The House Where The Black Cat Lives

Adventures in Paris: Scent of a Woman

2011-10-16T07:46:00.002-05:00

I have been jonesing for a real French fragrance.

Yes, I am well aware that my regular scents, Chanel No. 5, Coco by Chanel and 24 Faubourg by Hermes, are all French. However, beloved as these are, I can purchase them right here in the 'burg which somehow dilutes their French pedigree.

For years, I've harbored this vision of me sweeping grandly into the House of Guerlain's flagship boutique on the Champs-Elysees, whipping off my designer sunglasses, tossing my perfectly coiffed hair (I am always having a great hair and weight day in this fantasy) and imperiously gesturing at the "exclusive collection" house fragrances as wraiths in little black dresses scurry to accommodate. I exit the salon de parfum toting a beautifully wrapped package and trailing a distinctive Oriental spicy/floral/chypre cloud that leaves the hordes along the avenue swooning in olfactory ecstasy.

Other women do this all the time. Women like Madonna. And Princess Caroline of Monaco. Why can't I? I made up my mind that during this trip the fantasy would become reality.

And it did. Sort of.

I really hadn't planned to go into Guerlain the afternoon that I found myself at their threshold. The weather was unseasonably warm and humid with intermittent rain. I was wearing jeans. My makeup was gone, my only jewelry beads of perspiration. My reflection mirrored in the windows told me I was not having a good hair day. After four days of eating croissants, pommes frites, creme brulee and tarte tatin, I wasn't having a great weight day either. But with my Paris vacation more than half over, I knew that it was now or never. So I took a deep breath and forged ahead into the fragrant inner sanctum.

The sales associates were all chic in their little black dresses (at least that part of the fantasy came true). And they spoke perfect English. Thank goodness, for my French was not tripping off my tongue as mellifluously as I would have liked.

Stoppers were pulled out of bottles and dabbed onto my wrists. Atomizers were spritzed onto paper strips and waved beneath my nose. Top, middle and base notes were discussed with the seriousness of quantum physics. I found myself sagely tossing about words like "sillage" and "drydown."

And I left there with a bottle of Guerlain's exclusive Elixir Charnel Oriental Brulant housed in a gilded box wrapped in ribbon and scented tissue paper and tucked into an elegant Guerlain bag that drew lots of suitably envious glances on the metro.

And it only cost 170 euros (ouch). I'll leave it up to you to figure out the intricacies of the daily exchange rate and the duty free tax.

The day I returned, I test drove my new fragrance. As I turned away from my vanity, my persnickety orange cat Henry (aka Monsieur Henri, my personal stylist and beauty consultant) awoke from a nap on my bed. He blinked his topaz eyes, twitched his nose at the unfamiliar mixture of tonka bean, almond, vanilla, styrax and clementine. He jumped down and rubbed up against my leg purring approvingly. Figures he'd be the one to notice. That cat is so damn French.

Is this my favorite perfume ever? Actually, I still prefer Coco. And as much as the Elixir Charnel OB costs, that's a good thing. Let's face it; this was a once-in-a-lifetime splurge. Never going to become my signature.

But the Elixir Charnel OB is extremely wearable. It possesses a smoky, sexy, spicy, ambery yet subtle je ne sais quoi quality that is very French, yet somehow still me.

And you can't get that in Hattiesburg.

Adventures in Paris: I See Dead People

2011-10-10T06:47:00.000-05:00

On previous visits to Paris, I'd paid homage to most of the major "must see" tourist sites. Eiffel Tower, check. Louvre, check. Musee d'Orsay, check. Versailles, check. Sacre Couer, check. Arc de Triomphe, double check ( even hauled my ass up the stairs to the top. IMO a waste of time. There are much better views from the steps of Sacre Couer and from the Pompidou Center).

But I had never set foot in the famous Pere Lachaise cemetery nor the Pantheon, the mausoleum that houses the remains of France's most honored men (and a few women). Since, we're getting close to my favorite holiday, Halloween, and I have a somewhat morbid streak, I figured it was time to do the crypt crawl.

Pere Lachaise is a large "city of the dead" as we call them in New Orleans with the rich, famous, infamous and not-at-all-famous thrown together for all eternity. The architecture alone is worth seeing as are the gloriously eccentric funerary mementoes on display.

Here you'll find, among others, the grave sites of French author Colette, Irish playwright Oscar Wilde (can't miss his tomb covered with an sphinx-ish sculpture and umpteen billion lipstick imprints) and American rock star/bad boy Jim Morrison. There are always a few faithful devotees hanging around the famous graves. Even the dead have their groupies.

The uber-dignified, yet still creepy, Pantheon originally was constructed as a church to St. Genevieve, but in the wake of the French Revolution, it was turned into secular meeting place/mausoleum dedicated to memorializing the intellectuals of France. Voltaire, Rousseau, Victor Hugo, Emile Zola, both Curies, Pierre and Marie, and Louis Braille are among those interred here. There's also a slew of Napoleon's generals. Apparently just being a FoN (Friend of Napoleon) imparted greatness by osmosis. Napoleon, by the way, is not interred here. He has his own monument/tomb over at Les Invalides. He would like that.

Impressive, but overall the Pantheon is a little cold and emotionless. But then again that should be expected from a monument to dead intellectuals.

I didn't include the underground Roman catacombs on my Paris "to do" list; seemed a little too goth, even for me, with all those skulls and bones right out in the open. I also tend to be claustrophobic. However, I was able to descend into the caves of Reims' famous champagne houses with no problems, so the catacombs remain a distinct possibility for another time.

Hey, I'll use any excuse to return to Paris.

Adventures in Paris: Les Halles is Foodie Heaven

2011-09-19T12:14:00.000-05:00

For most women, the boutiques of the stylish Boulevard Champs-Elysees, Rue Montaigne and Rue St. Honore may be the ticket, but the neighborhood that makes my knees tremble is the gutsy, ballsy, decidedly blue collar Les Halles, the belly of Paris, once home to the famous markets of Paris Only vestiges remain, but what vestiges.

Here I ate lunch at Aux Tonneaux des Halles, a turn of the century bistro that serves up os de moelle (marrow bones) with ramekins of fleur de sel, huge workingman platters overflowing with perfectly cooked steaks or duck confit (best I've ever had), pommes frites or sauteed potatoes and fresh salad with perfect vinagerette. And wine. Unfiltered natural biodynamic wine that was nothing short of superb.

Just around the corner, there is G. Detou. If you love to cook, especially if you love to bake, you have to come here. After Monoprix, this is easily my favorite shopping destination in Paris. It's small than the average 7-11 and stocked from floor to ceiling with the most wonderful stuff. Exotic teas. Huge bricks of the finest chocolates (and also bags of chocolate chunks and cocoa powder), nuts in bulk, all kinds of flavored, colored and shaped sugars, flavored extracts, candied flower petals, dragees, exotic spices, Madagascar vanilla beans. Flavored oils. Mustards. Jarred
foie gras and pates. Tuna and sardines in prettily decorated tins. Iranian pistachios and saffron. And for the most part, everything is very reasonably priced.

"C'est comme Paradis!" I blurted out to the clearly amused proprieter as I looked around wide-eyed. He was only too happy to prove me right.

"Quel est le meilleur chocolate pour faire le chocolat chaud?" He whipped out a 1 kg bag of Valhrona Guanaja Mariage de grands crus 70%, little tabs of rich, dark chocolate to melt into milk or even to slip into croissant dough for pain au chocolat.

"Avez vous les lentilles du Puy?" I asked envisioning making that heavenly lentil salad from my October 2008 visit. Main bien sur. Did I want them in a tin or bag.

Flower essences? Rose. Lavande. Violette. Vertiver. One of each, please.

Candied violet and rose petals? Check.

Chestnut flour or Flour made from the lovely rose biscuits de Reims? Sure. I could also buy the fragile biscuits whole if I so desired.

G. Detou was actually the original owner, Gerard Detou, but pronounced in French it also is a play on words for "J'ai de tout" or "I have some of everything."

And they do. Or rather they did.

A fair amount of their merchandise came home with me.

The House Where the Black Cat Lives Goes to Paris

2011-09-18T19:51:00.021-05:00

I'm back from Paris. And as always, it was an adventure. I am convinced, no matter how many times I go there will always be some new sight, taste, sound to delight.

Like Au Panetier, one of the oldest patisseries in Paris, where the buttery toothsome pastry is eclipsed only by the beautiful Belle Epoque decor. Check out the lovely tile work.
Like Bistro d'Henri on Rue Princesse in St. Germain. Tiny dining room, always full, always good. I went there for the name; I came back for the food.
Shopping in the covered Passage Vivienne with its lovely domed glass skylights and elaborate wall frescoes.

Walking across a bridge covered with locks, left by thousands of lovers as signs of eternal love. Only in Paris.

This beautiful fountain near St. Sulpice.

Gardens everywhere, including this lovely little gem in the courtyard of Musee Carnavelet.

Pig pastries! (This one's for you, Lou.)

A decked-out bridal car parked outside Gerald Mulot (the similarly gorgeously attired bridal party was chowing down inside).

And black cats everywhere, popping up in the most unexpected places, reminding me that as enchanting as Paris may be, I'll always have a reason to come home.

Shopping in Paris

2011-08-21T11:18:00.014-05:00

More and more often lately, my thoughts turn to Paris. I'll be headed that way soon (my fourth visit if anyone is keeping track.)

Now you may wonder what there could possibly be left for me to see. Well, lots. I have reached that wonderful place in my relationship with Paris where I'm no longer the tourist running the frenetic race from the Tour Eiffel to Notre Dame from L'Arche de Triomphe to the Louvre.

Now I can enjoy Paris as the locals do, wandering the neighborhoods, revisiting familiar haunts, enjoying small-off-the-beaten track museums. And, of course, shopping.

Paris is a shopper's mecca. From les grandes magasins to the tiniest specialty boutiques to even the street markets, all the merchandise is arranged to entice.

I can't resist the vendors' entreaties to try les meilleures cerises dans la ville or that dab of cheese at the peak of ripeness. To enjoy a lick of the world's best ice cream scooped in the shape of a beautiful delicate rose . To spritz decadent parfum from a Baccarat crystal flacon onto a paper fan and waft it delicately under my nose. To enjoy the flutter of an ombre silk scarf against my neck as the vendeuse deftly knots it that inimitable way Parisiennes are born knowing. And they always wrap the packages so nicely, like a present just for you.

So what's on my Paris shopping list for this visit?

Food: bricks of Valhrona chocolate for baking and chocolat chaud. Madagascar vanilla beans in bulk. Candied violets. Essences of lavender, rose and violet. Mustard and honey -- the choices are dizzying for both. Green lentilles de Puy so hard to find over here.

Toiletries: The pharmacies and perfume boutiques are pure heaven for a girly girl like me. I love to stock up on the big cubes of Savon de Marseilles olive oil soap (great for the skin), and sachets in pretty silk embroidered packets.

