Read Online The Cat Who Wasn't a Dog by Marian Babson - Free Book Online Page B

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    â€˜We’ll all have another think.’ I gave Eddie a Leave it to me nod. I had a few more days to work on Evangeline and to bring her around to our way of thinking.
    At least, I thought I had.
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    I spent the rest of the day in a Fool’s Paradise. Before he left, Eddie drove us over to the supermarket to pick up supplies and back again. Evangeline sniffed when she saw me putting kitty litter and cat food into my trolley, but I noticed that she absently slipped a catnip mouse into her own basket.
    After Eddie had dumped all the shopping bags on the kitchen table and departed, I began unpacking them. With Martha’s new project in mind, I had picked up an assortment of sauces and spices. I’d try to remember some of the recipes I’d relied on in my early solo days.
    To begin with, I tossed a few peppercorns and a clove of garlic into the largest saucepan, then unwrapped the pair of chicken legs, put them into the pan and filled it with cold water before covering it and putting it on the stove to boil.
    â€˜Hmmph!’ Evangeline disdained my efforts. ‘I distinctly remember that when my mother made chicken soup she boiled up the whole leftover carcass.’
    â€˜So did mine – and I’ll never forget the thrill when
I discovered you didn’t need to eat cold chicken for a week before you got to make soup. It was like that Charles Lamb story when the people discovered that they didn’t have to burn the house down to make roast pork.’
    â€˜I know that story.’ Evangeline grinned reminiscently. ‘They burned down most of the village before they finally got the hang of it and invented the barbecue.’
    â€˜And I ate a lot of weak soup before I found the best base was two whole legs – thigh and drumstick.’ I had been putting the shopping away while we talked, now I chopped an onion and carrot, ready to tip into the pot at the half-hour mark. Another half-hour after that, and I’d take the legs out, one at a time, and skin and bone them before dicing the meat and returning it to the pot which was still simmering on the stove. Then just ladle it out and eat.
    Through it all, Cho-Cho-San frolicked at my feet, trilling with excitement. She tried to catch the shreds as I scraped the carrots and sniffed blissfully at the chicken scent beginning to permeate the air. It was a learning experience for her: food did not just come out of little round tins. It told me something else about her: she was not accustomed to food preparation and cooking. Perhaps she had belonged to a man – or, remembering Matilda’s fridge, a woman with no great interest in food. From the size of her, one would not put Soroya into that category, but I had the feeling that her interest in food did not extend beyond the eating of it. Someone else could do the work involved.
    The closing day merged almost imperceptibly into an evening of rare domestic tranquillity. The saucepan produced two bowls of soup each, plus one for Cho-Cho. I do like to see my cooking appreciated. Cho-Cho ate everything but a lone peppercorn that had found its way into her bowl. Evangeline crunched her peppercorns with zest. I’d purchased ready-made profiteroles for us and shared a generous dollop of cream with Cho-Cho.
    â€˜The Pick of the Day,’ Evangeline announced, scanning the evening paper’s TV listings, ‘is Fools Rush In. It seems
to be Matilda Jordan’s first film – starring her father, Gervaise, in his prime.’
    â€˜We can’t miss that,’ I agreed. We settled on the sofa in front of the TV, Cho-Cho curled up between us, purring happily, and we all watched the film.
    Matilda had been so young, so beautiful, so vulnerable – and yet there was an intriguing hint of world-weariness about her that caught at her audience. Especially when she looked at her father and his leading lady.
    â€˜That was Gervaise’s third wife, I