Fresh Herbs and Wee Chief

I think I'll blog early today, as I'm going out late tonight.  The Event I thought was this afternoon is next Thursday, turns out -- good thing I checked.

Today I went to the grocery store, and there bought a box of basil, so I spent some time with my food processor when I got home.  As Friend @javelinwarrior has lamented with me lately, basil never keeps, so I thought it best to use it at once.  First I made some green curry paste.  In the past, I've used lemon peel instead of lemongrass in my homemade curries, because lemongrass isn't very conveniently obtained.  But lately the Whole Foods has been keeping it regularly in stock, so I thought I'd give it a crack this time.  I made a paste out of a small white onion, several square inches of ginger, several garlic cloves, a lemongrass stalk, about a third of the box of basil, a good handful of cilantro, and the rind and juice of a lime -- kaffir lime leaves are still hard to come by.  It's in the fridge, awaiting use.  Nota bene: I kept the top of the lemongrass stick, as it can be used to flavor the curry additionally as it cooks, like a bay leaf.

Green Curry Making

After that I rinsed out the food processor and turned the rest of the basil into pesto, with garlic cloves, parmesan, olive oil, and walnuts instead of pine nuts because pine nuts cost a fortune.  That's chilling in the fridge now too.  Both pastes I pressed down and covered with plastic wrap before I put the lid on the little Pyrex container, to keep the air off them so they won't turn brown.

Pesto

Warm weather and fresh herbs just seem to go together.

After this project and lunch, I watched The Hulk, which I hadn't seen before.  I liked it, I think more than I liked any of the other Avengers movies, except for Iron Man, which is just ridiculously kickass. I think I mostly liked the hulk because of Edward Norton, who is The Dreamiest.  Seriously.  If Ted ever leaves me, I will accept no replacement but Edward Norton. The whole thing made me want to watch Fight Club again soon.

After that it was book readin' -- Crime and Punishment is still happening to me.

I think I'll take this opportunity to tell you about wee Chief, since he's going to the doctor early tomorrow morning.  Chief is one of my kitty cats; we have five cats, because although I hate kids and never want to have them, I do like having a big happy family.  Chief came to us five years ago, when we moved into an apartment in Wilkinsburg.  My friend Carrie was moving out the of the apartment, and we were taking her place with roommate Friend Roger.  A girl Carrie knew had dumped a cat named Lucca on her, but Carrie didn't want it, so we agreed to take up his care.  (At this point we had two other cats, George and Skyler, a brother and sister born in my mom's backyard a couple of years previous to this.)

A nervous-looking Chief, back in the Wilkinsburg days.

Lucca was cool with Roger, but he was mortally terrified of us -- and everyone and everything else.  I don't think he'd been well-cared for before he got dumped on Carrie; he was constantly panicked, and when you fed him, he ate like he'd never eaten before, sucking down the food so fast you could literally hear him choking on it.  He barely slept -- that's saying something, for a cat.  The slightest thing woke him, and he'd dart away in fear.

It was a long process of him first being comfortable in the same room with us (but on the far side of the room), then a little nearer to us ... he was as shocked as we were when, after a few months, he jumped on to our bed.  Along the way he got a new name when we were watching One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest one night, and we started calling him Chief because he needed a new name, anyway -- who names a cat Lucca?

Chief cuddling Matilda when she was a wee kitten.  They're good friends.

Point is it took a long time with Chief.  But I can tell you that he is now the cuddliest thing on Earth, at least as far as Ted and I are concerned.  He sleeps with us at night -- he likes for me to spoon him.  His favorite thing is to be between us, so he can put his back against me and his paws on Ted, while I hold his tummy.  If we won't make room between us for him, he pulls our hair until we do.

He's a weird little guy in a lot of ways.  He's very undersized for a male cat, but he's got the biggest meow, and it makes him sound like a complaining old man.  He likes to talk to his toys, little mice that he lies in bed next to and talks to for ten or twenty minutes at a time -- he's gentle with them, like they're little pets instead of toys.  He's definitely the smartest of our cats: he's taught himself to play fetch, he understands the most words and commands.  He might be a little in love with me.

I don't think anything's ever loved me the way Chief does.  Human love is complicated and hard, and often animal companion love isn't always entirely fulfilling because it's not clear the animal has the capacity to love completely.  But I know wee Chief loves me.  I love him.  He's a very good kitty.

"What? I'm shedding on Dad's dry clean-onlys.  WHAT IS YOUR POINT?"

In February, we woke up one morning and Chief could barely stand; he was weaving like a drunkard and I was practically hysterical because I was sure he had had a stroke or something similarly awful, and was dying.  We hurried him in to the vet.  She diagnosed him with an inner ear infection.  The pills made his symptoms go away, and for a few days after the pills ran out, he was fine.  We left one morning to visit Ted's parents in Cleveland, and when we got home, he was again barely able to stand he was so dizzy, his little eyes darting back and forth as he miserably clung to the bed.  More pills -- perhaps a very recalcitrant infection?  But this time it was clear that there was something more wrong.  The pills made him OK, but his head tilt and his wobbliness didn't quite clear up.

So now tomorrow morning he's going to a kitty neurologist.  Our regular vet says she suspects that he might have an inner ear polyp that's affecting his balance and causing his neurological-looking symptoms.  Hopefully this is so.  It will be expensive to remove, but once removed he'll be perfectly fine and back to normal.  But of course, one can't help but imagine the worst.  (Never mind how we're going to pay for this -- seriously, I have no idea.  Well, I do have an idea, the idea is credit.  Let me tell you sometime how much debt Ted and I are already in.)

So, anyway, that's the situation going in to tomorrow morning.  God willing, everything will turn out for the best.  Think on wee Chief fondly tonight and tomorrow for me.

Chief cuddling Matilda now that she has much outgrown him. Cuddling is a theme with Chief.