This year I am determined to set foot into the grand parfums salons. Sure I can purchase a bottle of Shalimar or Chanel No. 5 here in Hattiesburg, but I can't recreate the experience of sniffing Narcisse Noir or N'Aimez que Moi at Turtlecreek Mall -- these are sold exclusively at the Caron boutiques. And, while at over $100 dollars a teaspoon, I can't justify bringing these home as souvenirs, I can allow myself a whiff there in the salon and bring home a slightly more affordable, if still decadent, swansdown peach powder puff or five precious bath beads.

Scarves: My Paris obsession. Hermes is not in the budget this year, but even the street scarves sold in the markets and the metro stations have a certain cachet when knotted just so.

And perhaps a serendipitous old treasure or two discovered at a street brocante.

Is shopping in Paris cheap? No it is not, but it is a heady, gracious and soul-satisfying experience rarely found anywhere else in the world.

And you can't put a price on that.

So what would you buy if you were going to Paris?

There's Something About Ernie

2011-07-25T13:25:00.000-05:00

Like some people, certain cats are just blessed with charisma.

Ernie is one of those cats.

From the day that he showed up on my deck in Bay St. Louis, exactly six years ago yesterday, it was clear the tiny three-week-old grey and white tabby kitten with the big ears and enormous paws possessed personal magnetism in spades.

Immediately upon his arrival, he started charming the fur off the feral kitties that lived under my deck, working his way into their hearts (and their food bowls).

I thought he was the cutest thing I'd ever seen. Which is why I got concerned when I saw him trying to chat up the 'possum and raccoon that also helped themselves to the cat chow after darkness fell. In the wild, personality does not determine survival of fittest.

So I brought him inside to become part of my inside feline family.

Though Little Ernie was clearly delighted with his new family of five feline brothers and sisters, the feeling was not always mutual. His arrival in our lives coincided with the other cats' third birthday; a little brother was not on their birthday list.

Ernie was oblivious. For his first year in our family, Ernie, in true little brother fashion, padded around behind Henry wherever he went. He mimicked his mannerisms. Henry was not amused and frequently swatted the little guy sending him tumbling head over tail across the room. Ernie thought it was a cool game. He wanted to be Henry when he grew up.

Henry doesn't swat him around anymore now that Ernie is twice his size. He just hides from him. Ernie doesn't mind (I'm sure he's still oblivious).

And then there's Roxie. When she arrived, a skinny, frightened little feral, Ernie gallantly showed her the ropes, sharing his food bowl, protecting her from the others' malevolent glares, lovingly washing her gaunt little face with his big, pink tongue and heeding her piteous cries for company at all hours of the day and night. Theirs was -- and is -- one of the sweetest love stories I've ever witnessed.

When I fostered her three little grandchildren a year later, Ernie was their mentor and playmate. The slept in a pile, the kitttens happily snuggled against Ernie's growing girth. When awake they dueled, the kittens batting Ernie's huge paws with their tiny ones. One by one the kittens went off to new homes. When the last one left, Ernie wandered the house disconsolately for days. He missed his little buddies.

Just recently, three more kittens (Roxie's great grandchildren) joined our foster family. The semi-feral little moppets huddled wide-eyed in the training cage hissing in terror whenever one of the adult cats came sniffing their way. Then Ernie ambled by, belly a'swingin'.

It was if a switch had been thrown. The three kittens rushed to the wall of the cage, mewing happily, three sets of paws stretched out eagerly, reaching for Ernie, batting at his tail, their own tails up and alert. And, as always, Ernie was happy to oblige.

It's the damnedest thing.

My House Overfloweth

2011-07-04T18:56:00.005-05:00

The House Where the Black Cat Lives has always been pretty much at capacity, but for the past week or so we've been overrun with black cats.

Gizmo, now about six months old, has been caught and spayed. She now resides in my guest bedroom waiting for relocation into a new home. Although she retains some of the skittish mannerisms of a feral cat, she is a naturally affectionate kitten, given to spontaneous cuddles and outbursts of impromptu purring. She is well on her way to being someone's devoted companion.

Gizmo

Her mother, Funny Face, has finally been caught and spayed (the culmination of over a year's worth of effort). She remains in her old neighborhood, adopted as a yard cat. Another happy ending.

Three of the four kittens in her last litter were caught at one go and are now undergoing socialization in my guest bathroom as a prelude to being placed in new homes. They are about seven weeks old now -- a truly adorable age. All are black and white tuxedo kitties with white whiskers and longish hair. While they still hiss defensively when I pick them up unexpectedly, they grow friendlier every day, allowing me to cuddle them (kitten therapy is the best!) and tease them with the feather wand.

As you might guess, all this extra kitty love pretty much eats up all my spare time -- the time I used to use for eating, sleeping ... and blogging. So my apologies for having been away, but it's been for a good reason.

So .... anyone looking for a kitten? Call me!

The Cat Mobile

2011-06-08T14:10:00.000-05:00

You can tell a lot about a person by the car they drive. Not so much the type of car -- mine's a fairly generic Toyota Camry -- but by what they keep in it.

You wouldn't need to be a super-sleuth to figure out I'm a cat mama.

I actually chose the Camry over the Corolla so that I would have ample floor and seat room for stacking all seven cats in their carriers for our annual vaccination vet runs, household moves and emergency hurricane evacuations (been there, done that).

Peek into my trunk. On any given day you'll spy cases of canned cat food, large bags of kibble, water bottles, paper plates, trash bags, economy-size boxes of kitty litter (hefting those in and out of the car comprises my weight-lifting regimen) and a few empty Pet Smart bags, receipts and coupons that I never get around to using.

Like any cat mama, and a former Girl Scout, I travel prepared for any possible feline emergency. The "passengers" in my formerly roomy back seat include a wire small animal trap along with some camoflauge blankets and towels and some heavy duty claw-proof gloves. You just never know when the opportunity to trap a feral will present itself.

I also cart around a plastic cat carrier in case a kitty requires transport to the emergency vet pronto.

Always mindful of public relations -- yep, it's what I do in my spare time as well as my professional life -- I keep a few info kits about living harmoniously with feral cats from Alley Cat Allies, to hand out along with garbage can bungee cords and cat repellent to address some of the more prevalent crises I deal with.

And in my glove compartment? A supersize cat hair remover roller for last minute cleanup, wipes (because accidents do happen) and car deoderant -- because, let's face it, cat food stinks.

OK, so now you know what's in my cat mobile. What can people tell about you from YOUR car?

The Baby Daddy

2011-06-05T08:52:00.002-05:00

I’ve rarely met a cat, especially a black cat, that I didn’t like.

But I don’t really like this one.

He’s mean. Really mean.

He chased off my two sweet boys, Fergus and Tux.

He beats up on his woman, Peggy Sue’s beautiful girl Funny Face, she of the sapphire eyes and Himalayan coat.

He’s the baby daddy to her two half-grown kittens, Gizmo and Leona, and probably also fathered the litter she gave birth to some three weeks ago.

He abuses his kids, too.

Gizmo and Leona hide in the tall grass when he’s around and walk between my ankles for protection from him when I come to feed them.

I usually just refer to him as "The Baby Daddy," but lately, I’ve started calling him “Sid.”

When Sid first started hanging out at the colony, he was wearing a flea color, so he must have belonged to someone sometime. He’s since lost the collar and apparently his home, too.

Maybe he was abandoned by someone in the trailer park down the street from the colony.

I suspect Sid’s home, when he had one, was not happy. The wary way he circles me, his plaintive cries, hisses and growls, the obsessively jealous way he guards his food tell a story of starvation and abuse.

I used to chase him off, but he refused to go. So now I feed him, speak to him softly, and, when he is receptive, scratch his ears. Even bad cats need love.

Occasionally, he purrs. He sounds rusty, like the engine turning over in an infrequently driven car.

Maybe if he wasn’t fueled by so much baggage and testosterone, he wouldn’t be so doggone cranky.

I know how to fix the testosterone. If I can manage to trap him, a trip to the spay and neuter clinic will get rid of all that in about three months.

Getting rid of the rest of his baggage may take a little longer.

And I don't have longer. I have just found out that my darlings are in trouble. Big trouble.

The neighborhood association where my little family resides has some issues and wants to get rid of them. Apparently, the fact that there are crack houses and growing drug problems in this neighborhood is no big deal to "the association". But they are very concerned about getting rid of a few cats who are cared for and sleep all day

To most of you this may not seem like a big deal. It is to me. Huge.

My heart is breaking, my stomach is churning, my blood pressure is up so high, it's like tribal drums beating in my ears. I just got a new mattress set. But something tells me I'm not going to sleep tonight. Or any night until I can resolve this.

You see. I've cared for this colony, and its evolving membership, for going on four years now. That's longer than many significant relationships in my life.

I've helped trap, foster and find "forever" homes for eight of its kittens. I've spayed/neutered three adult members and adopted two of them myself. One sleeps in my bed; one in my garage.

I've fed them by flashlight in the dark. Through cold winters and hot summers, I've slipped flea medicine on their necks when they scratch and antibiotics into their food when they are injured.

I've run interference with the neighbors and supplied informative literature about feral cats along with bungee cords and Nature's Miracle to deal with the more common complaints.

I've smiled into faces I've wanted to slap. Listened patiently and with as much sympathy as I can muster to some pretty outrageous (and I'm pretty sure some bogus whining). I've resisted the urge to point out that the "cats" they describe getting into their trash sound more like raccoons and that trash bags placed on the curb without benefit of first being placed in a can with a secure lid are an open invitation to raccoons, dogs, possums, foxes and other wildlife, not just cats.

I don't see myself just walking away at this point as some of my "friends" have suggested I do (for shame!) My babies, even Sid, need me now more than ever. No one else is stepping up to the plate.

I'll make a last ditch attempt to educate the ignorant, trap/spay/neuter/relocate the innocent and get assistance from the uncommitted . But I feel I'm going it totally alone.

And that scares the hell out of me. For me. And especially for the kitties.

Most of all this makes me mad as hell.

They're God's creatures. Don't they deserve better?

Peggy Sue, Part Deux

2011-05-31T19:42:00.002-05:00

When we last checked in, our heroine, Peggy Sue, was holed up in my bathroom cabinet, resolutely , yet politely, refusing to be tamed while awaiting her date with destiny – an appointment at the local spay and neuter clinic.

I never did tame her, but I did get her spayed.

Now she’s living in my garage. Sort of.

The original plan was to return her to her home turf and into the bosom of the colony she had helped found. However, the colony underwent a profound demographic shift during Peggy Sue’s tenure in my bathroom.

In a turn of events worthy of a tragedy by Shakespeare, a mean cuss of an abandoned black tom cat had moved in, chased off Peggy Sue’s two grown sons, beat up and impregnated her daughter and staked his claim to the old homestead with a series of well-aimed, pungent sprays.

Feral cats, territorial creatures that they are, don’t really cotton to relocation, but I didn’t see as how I or Peggy Sue had much of a choice.

So into my garage Peggy Sue went with her carrier lined with now-familiar towel, her litter box and her food and water bowls. After about a week, I cracked open the door remembering that cheesy poster so prevalent on dorm room walls during my long-ago youth, “If you love something set it free, if it comes back it’s yours. If it doesn’t, it never was.”

The next day all that remained of Peggy Sue were a few tufts of grey fur clinging to her terry blankie.

