I haven’t spent anywhere near the time in the kitchen that I’d imagined I would once the construction was finally finished.

While work has been having its way with me, Paul has been having his way with the new range. One joy of cooking with serious gas is that the middle burner (it has five) puts out enough BTUs for high-heat cooking. When I arrived home tonight, Paul was just firing up our wok. He doesn’t like to be watched while he cooks, so I left him alone in the kitchen, and 15 minutes later we were sitting down to lovely, spicy bowls of shredded pork with garlic sauce. Morsels of pork and slivers of vegetables enrobed in ginger and sesame, vinegar and (saltless) soy, and lots of minced garlic. Yum. So much better than take-out Chinese, because it was made with love.

I don’t need a fortune cookie to tell me that I am a lucky woman. And there are leftovers for tomorrow. Oh, yes, I am lucky indeed.

Lyra took some time out from dozing in the sun to pose for a new head shot. Even with fewer teeth, she is a gorgeous girl.

All the beautiful critters strut their stuff this weekend. Will there be a red carpet to board the Friday Ark? The felines will be looking particularly fabulous at this weekend’s big parties: Weekend Cat Blogging at Kate in the Kitchen and Carnival of the Cats at Scribblings.

Tulips are beautiful in bud, their stems straight, blooms tightly furled and glowing with promise. But they are at their loveliest, to my eye, when mature; stems curving, blooms opened fully to expose the intricacies of their color and form.

Did you know that February is National Pet Dental Health Month? Neither did I, until I began searching the Internets for information on dental and gum disease in cats. You see, Miss Lyra had just had some dental work. Even a cleaning is a fairly a big deal for a cat, as most feline dental work is done under general anesthesia, but this was major work.

When she joined our family 4 1/2 years ago, Lyra was a young adult cat; our vet guessed that she was about two years old. Her short life had been rough; not only was she extremely skittish, but she was already missing several teeth, and one of her top fangs was broken. While she has become much less skittish, and will now consent to being picked up with only a mild squawk of protest, Lyra has never been willing to let us near her mouth or her claws.

Last year, when we took Lyra in for her annual check-up, our vet noted that she might need a dental cleaning this next year. We were surprised to learn, when we took her in a couple of weeks ago, that in just over a year her periodontal disease and tooth decay had become quite advanced. Our vet commented that, with so much disease, she must be in pain. We had seen no indication of pain; Lyra has always eaten well, grabbed toys with her mouth, and leaned into our hands when we rubbed her face. She has not, however, been willing to let us do any sort of dental care at home, so we had missed what was obvious when the vet held her mouth open.

Yesterday, our little cat had all four of her canines and several back teeth extracted. When we went to pick her up, the vet technichian reported that a number of the teeth were so loose that removing them required almost no effort. Perhaps I should be grateful for that. The tech also told us that, in her experience, cats seem to do quite well following the extraction of many teeth. I hope so.

As I write this, Lyra is sleeping a few feet from me. She has eaten a healthy portion of soft food. She has dozed on the big leather chair (where I snapped these shots). She has tolerated (though unhappily) our administering doses of antibiotic and painkiller. She has spent some time in her favorite spot between us on our bed, where she received gentle petting and lavish praise. She has even purred a little.

Be sure to stop by the Friday Ark, and the Carnival of the Cats on Sunday. Late-breaking news: Weekend Cat Blogging is at kitchenmage.

Yesterday, we had flour, sugar, yeast, salt, kumquats, clementines, lemons and water. Tonight, thanks to the magic of heat (and a few other processes as well), we have a lovely loaf of no-knead bread (made with 2/3 white flour and 2/3 spelt flour) and not one but two batches of marmalade: kumquat with clementine and lemon, and straight-up clementine (which does have some lemon, but not so’s you’d notice).

While I have baked several loaves of bread since the end of our kitchen transformation in November, this weekend was my first experience with making preserves in our new kitchen.

Oh my. What a difference a range makes. Sure, the pot filler was nice (and I used it every time I needed water while making and canning the marmalades), but the new range was revelatory. For the first time since I began making preserves, the boiling mixture of fruit and sugar reached the gel stage in the amount of time indicated in the recipe. My old, underpowered electric stove took forever to bring fruit mixtures to a boil, and 50-75% longer than recipes stated to achieve a proper set. I always checked the set at the time indicated, but never expected that the preserves would be done. Imagine my delight when the first teaspoon of hot marmalade I dripped onto a cold plate today thickened right up, forming little wrinkles on its surface when I tilted the plate.

I will resist going on more about the pleasures of the new stove, about kumquats and marmalade, about variations on the bread recipe, as it’s late and I have to be up early tomorrow.

Just one more thing: I’m looking forward to breakfast tomorrow morning.