For nearly a month, I left food for her every evening at dusk, humming a few bars of “Peggy Sue” in the direction of my neighbor’s bamboo privacy hedge across the alley way where I fancied a feline shadow lurked.

The kibble was always gone in the morning, but no further sign of Peggy Sue. One grey dawn, I did see one of the other neighborhood cats squeezing his growing belly under the garage door. Mystery solved. Looks like Peggy Sue wasn’t coming back. Still, perversely I continued to set out food and a few of the treats she had grown so fond of.

Last Friday I came home a little later than normal. A familiar head with a bobbed ear cautiously peered from under the garage door and up at me with wide-set peridot eyes. Peggy Sue? She mewed in the affirmative and ran to the privacy hedge, talking to me all the while.

She had plenty to say.

She looked well fed, healthy and relatively well-adjusted.

So, now she’s back -- if she, in fact, ever really went away. Does that mean, she’s mine? Not really. She never was, probably never will be. But we’re still talking, and we’ll always have “our song.”

So now you know why I’m less blue ‘bout Peggy, about Peggy Sue.

To Stroke or Not to Stroke, That Is The Question

2011-05-14T09:23:00.008-05:00

Is your cat lovey-dovey one minute, and downright mean the next? I have often noted the differences in my cats' personalities. One of the major differences is their varying thresholds for affection -- both giving and receiving . How quickly those thresholds can change!

Koko is a love bug whose favorite activity in life is to be snuggled into the crook of my side or knees, kneading away and purring his funny little out-of-tune purr. That said, he has a very low tolerance for actually being picked up in my arms and carried around.

Henry is a "Don't call me, I'll call you" type. As I have said before, he is SUCH a guy. That said, when he wants attention, he wants my FULL attention and will go around poking me until I give it to him.

Ernie, Roxie and Nettie, on the other hand, love to be picked up. Ernie, bless his heart, is just too big for me to pick up too often. I can do anything to Roxie, including rubbing her face and sticking my fingers in her ears and she won't let out a squeak. Nettie loves to be held, but can get pissy if I try to put her down, rub her too hard or even rub her too often. She actually curls her upper lip at me when I give her the wrong kind of attention.

Sammy is an attention whore who meows and head butts until he gets my attention. But after about three strokes, he throws the personality switch and comes after me. I have little bruises from Sammy's love bites all up and down the underside of my arm.

CJ is undoubtedly the most distant of my cats. From the time she was a kitten, she has been a loner. She doesn't even seem to like her siblings, except for Sammy, with whom she has always had a weirdly close relationship. Days will go by without seeing her. The Recurring Gentleman Caller and I had been seeing each other for three months when he asked "Did you get a new cat?" while pointing to CJ who had surfaced for a drink of water. That said, on rare occasion, she will come up to me, head bent, and sit by my side patiently waiting for a stroke on the head.

Apparently, dual-personalities is a common trait among cats, and major headache for the people who love them. But according to this article, we shouldn't take it personally.

They're just being cats.

Gotta love 'em.

I'm a Winner!

2011-05-01T13:41:00.006-05:00

Bonjour, y'all! Just found out I won this great little cookbook in a blogging giveaway over at "My French Corner."

I love food, I love to cook, I love France. Lately I haven't had time for much of any of it, so a 10-minute French cookbook sounds custom made for me. I can't wait to try it. And the period illustrations look too cute.

If you're a Francophile, pop on over to "My French Corner." It's an adorable (and very readable) blog about adding French touches to your everyday life. It's one of my faves.

Bon weekend (this has made mine!)

Eating My Way Through New Orleans: The Green Goddess and Boucherie

2011-04-24T20:43:00.003-05:00

As my Blogger profile states, one of my life goals is to eat my way through the great restaurants of New Orleans. Here's hoping I live a reallllllyyyyy long time because this is turning out to be quite the project -- and one I relish completely.

Since starting the project, I've dined (in no particular order) at: Camellia Grill, Lola's, Cafe Degas, Elizabeth's, Emerils, Bayona, Praline Connection, the Upperline, Bacco, Ralph's on the Park, Luke, Britgsen's, Stanley's, La Petite Grocery, Lilette, Herbsaint, Mr. B's, and now The Green Goddess and Boucherie.

I have yet to eat at a bad restaurant. Yes, I like some places better than others (and sometimes it is just because I ordered the wrong dish or the restaurant was too crowded or someone obnoxious at the next table put a damper on the occasion).

Good food for me is good food. I'm not a snob about location, celebrity chefs or price point. However, I am discovering that my favorite places are a little off the beaten path (as in not necessarily in the Quarter), neighborhood gems that are somewhat upscale (but not intimidatingly so) with small, intimate dining rooms reminiscent of a bistro in Paris. Does this surprise anyone that knows me?

The Green Goddess, though in the Quarter, still earns points for being hard to find; it's located on Exchange Place, the charming alley way located between the Louisiana Supreme Court and the Monteleone Hotel. It's also extremely intimate; plan on sitting outside and waiting for a table no matter how early you get there. The list of speciality drinks is impressive as is the cheese list.

The food is inventive and pairs some unusual flavors -- a soup with a watermelon, ginger base topped with avocado and crab meat, for instance. Some pairings work more successfully than others. I was a little hampered because it was Good Friday, the one day a year when I am an observant Catholic (I know it makes no sense), so I limited my options to vegetarian/seafood, and as is always the case, the meaty dishes were what sounded, looked and smelled appealing. But still it was a fun, funky, yummy experience. The chef (and the menu) are totally different at lunch and dinner so I may have to go back at lunch sometime (and not during Lent).

It's a good thing I saved Boucherie for Saturday because the smell of their signature barbecue dishes would have driven me insane had I attempted to dine on Friday. Located in a tiny house in Riverbend, it scores for off the beaten path and intimate dining room. You HAVE to have reservations. There are only about 12 tables.

Their food, which is quite reasonably priced, is Southern with a twist. My dining companion and I decided to go with their better known dishes: boudin balls; collard greens with grit fries; ribs with fried shallots, brisket with Parmesan garlic fries and (drum roll, please) Krispy Kreme bread pudding. All were wonderful. The biggest surprise were the collards which had a tangy, yet smoky, flavor. We shared the bread pudding. Loved this place. Recommend it highly.

The issue with this project is that once I find a restaurant I really like, I want to return to it all the time, which makes it hard to make progress on my "list." And, yes, this is a self-imposed rule which I means I can un-impose it at any time. As I did this morning when I returned to Elizabeth's for brunch. This was my third visit. But I can't resist their crabby eggs. Or their praline bacon. Or their best-I've-ever-had Bloody Mary's.

So what are the other places on my list? Well, the list keeps growing. It seems as soon as I cross one place off, I hear about someplace else I just HAVE to try. Sadly, a few places (Cafe Sbisa, Christians, Cuvee, Petunia's) shut their doors before I had the opportunity to try them. But here is "the list" as it stands as of today. Tomorrow, who knows ...

Coquette's
Domenica
Cochon
Bistro at Maison de Ville
Patois
August
Le Foret
Bistro Daisy
Three Muses
Feelings Cafe
MiLa
Matt and Naddie's
Gautreau's
Dante's Kitchen
Iris
Ste. Marie
Delmonico
La Provence (technically not in New Orleans, but it's been on the list a long, long time).

Anyone else have a recommendation, a review, an observation. Pile it on. I'll get to it eventually.

"Cats Are Like Me": Cats and Autism, Part II

2011-04-01T18:52:00.012-05:00

Today is Autism Awareness Day and the beginning of Autism Awareness Month.

Long-time readers of this blog will remember that autism awareness was the subject of the very first post on The House Where the Black Cat Lives two (!) years ago.

I remain passionate about this topic, because like cat rescue and spaying and neutering, I know something about it. My 10-year-old niece lives with autism.

Increasingly, cats (and dogs and horses) are being used as therapy animals for children with autism. Today, I stumbled across this lovely story about how cats helped the author's son learn to communicate.

The part that made my eyes well up was when he said, "Cats are like me." I feel that way myself which makes me wonder if I, too, was touched, if ever so slightly, by the brush of autism.

Now if you read the story of the House Where The Black Cat Lives over on the right side of this page, you'll figure out that cats are unlikely to be my niece "N"'s therapy animal of choice. (Actual cats that is. She still loves drawing pictures of them.)

That said "cat" was among her early words, at a time when she was almost completely non-verbal. But that was before the infamous "black cat" incident. She is, however, fascinated by all things canine. And I have witnessed her blossom in the presence of a horse, grooming, mounting and riding it with a near-religious reverence.

N is coming to visit later in the month. Perhaps she and the cats will have a breakthrough. Perhaps not.

At the very least, I'll probably get a new drawing of the cats for my refrigerator.

Felony Laws for Animal Cruelty Needed in Mississippi NOW

2011-03-30T12:04:00.004-05:00

Did you know that Mississippi is one of only four states in the Union where cruelty toward a cat or a dog is not considered a felony? *

Appalling isn't it? That's right, in this state, people have starved and/or beaten pets to death, poured hot grease on feral cats and doused dogs with lighter fluid and burned them alive and gotten off with a fine of $1,000 (or less) and/or a six month jail term -- which was usually commuted to community service-- for a misdemeanor. That is, if they were punished at all.

Never mind that animal cruelty is a predictor and indicator of violent crime, domestic abuse and child abuse.

It's not that the citizens of Mississippi don't care about animal cruelty. Time and again, stories of horrific cat and dog abuse make the news, and there is always an outcry for a felony law. Petitions circulate. Legislation is introduced. And then it hits a wall.

Why? Mostly because of powerful Mississippi Farm Bureau lobbyists. Mississippi Farm Bureau opposes tougher laws against aggravated, intentional cruelty to dogs and cats. They claim that a felony cruelty law protecting dogs and cats could somehow impact farming, but livestock are already protected by a first offense felony cruelty law.

Just this week, a conference committee report was released that will weaken current laws in regards to acts of simple animal cruelty.

But never say die. Earlier this month in New Jersey, the case of a starved, left-for- dead pit bull made national headlines and spawned "Patrick's Law," a huge grassroots effort to provide stiffer penalties for animal abusers. Patrick's Law is also shedding additional light -- and putting pressure-- on states, including Mississippi, where no felony laws exist.

Seize the moment. Our cats and dogs have no choice but to be silent. We can speak for them. Learn more about Mississippi's laws for animal cruelty and what you can do to help here now.

* The others are Idaho, North Dakota and South Dakota.

Black Cat Rescue

2011-03-29T14:21:00.001-05:00

Did you know that black cats are only about half as likely to be adopted as other cats?

I didn't know that, either, until I visited the Black Cat Rescue (BCR) blog. I've lived with several black cats over the years, and I've always found them to be the sweetest and funniest of kitties. For more about BCR and the wonderful work they do to rescue and adopt out black cats, visit their blog or their page on Facebook. Sammy and Koko are fans.

A New Toy ...

2011-03-26T20:39:00.001-05:00

.... inspires exultation - and envy - at The House Where the Black Cat Lives. Nettie revels in having the new mint-flavored chew toy all to herself - at least for the moment. It looks like Sammy's turn is coming sooner than she thinks.

My Creature Comforts

2011-03-11T09:28:00.000-06:00

I love my creature comforts. Almost as much as I love my little creatures.

Sometimes between the 9-hour work days, the 2 1/2 hours round trip commutes, the chores and stresses of living in a multi-cat household, I just want to scream , "Calgon, take me away."

When the cats at The House Where The Black Cat Lives get bent out of shape, brushings, cat nip, a few treats and a nap in their favorite sunny spot always works wonders. When the resident cat mama needs little pampering, I can always count on these decadent little luxuries to whisk me a to a calmer place.

Bath and Boudoir

Candles: Tyler Candles' richly scented products come with atmospheric monikers like French Quarter, Cathedral (which no kidding smells like incense), Diva and High Maintenance. My favorite? Do you even have to ask? Paris, mais bien sur! I also love Trapp's heavenly orange vanilla scent. It belongs in the Scented Candle Hall of Fame.

Anything by Bath Junkie: You pick the product, the color and the scent at their bath boutiques. They do the rest, then wrap it in color-coordinated tissue paper. I just feel better walking out of that uber-Zen oasis of calm. with my little bag. Their sea-salt scrub is the best (I get it in Calming Lavendar). I also keep a couple of bottles of bubble bath in mock-Chanel No. 5 and Rose for long Sunday evening soaks. They recently added a 6 oz. size to their 4 oz. and 8 oz. line up.

Savon de Marseilles: Gargantuan cubes of unwrapped French-made soap made with olive oil are great for your skin and look tres francais piled up in a big clear glass jar in your bathroom. One cube lasts forever. I always bring these back as souvenirs when I go to France.

L'Occitane en Provence's Pearlescent Rose Body Creme: I love anything from this high-end bath shop, but this soft pink, rose-scented cream carries a little lagniappe: a pearlescent shimmer that leaves your skin glowing.

Lady Primose Dusting Silk: Want to feel super-pampered? Spend a weekend at Monmouth Plantation in Natchez, Miss. Walk around the romantic grounds, dine in the 1818 restaurant, and enjoy being waited on hand and foot. After your shower, take their pretty cut glass bath shaker and idly drift some of this wonderful silky powder along your collarbones and decolletage wondering why you can't do this at home. You can. They just happen to sell the shakers and powder in their gift shop -- if they happen to have it in stock. "We seem to sell a lot of this," the clerk apologized after vainly searching the stock room . No problem. You can buy online. http://www.ladyprimrose.com/

The Kitchen

Oh, who are we kidding, it's not like you want to cook at moments like these, but never discount the mood-lifting power of a spoon dipped in a jar of something gooey. Or a yummy little bon bon popped right from the package into your mouth.

Nutella and Biscoff spreads: Nothing wrong with the tried and true spoon-in-the -ice cream tub or peanut butter jar, but now that I'm a big girl, I dip my spoon in something a little more decadent like Nutella or, my newest passion, Biscoff spread, which is made from those Biscoff cookies Delta serves in flight if you're lucky. Biscoff spread is the same thing as the Specaloos spread so beloved by American expats living in Europe. Over here, you have to order it online which gets pricey what with the shipping. So if you're going to France or Belgium any time soon, head to a local grocery and stock up. And bring back a jar or two for me

Chocolate: I will not turn my nose up at any chocolate, but Trader Joe's carries a dizzying variety of wonderful dark chocolate-- coated marshmallows (heaven in their sipping chocolate), pretzel bark, cocoa dusted almonds or my favorite: dark chocolate, pistachio toffee clusters.

Tea: Jolly Old England's best, P.G. tips is my everyday tea of choice, but lately I am also addicted to Trader Joe's vanilla cinnamon tea which my sister sent me in my Christmas package. We don't have a Trader Joe's here, so she periodically sends me Trader Joe's care packages. Is she a great sis or what?

And for the rest of my senses ...

Cashmere: Sweater, socks and a wonderful red shawl I bought in Venice cocoon me in softness (all best accompanied by a purring kitty or three or seven).

Movies: They have to be pretty, romantic and make me cry or laugh. Period pieces preferred. Gloomy Sunday, The Wings of the Dove, The Last Time I Saw Paris, even the Aristocats will do.

Music: Something kind of jazzy. Billie Holliday, Dinah Washington, Sarah Vaughan, and my favorite New Orleans chanteuse Linnzi Zaorski.

So, what picks you up when you're down.? I'm always on the lookout for a new source of cheap endorphins! As long as it's legal that is...

Sex and the Single Cat Mama, Part II

2011-03-01T09:29:00.000-06:00

Early on in this blog, I documented the trials and tribulations of dating as a single cat mama. The video below, "Single White Feline," encapsulates it perfectly.

I think my Recurring Gentleman Caller (RGC) would agree that this has been pretty much his experience -- times seven.

His stuff has been shed on, slept on, walked on, clawed on, peed on, and puked on.

He has had his dinner time, leisure time, work time, sports time, sleep time and romantic time interrupted by the calls of feline nature.

And still he stays put.

I keep hoping that he and the cats will grow on each other. As it is they manage to co-exist. And that is enough. I realize that I have found that rare, one-in-a-million guy.

I think the cats recognize it, too, or they wouldn't still be trying to get rid of him.

Now watch the video. Bat Sh** Crazy. I love it.

Video via BBC Comedy

How Do They Do That?

2011-02-26T09:05:00.000-06:00

Like Superman, Koko scaled this door in a single leap. I've seen this a million times -- and it never fails to amaze me.

10 Smart Products People Buy for Their Cats

2011-02-25T07:33:00.000-06:00

Photo: Sammy loves his kitty chaise; he just wishes he had a bigger one.

In May 2009, I wrote a blog post entitled, "Useless Stuff People Buy for Their Cats." Since then, the market has been flooded with a plethora of new, useless cat merchandise (Look for "Useless Stuff II" coming here soon). However, there are also some wonderful products that enrich my cats' lives and mine, too. Here are my Top 10 favorites:

Drinkwell water fountains. Cats normally don't drink a lot of water. But cats with Feline Lower Urinary Tract Disorder need plenty of it to flush out bacteria that can lead to infections and life-threatening urinary tract blockages. Two of my FLUTD cats just will not drink out of a bowl. Their favorite "fountain" -- the drippy faucet in my bathtub-- was not good for my pipes or for my water bill. (After the plumber left, Henry sat in the tub for hours just staring at the faucet and willing it to start dripping again.). Drinkwell's basic model fountain with adjustable water flow is well-priced, dishwasher safe and easy to assemble and disassemble. The splashing noise is kind of soothing. I think of this as what HGTV calls a "water feature" for my home.

Corrugated Cat Chaises. These ecologically friendly, corrugated cardboard cat beds/ scratching posts are just a riff on the scratchers that have been available for years. Cats adore the chaises for snuggling and napping as well as scratching. Sprinkling the chaises with the little packets of catnip included in the package makes it a double happy. I have a cat chaise in every room in my house, and flip them over when one side gets worn out. We are not as thrilled with the emery board version which is supposed to wear down kitties' sharp claws. My cats rub their faces against anything with cat nip on it. Ouch!
Prescription Heartworm/Flea Drops. Cats hate the smell, but not as badly as they hate flea collars, dips, shampoos, and powders. Advantage Multi or Revolution prescription strength flea meds also offer protection against ticks and heartworms. Get a vet-recommended product appropriate to your cat's weight and age. Be leery of over the counter drops. They are less expensive and also less effective; some have nasty side effects. Do indoors cats need flea/heartworm prevention? Absolutely! Fleas can travel into the house on your clothes and can also come in through cracks in the foundation, floorboards and plumbing. My vet says many cases of feline heartworms he sees are in indoor cats.

Urine marker removers. Almost every cat is going to miss the litter box at one time or another. You won't be able to miss the unmistakable lingering odor, especially in humid weather. There are a lot of "stink remover" products; some stink worse than the cat urine does. The best ones contain enzymes that attack and break down the organic matter in the urine or spray making it less pungent and less likely to reactivate. Now I should warn you these products remove odors well enough to fool your nose, but not always your cats' more sensitive sniffers. Cats will often re-mark a treated area. Invest in the economy size and treat affected areas frequently until the cat loses interest. and you can no longer smell it. Nature's Miracle, Simple Solutions and Anti Icky-Poo (dumb name, smart product) are some of the better brands out there.

Cat nip mist. Most of my cats adore cat nip, but the dried herb loses its potency over time, and it makes a mess. Who wants to be sweeping that stuff up all day long when you can mist a spray infused with cat nip on kitty chaises (see above) and pet toys with the same desired result: kitty bliss.

Fat Cat brand cat toys. Most pretty little cat toys disintegrate after five minutes in my household. Fat Cat products are durable, witty, and fun (cats love that crackly noise inside not to mention the cat nip). Most can even hold up to a run through the washing machine. Spritz them them with cat nip spray afterwards, and they are as good as new. For best results, don't buy the toys with attached feathers, ribbons and doo-dads; they just don't hold up as well.
Cat calmant. Many cat owners sing the praises of Feliway pheromone spray and room diffuser for calming aggressive and territorial behavior in multi-cat homes. I'm not one of them. It's expensive as hell, and my cats fought and sprayed just as much with it as without. On the other hand, a few drops of homeopathic Calm Down ($9.99 a bottle at Pet Smart) in their drinking water or food does seem to settle them down a little but not to the point where they are zombies. There are no chemicals in it; it's made from all natural flower extracts. Is it just the power of suggestion? Don't know, but I sure like the price! Unfortunately, it looks like this brand has been discontinued at Pet Smart and at some online suppliers like Amazon.

Furminator cat brushes. We are approaching the time of year, when everything in the house, including me, wears a fine down of cat hair. Those info-mercials don't lie: This is the best cat brush in the world for removing undercoat hair. You may be shocked the first time you use it and see just how much hair comes off your cat. Don't be scared; you won't wind up with hairless cats like Rachel's Mrs. Whiskerson on Friends.
Pet hair rollers. I have one of these in every room of my house, my car, my office and my purse. All rollers are not created equally. My favorites are the Evercare which are high-quality, thicker and stickier than most and therefore pick up more hair per swipe so you don't use as much. The runner up is the classic 3M by Scotch which also comes in nice, thick rolls in a variety of sizes. Downside: Sometimes the layers stick to each other and don't peel away evenly. Budget rollers, available at discount stores, cost about a third of the price of the name brands, but also tend to be poorly made (the tape roll comes off the roller when you try to get a good grip on it) with fewer -- and thinner -- sheets and less "stickiness" so you will go through them faster thereby eating up any cost savings.

Environmentally friendly clumping cat litter. The first "natural" cat litters were horribly expensive, hard to find, and, with limited clumping ability, not very scoopable. Choices have multiplied and improved over the last couple of years. Now your kitty can go green in litter made from unscented pine, corn, wheat and recycled newspaper. Prices have come down as well although most are still a few dollars more than regular clumping clay litter. I'm still seeking the "perfect" litter, but I have found some brands that I -- and more importantly the cats -- like including Exquisicat corn-based clumping litter carried by Pet Smart and the multi-cat version of Swheat litter. I'm also very fond of Dr. Ellsey's cat attract products though they are not all natural and very expensive. After one try, I took a pass on the recycled newspaper and pine pellets. My cats hate the feel of them underfoot, and they are not scoopable. The clumping version of Feline Pine (which is actually made from the guar bean) is very soft and the cats seem to like that, but it tracks badly and larger clumps disintegrate during scooping .

Is there a product that makes your life with cats easier? Please share in the comments section. Here at The House Where the Black Cat Lives, we're all about making life with cats as pleasant as possible.

It's Spay and Neuter Reminder Time!

2011-02-17T19:24:00.000-06:00

Henry and Roxie (right) urge you to spay and neuter your pets. Henry can't remember a time when he wasn't neutered. Roxie, a former stray, produced countless litters of kittens before being trapped and spayed in 2007. Ever since then she's been living uterus-free and loving it at The House Where The Black Cat Lives.

Now that Spay and Neuter Month is half over, and with peak kitten season looming I would like to put in my annual plug for spaying and neutering your pets (and ferals).

If you need motivation, grab any reason you like from this article at About.com Cats or from this old blog post of mine. There are only a few things in life I get REAAAAAALLLLY passionate about. This is one of them.

Since November 2009 the Pine Belt Region of Mississippi has been fortunate to have the services of a Spay and Neuter Clinic, a state of the art modern facility offering reasonably priced spay and neuter services. The clinic is affiliated with the Southern Pines Animal Shelter. They are also in the process of trying to open a Pet Food Bank.

I recently availed myself of their services for spaying one my feral colony members, Peggy Sue, and was quite impressed. I'll definitely be bringing in the rest of the colony members when I can trap them.

If you are lucky enough to live in this region, or in another area with a similar clinic, here are some thoughts to remember:

1. Low cost spay and neuter clinics operate on a shoestring off grants and donations and volunteer labor. They discount their services as much as they can to make the services affordable. However, when the grant and donation money and the volunteers run low, some services may be discontinued or operating hours cut back temporarily. For example, our Spay and Neuter Clinic will be closed until Feb. 28 to train new volunteers. Always call ahead to make an appointment and inquire about current availability of services and prices.

2. Ask about special discounts. Grants often make it possible for clinics to discount their already low prices for specific animal groups like large dogs, small dogs, green and orange striped and polka dot cats (just checking to see if you were still with me) or breeds as well as residents of specific cities or countries. These may not be available all the time, but it doesn't hurt to ask.

3. Ask about the clinic's policy regarding ferals. Most spay and neuter clinics are very flexible in working with managers of feral colonies. However, if you will be bringing in a feral, make sure the entire staff knows about this well in advance. You don't want anyone getting hurt unnecessarily. Some clinics require ferals be conveyed in humane traps, others have staff that can handle them in conventional pet carriers. The day I brought in Peggy Sue (in a carrier), it so happened that the volunteers with experience handling ferals were away on training. Fortunately, Dr. White handled the situation herself, and all was well.

4. Be nice to the staff. Some spay and neuter facilities, like the one in Hattiesburg, employ a full-time vet; others depend on vets volunteering their spare time away from their own businesses. Almost all the rest of the staff are volunteers. They aren't getting paid for this, and most are getting on the job training as they go so be understanding of minor inconveniences and communications snafus. Remember you are all there for the same reason: Because you love animals and you want to control overpopulation and reduce the amount of animal euthanasia.

5. Observe the clinic's drop off and pick up times and pre- and post- op instructions. These are not unreasonable demands. Many of these are required by law. And remember it's for the good of your animals.

6. If you can afford it, make a donation. Low cost spay and neuter clinics are intended to help out low-income pet owners who would not be able to afford the services otherwise, but because these facilities are also devoted to animal population control, they rarely turn anyone away regardless of income, especially people who are feral colony managers or involved in animal rescue. If you can afford to pay more than the list price, please consider making a donation. The clinic personnel appreciate it, you'll be helping out someone else who really needs it and it's good karma. The donation I made when I got Peggy Sue fixed will fund the spaying of another female cat, and thereby spare her the ordeal of repeated pregnancies and the Pine Belt of scores of unwanted kittens.

7. Shop at a spay and neuter clinic thrift shop. If you're a flea market junkie like me, you can get your old junk fix and support low cost spay and neuter services all at one go. Our Spay and Neuter Clinic's booth is conveniently located in an antique mall right next door to the clinic.

Spooning

2011-02-13T19:22:00.000-06:00

Roxie and Ernie, the resident lovebirds at The House Where The Black Cat Lives, enjoyed this weekend's warmer weather, but took advantage of the cooler evening temps for a snuggle with their favorite Valentine. Ain't love grand?

My Style Muse

2011-01-29T08:17:00.001-06:00

My chic mother in classic streamlined spring/summer style: Simple light-colored belted linen dress with slip-on huraches, accented with eye-catching earrings.

Even before I became a Francophile, I sought a signature style. My aesthetic has always been very French. People noticed that even when I was in my teens. At the time I assumed it was because I was tall, brunette and dabbed Chanel No. 5 on my wrists every now and again. I realize now there was way more to it. It was in my genes and in the air I breathed.

My first style muse and teacher was my mother. Mama was not French, never went to France and most assuredly never read "Entre Nous," the style bible cited by most American women with Francophile leanings. But like French women, she possessed in spades that je ne sais quoi quality that most American women find so elusive. She wasn't tall, but she wore clothes confidently. Having now observed many, many French women at close range, I can attest that style confidence is really the factor that sets "them" apart from "us."

My mother was not one to follow the herd. In an era when the preferred look was All-American Doris Day-ish snub-nosed blondes, my ethnic Croatian mother with her dark coloring and angular features didn't try to look cute or frou frou with ruffles and pastels. Nor did she go overtly sexy with cat-eye liner, cinched waists and plunging decolletage a la Sophia Loren or Gina Lollobrigida (though with her great legs and generous bosom, she would have stopped traffic).

Lean, clean lines that made her look taller were her trademark. She preferred solid colors, but sometimes wore prints, like this blouse, in small doses.

Instead she adopted a look that was part gamine, part classic casual elegance that suited her perfectly. Cropped pants with espadrilles and cotton boat-neck sweaters. Simple Ts with flowing skirts and leather huraches or ballet flats. Tailored trousers (still a novelty in the ultra-conservative South) with slip on loafers and button front cardigans with collars and three-quarter length sleeves. A cropped Italian boy bob that played up her big dark eyes and incredible cheekbones. Max Factor's flattering Pink 'n Orange lipstick rather than Revlon's dramatic Love That Red.

She loved clean lines and solid colors (but not black which she felt turned her dark olive complexion muddy), and put them together in original pairings like blue or aqua with brown. She didn't want to overpower her slight frame, so she accessorized sparingly but dazzlingly. She might adorn the French cuffs of a simple blouse with exotic jade cuff links fashioned like the heads of Burmese dancers. A pair of sculptural gold earrings looked great with her short hair and the cream, brown and camel clothes she favored.

Collared cardigans like this one worn over simple Ts were favorites whether paired with trousers, skirts or cropped pants -- always with flats.

She invested in quality pieces and wore them a lifetime. I loved her chocolate-colored three-quarter length, shawl-collar walking coat in a wool, cashmere and reindeer hair blend. She -- and I -- wore that coat for nearly 50 years, and she was still receiving compliments on it the last day she wore it. Her go-to evening bag was a simple cream-colored, mesh metal bead clutch she bought in the 1950s -- a delightfully tactile little number that my sister and I loved to play with when we were kids.

And to the end of her days, she wore one signature fragrance: Toujours Moi by Corday.

As she grew older, she became less interested in dressing herself than in passing on her style wisdom to my sister and me. But she never lost interest in good style. She read fashion magazines and pored over the latest fall collections (like me she always like fall clothes the best) and singled out pieces she thought would suit us. She loved to visit the mall to observe what people were wearing so she could critique them to us sotto voice.

While Mama generally did not care for the way she looked in black, she did own a little black dress, worn here, with a flattering lace insert to keep the dark color away from her face. The simple lines are classic Mama.

Her lessons stuck. Though I've had my "what was I thinking" fashion moments (my 20s coincided with the 1980s), like my mom I prefer clean lines and solid colors and well-made pieces I can wear forever. I don't eschew trends, but, like her, I consider them carefully and adopt only those I feel suit me.

There are some individualistic differences in our styles. Since I have dark hair with a fair complexion, I prefer black and grey clothes and red lipstick (how very French of me) rather than the earthier tones she favored. I am tall, so I choose bolder scaled (but still classic) accessories. Unlike my mother, I am a cat mama so my clothes are often unintentionally accessorized with cat hair. For that reason, I keep lint rollers in every room of my house, my car, my office and my bag.

Mama even managed to look good in a bridesmaid's dress. Of course, she designed the dresses and picked the color schemes (mossy green here) for both of her sisters' weddings. My sister and I weren't the only ones who looked to her for style advice!

The biggest lesson I've learned from my mother is that I don't have to be a conventional beauty, have a certain weight or body type or be under 40 to look stylish -- and more importantly feel good -- in what I wear. It's an attitude as much as a look, and it's one I hope to continue to cultivate no matter how old, fat, flabby, wrinkly and /or stooped over I become.

Merci, Maman. Merci beaucoup.

Baby It's Cold Outside!

2011-01-22T08:48:00.000-06:00

Brrrrrrrrr!! It's cold in the 'burg this morning. Koko thinks today is a good day to stay in and snuggle under the covers.

Stay warm -- wherever you are!

Winter Wallowing

2011-01-13T10:07:00.000-06:00

My house in holiday dress. It's all gone now...

The holidays are over, and I finally got the Christmas decorations down. My mother's perennial excuse that the season isn't really over until after The Feast of the Epiphany expired last week. Well , I did leave a string of lights wound around my Eiffel Tower. Every time I plug those in, I'm instantly transported to Paris. Those are staying put.

... except for the Eiffel Tower lights (sorry about the blurry photo).

The house seems so naked now! What with the bare trees, dead grass and general blah-ness outside, it's all rather depressing.

But the post-holiday lull does bring with it the soul-soothing benefits of winter wallowing. And Lord knows, I do love a wallow.

I snuggle on the sofa in my cozy yellow and red family room, under a toasty throw, surrounded by purring kitties (Want to learn how to wallow? Observe a cat.) and watching old movies while sipping from a generous-sized mug of cinnamon vanilla tea or hot cocoa with chocolate-coated mint marshmallows melting inside. (Thank you, Kimmy!)

Everything I know about wallowing, I learned from my cats.

I flip through the new cookbooks I received for Christmas in search of wallow-worthy recipes.

Unlike holiday food --opulent, over the top and designed to impress -- wallow food is simple, homely, hearty fare meant to be enjoyed alone or shared en famille. That's another thing I love about mid-January: It's the least judgmental time of the year, completely lacking in pretension or pressure.

Sammy finds a private place amidst the pillows for his wallow time.

The other night I tossed a couple of cans of rinsed white cannellini beans with a pint of grape tomatoes, olive oil, chopped fresh oregano, thyme and rosemary, smashed garlic cloves, sea salt and freshly ground pepper, topped them chicken thighs, drizzled with more olive oil, sea salt and freshly ground pepper and baked for about 45 minutes. Voila --- wallow-worthy winter food just like I ate in Paris last winter.

I also baked a dense, moist chocolate orange loaf cake from Nigella Lawson's new cookbook (now there's a lady who makes wallowing look downright sexy). It was a lovely, lumpy, sunken in the middle, frosting-less cake perfect for nibbling.

Tonight I'm going to take the remnants of the show-stopping standing rib roast I served at Christmas out of the freezer and simmer it with onions, potatoes, carrots, celery, garlic, beef broth, red wine and baby pasta to make my grandmother's famous beef soup. If I work up enough energy (difficult to do when properly immersed in a state of wallowing), I will make up a mess of tomato and pork-simmered sauerkraut to serve alongside it.

Just thinking about it lifts my spirits.

Cats In My Christmas Tree

2010-12-24T17:55:00.000-06:00

There was a time, not so many Christmases ago, that the cats in my tree would have been real ones. As kittens, my babies loved to climb up in the branches and take a nap. It was always fun to see my house guests' egg nog go flying when one of the adorable "realistic" cat ornaments leaped out of the branches.

This Christmas, the cats in the tree, are of the ornamental variety. My tree is a reflection of me and the things important to me .... and, well, I am a cat mama .... so there are a few kitty ornaments in there with the stars, St. Nicks and Mr. Bingles.

Like these musical little tabbies that play Jingle Bells when their tummies are squeezed.

These little black cats are really gift tags, but they work well as ornaments don't you think?

My favorites may be the newest feline additions to the tree, these two stylin' black cats.

And, on that note, Henry, Sammy, Nettie, C.J., Koko, Ernie, Roxie and I all wish you a very Merry Christmas .... from the House Where the Black Cat Lives.

A New Orleans Interlude

2010-12-20T20:25:00.000-06:00

Last year I spent Christmas in Paris, one of my favorite cities in the world. This year, I'm spending Christmas at home in Hattiesburg, but slipped away this weekend to my other favorite city, New Orleans, for a little holiday interlude.

I have always loved this city and actually lived there for one magical Christmas when I was a little girl (I shared my memories of that Christmas on my other blog "Mike and Mary's Kitchen).

Neither the passage of time nor the ravages of Katrina have dulled New Orleans' Yuletide luster for me.

This year I enjoyed:

Shopping for sweet scents in the uber feminine Hove perfumer.

Citrus-laden trees in French Quarter courtyards.

Getting a history lesson at the Beauregard-Keyes, Gallier and Hermann-Grima houses, interrupted by a raucous second line passing by outside.

Celebration in the Oaks at City Park.

Lobster beignets and s'mores tart (yum) at La Petite Grocery on Magazine Street ...

... and duck confit and bacon seared scallops at Ralph's on the Park ....

... and duck/sweet potato hash with homemade pepper jelly atop a cornbread waffle, washed down with the perfect Bloody Mary (and did I mention praline bacon) at Elizabeth's in Bywater.

Finding another "House Where the Black Cat Lives," in this case the Mexican restaurant El Gato Negro.

The lovely courtyard outside my hotel window.

Meeting up with Old St. Nick in the French Market ...

... and Ernie's twin in the window of French Quarter vet's office (if possible I think this guy is even fatter than Big E!)

The twinkling white lights in the grand Roosevelt Hotel lobby.

Cocktails in the Victorian Lounge at the Columns Hotel. Yes, that is Brooke Shields' photo on the wall. Her controversial 1979 film "Pretty Baby" was filmed here.

If you knew Peggy Sue…

2010-12-06T18:39:00.000-06:00

A feral cat is living in my guest bathroom.

Her name is Peggy Sue, and she is the matriarch of the Oak Gove kitties, daughter of my Roxie and the baby factory of a seemingly endless production line of kittens.

I finally decided to shut down kitten production, hence the current situation.

I am an old hand at the care, feeding and and TNR (Trap, Neuter, Release) of feral and semi-feral feline colonies.

If you had asked me last week, I would have characterized Peggy Sue, a member of the colony I have cared for two years now, as a shy, but mostly tame, occasionally affectionate, kitty who tolerated the odd stroke or pat on the head. She even recognized her name and mewed in response when I called her "my little girl."

So generally agreeable seemed she that when the time came, I put aside the scary wire contraption I use to trap only the most feral critters in favor of a open can of tuna tucked temptingly inside a common cat carrier with the door left ajar.

I figured after a week or so of reprogramming and TLC in my guest bathroom she, like so many cats before her including her mom, would be ripe not only for "the procedure" but also for relocation and adoption into a new life. I'm a sucker for happy endings.

Clearly, Peggy Sue doesn't believe in happy endings. She is not adjusting as well as I had hoped to her new life in my bathroom.

Considering she is semi-feral, Peggy Sue is not a bad cat at all. She’s quiet, unfailingly uses the litter box provided, eats whatever I give her without complaint and accepts the treats I leave as peace offerings.

But our formerly cordial relationship is in shreds -- as would be my hand, I'm sure, if I was brave enough to stick it uncovered into the cabinet where she has holed herself up. It seems some trust issues have been breeched.

For help, I turned to the Best Friends Animal Society's socialization manual – the one they use to resocialize the cats pulled from cat-hoarder rescues. But Peggy Sue and I can’t seem to get past step 1 .

We have arrived at an impasse.

With her continued baleful stares, flattened ears and hisses, my hopes for an immiment peaceful détente between us are fading.

If she doesn't break by next week, I’m going to have to suit up and drag her off to the spay and neuter clinic, then release her back into the world from whence she came, hoping she will still bond with her colony members and allow me to continue to care for her.

Most of all, I hope she will survive the cold winter, the dogs, the cars, the unfriendly humans, the predators and other hazards that make the lives of feral cats such short ones.

This is the suck-y side of being a cat lover and caregiver. As rewarding as what I do is, I have to accept that while I do my best, there is a fair amount of attrition in any feral colony. Every time someone doesn’t show up for dinner several nights in a row – as Tux has not for weeks now -- my cat mama’s heart breaks just a little.

The fact is while you can love these cats and do your best to make their lives better, you can save some, but you can't always save them all. Peggy Sue’s dilemma is hardly unique. But I want so much more for my “little girl” and her remaining offspring. If not a home, at least a safe environment where they can live out their lives.

And so now you know why I feel blue about Peggy, ‘bout Peggy Sue.

Cute Kitty Photo of the Day: Sammy and Ernie

2010-11-28T21:20:00.000-06:00

Sometimes cold weather makes for strange bedfellows. Until I snapped this photo, I didn't even know that Sammy and Ernie liked each other. Sammy's a loud purrer, so for Ernie it must be a little like bedding down on a mattress with Magic Fingers massage (remember those from old hotel rooms). And for Sammy, well, Ernie's the fat cat, so he's warm. With the weather warming up tomorrow, I'm sure the little friendship will thaw as well.

Venetian Velvet

2010-11-01T12:16:00.000-05:00

Is there a more opulent fabric in the world than velvet? Even the word itself sounds lush.

And there is no velvet like Venetian velvet. It's Velvet with a "V".

... stamped with gold and sewn into little evening bags...

... burned out and hung with silk fringe. This shawl reminds me of the movie 'The Wings of the Dove." It's the perfect accessory to toss around your shoulders to take in a Vivaldi concert.

... hand stitched onto rubber soles recycled from bicycle tires for no-skid slippers like the gondoliers wear.

... and sold by the yard for curtains, tablecloths, pillows, wall-hangings to decorate your own Venetian villa .... or your hotel room.

Yes, I really slept here. (and that really is a Murano glass chandelier). I kept waiting for Casanova to slip through my shuttered window in the moonlight.

Maybe he did, maybe he didn't ... what happens in Venice stays in Venice.

Except for that velvet -- I brought some of that home with me.

Because I could always use a little Venice in my life.

Couldn't you?

Happy Halloween From the House Where The Black Cat Lives

2010-10-31T10:26:00.000-05:00

Here Be Dragons: Restroom Adventures Abroad

2010-10-31T08:31:00.000-05:00

During my recent history as a globe-trotter, I've learned a few universal truths:

1.) Dress conservatively in black and you can go anywhere.

2.) Food costs near tourist attractions are roughly the same amount as your mortgage. And about as tasty to chew on.

3.) Learning (and correctly using) a few words in the native language will almost always get you much better service.

But when it comes to restrooms, well on those fold-out guidebook tourist maps, this area should be marked "Here be dragons," because you just never know ...

Europe of course is the home of the "pee for a fee" public facility. Sometimes the toilet is an attraction in and of itself. Heck, I'd pay 2 euros just to see this fancy loo at the Louvre in Paris.

However, I did battle with my one-eyed monster for free last week in a restroom in a cute, modern, clean little sandwich shop in Padua. Yes, I am talking about the dreaded Turkish toilet. Toilet is a bit of a misnomer because, ummmmm, there wasn't one. (Sorry, I did not take a picture. I was just too freaked out.)

I had heard of these before. I had even glimpsed one in a century-old Parisian bistro, where it just seemed a quaint anachronism that I could laugh off while I held my business until I got back to my hotel room.

I'm three years older. I had been holding it all the train ride from Venice. My hotel was no where close. I wasn't laughing anymore.

A 50-year-old bladder will not be denied.

Just down the street from this restroom was the basilica of St. Anthony, patron saint of lost objects that must be found. I sent up a hasty prayer that he might find the obviously missing toilet for me. Either St. Anthony was answering legitimate requests that day, or being Italian, he was just laughing at the clueless American tourist.

My bladder was screeching at me to do something before it took action for me.

I won't fill you in on the gory details. It wasn't pretty. Let's just say for women, the process is not intuitive. And, surprisingly, while menus here are written in three languages there are no instructions (even those with universal symbols) to help you out. You are totally on your own. Sure wish I'd read this first.

Now I know why so many Italian women wear skirts; but I've got to wonder how they keep those expensive leather shoes so clean.

(And, yes, I did want to go back to my hotel room and curl up in the fetal position!)

The Islands: Murano, Burano and Torcello

2010-10-29T08:22:00.000-05:00

Murano, Burano and Torcello may sound like an accounting firm in Little Italy, but they are actually islands in the lagoon surrounding Venice and tourist destinations all in themselves.

Murano, the most famous, is the site where the Venetian glass has been blown for centuries. The glassblowers' techniques are jealously guarded -- hence no photos.

However, you can view their handiwork -- ranging from jewelry and knick knacks up to enormous chandeliers in dozens of shops and studios all over the island.

I couldn't resist picking up a few knick-knacks for souvenirs. The blown-glass Christmas ornaments are lovely -- no two are alike. Blown-glass goblets are also wonderful -- if you want to pay to ship them back.

As for the rest of it .... ehhhhh, to tell the truth, it's really not my cup of tea. Well, except for the chandeliers -- I want one of those for every room of my house! I can appreciate the artistry that goes into making say a five-foot glass clown holding balloons or a life-size soaring glass eagle, but I can't get past the fact that these look like something the set designer for The Sopranos might snap up as opposed to something I want for my own art collection.

Venice's dirty little secret is that a lot of the "Murano glass" sold in the tourist's shops is imported from China. The glass blowers and shop keepers on Murano are very sensitive about it; many of them post signs saying they do not import. Rule of thumb: Murano glass will have a sticker saying it was made in Murano. Also Chinese glass is a lot cheaper.

Burano, a little farther out, is famous for its colorful fisherman's cottages and handmade lace. Like Murano, much of the lace that is sold here is imported from elsewhere. Still it's a pretty little place -- with lots of cats so you know it's right up my alley. The best restaurant on the island is named for a black cat -- just like my blog.

Torcello is the most distant, and oldest, of the settlements. Only about 15 families (and several cats) live here now mostly to run the restaurants and inns that cater to tourists, like this lovely little place.

I think the pomegranate tree got me; I love pomegranates and I've never seen them growing before. I was instantly seized with a desire to move here and run a rustic inn called La Casa alla Gatto Negro where I could eat pomegranates and risotto every day and have a lot of cats. When I laid this proposal out to the Recurring Gentleman Caller, his only comment was: "We have a lot of cats." Spoilsport.

Torcello's Basilica of Santa Maria Assunta (the oldest in Venice), museum and bell tower, featuring gorgeous Byzantine tile work, is a testament to the power Torcello once held. This is where Venice's history began until the population was decimated by malaria. It's pretty much a swamp.

Which brings me to the subject of bug spray: If you are coming to Venice, bring some. Even in the fairly cool temps of October, they are a problem, especially for skeeter-bait like me. I'm thinking of pencilling over my bites with eyeliner and calling them beauty marks as the Venetian beauties of yore did.

Dottore, Dottore ... A Day Trip to Padova

2010-10-27T21:00:00.000-05:00

As lovely as Venice is, after a few days, you do feel the need to get away from all the tourists. Fortunately, the centrally located train station offers easy escape to nearby Verona, Vicenza or Padua (Padova to the Italians).

I live in a university town, and I have a fondness for the energy that comes from all that youth combined with knowledge. I chose to steal away to Padova, home to Italy's second oldest university (founded in 1222). Its faculty and alumni include Galileo, Copernicus, Casanova and Elena Lucrezia Cornaro Piscopia, the first woman ever awarded a Doctor of Philosophy degree.

The train ride is less than 30 minutes, yet Padova is a world away from Venice.

If you must still play tourist, you will want to visit the largest piazza in all of Italy as well as call on the remains of St. Ant'ny (that would be Anthony to those of you unfamiliar with New Orleans' yat parlance) which are interred in the truly gorgeous basilica that bears his name -- just don't follow the directions in Rick Steves' guide book. Those will take you to the basilica of Santa Giustina across the street.

If you're not Catholic, or if you are and missed catechism that day, this site explains what a basilica is, how it came to be called that and how it differs from a cathedral, church or shrine.

There are also the obligatory open-air markets (de rigeur for any Italian city) and some good shopping. If possible, the Italians are even more style conscious and chic than the French are!

Me, I could just spend all my time wandering under the city's famous colonnades, pausing now again to enjoy a spritz (club soda, white wine and Campari) or a cone of gelato (the best is at Grom's) while window-shopping, people watching and picking up fashion pointers.

But perhaps the most fun is getting in on the graduation hi-jinks in the square outside of the university. Students graduate on the day they defend their thesis so there is always a side-show, often several of them. The celebration is a two-parter. First, the grad dons a laurel wreath a la Julius Caesar for photos with proud family members who come dressed in Sunday best and bearing flowers for the occasion.

Then, as Rick Steves writes in his blog, "Grandma goes home," and the rite of public humiliation commences.

Dressed in an absurd costume -- Lady Gaga for example-- chosen by their so-called friends, the graduate is paraded in front of a large custom-made poster featuring a bawdy caricature of themselves and a poem about their misadventures, again written by their friends, which the honoree must read aloud to the assemblage taking a swig of alcohol every time they flub a word.

Then their friends douse them with water, shaving cream, honey or other assorted fluids/condiments, all the while serenading them with the standard graduation ditty: "Dottore, Dottore Dottore del busco de cul Vaffancul, Vaffancul!"

It sounds like a catchy little children's song -- but the lyrics are X-rated (quasi translation here. )Basically they are telling the newly minted doctor to do something anatomically impossible. It's all in good-natured fun; everyone has an excellent time.

And to think, all I had to do when I graduated from the University of Southern Mississippi was walk across a stage in a cap and gown. Somehow, now I feel cheated.

The House Where The Black Cat Lives Goes to Venice

2010-10-25T20:09:00.001-05:00

Usually, I like to plan vacations down to the nth detail. Then I went to Venice. Here, you let your senses guide your feet. Get lost. Every bridge crosses over to a new experience. Every alley way leads to an unexpected treasure. Some of my favorite discoveries in Venice:

Tiny hole-in-the-wall taverns serving amazing Veneto wines by the glass and an assortment of hearty appetizers known as cichetti.

Open air markets (some of them on boats) selling the freshest produce and roasted chestnuts.

Pasticcherias with tempting window displays of panettone, jam-filled croissants, panino with fresh cheese and spicy salami.

Beautiful piazzas where neighbors visit on park benches while their children kick soccer balls or zip around on scooters.

Gelaterias serving scoops of the richest dark chocolate, buttery caramel and panna cotta ice cream.

A store that sells nothing but gorgeous hand-stamped paper as they have for hundreds of years -- in the very same location.

Exquisite centuries old architecture -- everywhere.

Tiny specialty shops where the proprieters magically find your heart's desire -- whether it's a pair of hand-stitched velvet gondolier's slippers, a soft wool stole, cashmere socks, gold-stamped silk velvet pouches or buttery-soft Easter-egg candy colored leather gloves, that fit like, well, a glove.

An impromptu street parade of exuberent school children, shopping housewives, bemused tourists and a chanting Hare Krishna or two.

Neighborhood church bells ringing in the hour, but not quite in synch, all over the city. Every hour is a celebration.

Strains of Vivaldi seeping out of evening concert halls into the chilly fall air.

Venetian cats. While my Italian may not be quite up to snuff, it's reassuring to know I still speak fluent kitty.

Pasta shops with every shape, color and size imaginable.

Meow-- I mean ciao-- for now.

Countdown to Venice: We're in the Home Stretch

2010-10-08T21:01:00.000-05:00

As mentioned in a recent blog post, I am traveling to Venice this month to celebrate my 50th birthday. I'm very excited as I've never been to Italy before although I did get a taste of Venetian architecture and cuisine when I travelled to the Dalmatian region of Croatia two years ago.

Half the fun of travelling anywhere, for me, is the anticipation and the planning.

One of my favorite ways to get into the mood is to watch movies set in my travel destination. There are some beautiful ones set in Venice (but then how could they not be beautiful). Some of the films I've enjoyed watching for this trip are:

Don't Look Now (1973)

This 1973 thriller starring Donald Sutherland and Julie Christie offers some incredible views of Venice. Julie Christie's wardrobe is also worth seeing; great style is forever. Although I had never seen this movie before, I experienced an eerie sense of deja vu the entire time I was watching it. Then I remembered it was based on a short story by Rebecca du Maurier that I read in high school. It's fairly intense; let's just say if I see a small person in a red cloak, it's a safe bet I won't be following them down a dark alley. If you're prudish or have young 'uns hanging around, you may want to pass on this one. Besides the psychological intensity, there's a fairly heavy-duty love scene that was quite controversial when the movie was filmed.

The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999)

More psychological mind-twisting and gorgeous, gorgeous settings in this period piece set in 1950s Italy with Jude Law, Matt Damon and Gwyneth Paltrow involved in a complicated triangle and stolen identity.

Summertime (1955)

Katherine Hepburn shows off her timeless style in this controversial-for-the-era movie about a mid-life woman who travels to Venice and enjoys a romantic -- and (mostly) remorse-free-- vacation fling with a handsome (and married) Italian she meets there. Even if I hadn't already bought my plane ticket to Venice, this movie would have had me hot tailing it to Expedia.

The Wings of the Dove (1997)

This Edwardian period piece, based on a 1902 novel by Henry James, has to be one of the most gorgeous films ever made. I saw it in the theater when it came out, and I think it's one of those films I must own and rewatch every now and again. The settings, the cinematography, the acting, another love triangle --- and those achingly lovely Fortuny gowns worn by Helena Bonham Carter and Alison Elliot

Bread and Tulips (2001)

This quirky Italian gem is about a bored, long-suffering Italian housewife who gets separated from her tour group -- and her family -- while on vacation. On a whim, she travels to Venice by herself and winds up finding a whole new -- and much more satisfying -- life. I liked this film because it seemed to focus on the "real" Venice where people live and work as opposed to endless shots of the Grand Canal and San Marco Square.

Has anyone else seen any good movies set in Venice?

Happy October!

2010-10-02T08:44:00.000-05:00

October has always been my favorite month. I suffer through the hot Mississippi summers just knowing that it's there waiting for me on the other side. I just wish my favorite month was longer than 31 days! I try to make each and every one count.

This weekend:

I purchased the obligatory pumpkins and mums to decorate the outside of the house (the black and orange kitties decorate the inside).

I attended a wonderful Oktoberfest party at my friend Lou's house (yum, German beer, bratwurst and obatzda).

At some point, I'll get started on those online Italian lessons I've been meaning to take in preparation for my upcoming trip to Venice this month.

Something tells me these 31 days are just going to fly by! Boo (hoo)!

Mashing and Cleaving in the 'burg

2010-09-17T19:38:00.000-05:00

A few weeks ago (OK maybe longer), I told you about my brand-new potato ricer and Francis Lam's recipe for perfect mashed potatoes.

In anticipation of christening my new tool, I bought a 5-lb bag of russets which have the highest starch content of any potato and apparently make the fluffiest potatoes -- although I wouldn't be adverse to using Yukon Gold just for the yummy buttery flavor.

The problem is mashed potatoes cry out for a juicy roasted bird or a big slab of roast beast to go alongside them. And with the heat index up in the 100s here in the 'burg lately, I just haven't been into the whole idea of turning on the oven.

But by last weekend, the spuds were wanting to sprout. I decided to go for it. I talked the Recurring Gentleman Caller (RGC) into firing up the grill. Because he is a man and, therefore, a meat and potato whore, he even peeled the potatoes.

Step one: I put the peeled spuds, cut into quarters, in cold salted water, and let them come to a boil. OK, I already knew about the cold water part from my mama. They cook more evenly or something like that.

I should point out that even though cooking is basically one big science experiment, I am not a math and science geek, and, because of this Alton Brown will never be my favorite Food Network star.

I don't want to know all the nerdy factoids. I just want magic -- and for my food to taste so good that people will weep with pleasure, sing hosannas to my greatness and possibly buy me jewelry and small islands. Is there anything wrong with that?

Lost in this self-absorbed little reverie, I forget to turn the potatoes down to a simmer and almost let them overcook, a big no-no according to Mr. Lam. After about 15 minutes, you're supposed to poke them with a fork to make sure they are tender. They are.

Now ordinarily at this juncture, I dump the potatoes into a bowl with some cream and butter, mash the heck out of 'em and call it a day.

But Francis recommends drying out the potatoes on a baking sheet in a 300 degree oven for a few minutes. Damn, I have to turn on the oven after all.

Meanwhile I put some milk and cream in a pot on slow simmer and dump some salt and pepper into the mixture. Living in South Mississippi, I have a fairly comfortable relationship with my spice rack, so I am generous with both shakers.

I am tempted to chop up some fresh herbs a la Ina Garten (my favorite Food Network chef), but decide no fancy stuff this go round. I don't want to skew the results of this little experiment.

Oh joy, it's time for the potato ricer! The potatoes really do come out looking like rice. It's just like pressing garlic, except no smooshed pods to pick out and no smell clinging to my fingers. This is fun!

I venture a taste. So far kind of dry and bland. Uh oh, Francis, you got some 'splaining to do. Per his direction, I cut up a few chunks of butter and start alternating them with the riced potatoes. I slowly add the hot (but not boiling) cream mixture to the potatoes and gently fold it in.

Ahhhhhhh, here's the magic! These potatoes are light, airy, floaty, fluffy, butter-drenched perfection. Now if you're one of those people who like lumps in your potatoes, well, lump them then, this may not be the method for you. I, however, consider myself a convert.

My man Francis, how could I ever have doubted you?

I steal a glance at the RGC sweating over the grill outside and face a moral dilemma: Do I eat all the potatoes now and tell him the cats got into them, or do I force myself to set some aside so he can share?

I decide to take the high road, but only because he bought me an early birthday present -- a Wusthof meat cleaver which he let me have only after I promised I would never use it on him or anything belonging to him.

It's a deal -- as long as he never comes between me and my mashed potatoes.

A perfect mashed potato recipe and an uber new kitchen weapon. I am one empowered kitchen goddess.

Now, what can I cleave?

Things I Love About My Cats

2010-09-04T12:33:00.000-05:00

People often ask which of the cats is my favorite. My answer is always the same. Each and every one makes my heart happy in an entirely different way. I can't imagine my life without a single one of them.

Specifically, I love:

Henry's gorgeous mandarin butterscotch fur with eyes to match ... Big kissable pink nose ... Magnificent whiskers ... Tummy, soft and downy as a baby chick's (just don't think about petting it ) ... "Superior being" attitude ... ... Henry VIII and Buddha imitations ... "Frenchness" ... Handsomeness incarnate. He should be in ads.

Sammy's sleek, black velvet coat ... Long tail flourished grandly like a punctuation mark ... Southern accent and three-syllable meow .. Supersized purr .. Tail up, high-stepping show cat trot ... Preferred sleep position -- rear paws pulled over his head with sly sideways peek. Is there anything in the world more adorable than a little black cat curled up asleep?

Koko's wide eyed owl-cat stare ... Really Big Lips forming a big white "O" -- no one pulls off righteous indignation better ... Single white whisker in bas relief against a midnight backdrop ... Stubby little tail thumping on wood floors ... "I see a bird, Mama" meow ... Cheek caressing my cupped palm ..... Warmth against my side (or behind my knees, or on my feet) at night ... Soft snoring ... Obsessive-compulsive bathing and litter-box scratching.

Nettie's mohawk standing on end along her spine .. Orange patches on her rear foot and under her front leg -- just one chromosome away from an orange tabby ... Heart-shaped face, a sweet complement to her tart tortie attitude ... Head resting against my shoulder, gazing up at me adoringly ... Favorite sleep position: Weight curled on my hip night after night ( I'll probably need hip replacement one day) ... Proud Egyptian sphinx profile.

CJ 's "Mardi Gras mask" facial markings ... Thick, multi-colored coat ... Teeny suggestion of a tail ... Splotchy nose and big, wide set eyes like a rag doll ... Loping bunny-run, slipping through the house like "The Shadow" ... Shy nature ... Head bowed, by my side, as she silently waits for me to pet her ... Luxuriant back rubs against the jute rug.

Ernie's sweet baby-face ... Big white belly ... Crooked tail ... Old-man's pigeon-toed gait ... Dainty meow belying his behemoth girth ... Massive multi-toed paws gently patting my face ... Forever-kittenish playful nature ... Favorite sleep position: on his back, paws up in the air ... Denial of his considerable size; he constantly tries to fit in teensy boxes and perch on narrow ledges ... Complete and total adoration of Roxie.

Roxie's close-set "I Dream of Jeannie" almond eyes ... Prissy little walk, claws clicking like high heels as she sashays through the house ... Circular tabby markings ... Warm, maternal nature ... Unabashed adoration of Ernie which he fervently returns ... Pause for permission before jumping up on furniture ... Body stretched out like a super-hero in flight when she is picked up (all she needs is a cape).

A Gourmet Weekend

2010-08-24T18:50:00.000-05:00

There are three things I can never pass up in life: a fancy kitchen goods store, the kitty window at the pet store and a lemonade stand.

On Saturday, I just happened to find myself loitering outside of Hattiesburg's premier kitchen store -- the place that sells Le Creuset cookware, Wusthof knives and about 99 different kinds of sea salt.

Right outside the door, two adorably dimpled future Junior Leaguers were selling lemonade.

"It's really good; it's homemade," said the take charge little blonde who was obviously over marketing. I had to agree with her; it really was tasty -- not too sugary, sublimely tart and with just enough pulp to let you know real lemons were harmed in the making of it.

As I looked around for a trash can in which to pitch my empty cup, she motioned me inside the store.

As if I needed an excuse to cross that threshold.

Thirty minutes later I left there sans lemonade cup and with two gadgets that clearly my life would be worthless without: a compartmentalized unit for my sea salt and a potato ricer.

Now you may ask who needs fancy-schmancy sea salt (and a holder to separate the various kinds), when the Morton's canister already has this neat-o little spout that pours forth lots of good, cheap iodized crystals that pack plenty of flavor if not pedigree.

Apparently I do. I personally own about five different types of sea salt (and just typing this I realize how pretentious that sounds). Yes, Recurring Gentleman Caller, they all really do have their own unique cachet. And I am just enough of a sea salt snob to be slightly put out when the shop owner told me that they were out of their new imported Portuguese sea salt, which until five minutes earlier, I hadn't even known existed.

Then my eye was caught by what looked like a giant garlic press (and don't even get me started on the various forms of garlic).

I started to hyperventilate.

Some time ago you may recall that I went through a cooking epiphany of sorts when a chance column in Gourmet's online magazine finally freed me from the heartbreak of sticky, gummy boiled rice by teaching me how to (drum roll, please) bake it.

Ever since then, I have been a disciple of the column's writer, one Francis Lam, who has moved over to Salon.com since Gourmet's untimely exit from this world.

The man is hilarious. And he knows a thing or two about cooking. So when he wrote another column that said the path to mashed potato nirvana was paved with plain russet potatoes pressed through a potato ricer, well, I knew a potato ricer was in my future.

One might argue that there is really no thing as a bad mashed potato, but they can get a little rubbery if you just mash them up. I'll let you know when I christen my new kitchen aid. I have high expectations.

As I exited the shop, the pint-sized lemonade gourmet was working her pitch on a sweet grandmotherly sort. I thought about warning her, but she looked like she might need some sea salt.

For the Recurring Gentleman Caller's sake, I hope that little girl never sets up shop outside of Pet Smart.

Back From My Blogging Break -- Gobble, Gobble.

2010-08-12T20:15:00.001-05:00

Photo: My new BFFs, Tom and Tommy

So did anyone even realize I'd been gone? Honestly, I didn't intend to take a "blogcation." I just looked at the calendar one day and realized ... it had been a while.

You didn't miss much. But for those of you breathless to hear the details, here goes:

I visited my sister's in-laws in Fayetteville, Arkansas.

I learned that, unlike a lot of fowl, turkeys actually have personalities which is going to make it mighty hard for me to celebrate Thanksgiving properly from here on out. Gobble, gobble. (By the way, Tom and Tommy weren't the only ones gobbling. I ate A LOT during this mini vacation)

I watched my niece, brush, saddle and ride a horse for the first time -- and love it.

I took my car in for its 30,000 mile service.

I made a yummy chocolate pound cake. Southern Living never lets me down on the classics. Gobble, gobble.

I finalized the details for my birthday blowout in Venice (Italy, not California).

Yep, it's gonna happen for real.

We all have to turn the big 5-0 sometime.

Might as well do it in Italy.

Adriatic seafood. Pasta. Risotto. Proseco. (Gobble, gobble.)

They don't eat turkey there, do they?

I Know I Was Never Any Good at Math, But ....

2010-07-26T12:54:00.000-05:00

OK. Wrap your brains around this one.

As of Saturday, five of my seven cats are the same age as I am.

That's right. Henry, Sammy, Nettie, CJ and Koko who were born on July 24, 2002, turned eight (my how time flies) which makes them the equivalent of 49 human years old. *

Yeah, I know that most people subscribe to that one-year-in-dog-years-equals-seven-human-years stuff. But it doesn't work that way for cats. I'm not even sure it's really true for dogs. It's a complicated and intricate system that's equates to something like 15 human years to a cat's first year, seven or eight years the second year and four years for every year after that.

The part that truly amazes me is how gracefully my cats wear their advancing years. Now that we are the "same" age, I have to admit, they are aging way better than I am.

For example, they can still easily jump six feet and balance themselves on the narrow edge of a doortop as if it were nothing. I can't do that -- I couldn't even when I was eight!

And they are all still so good-looking. For the most part they have kept their lithe figures (well, not all of them. Yes, Ernie, I am talking about you, my love.) with thick, rich glossy coats without a speck of grey. Wish I could say the same.

How do they do it? Maybe it's the 18+ hours of sleep they get every day. On a good night I get about six and a half hours. If I'm lucky, that is.

Maybe, it's because they live totally sans souci. Why should they have worries? They have me to look after their every need and tell them how special, wonderful and beautiful they are 24/7. Hmmmmm. Could be something to that.

Any takers?

* Actually depending on which calculator you use the range for a eight-year-old cat is anywhere from 48-50 years. But then it's pretty common for all of us who are nearing the big 5-0 to fudge a year or so here and there isn't it?

A Trip to the Farmer's Market

2010-07-18T15:00:00.001-05:00

The heat and humidity aside, there are some aspects of a Southern summer that I love. Fresh home-grown produce is among them.

While I usually spend my weekends sleeping in, sun-ripened tomatoes and sweet milky corn on the cob are well worth rolling out of bed early for on a hot Saturday in July.

The colors, smells, tastes, even the sounds, of a farmer's market entice me no matter where I am. I seek them out when I travel as well as on my own turf.

Hattiesburg's old-fashioned indoors farmer's market is a step back into time and Southern manners. Everyone greets me and asks how I am before getting down to the business of ... business. Tastes are offered. There's lots of commiserating about the weather.

Yesterday's haul: perfect unblemished eggplants, weirdly shaped yellow, green and red tomatoes, amber honey from Mississippi hives, a bottle of pepper vinegar, six ears of sweet golden corn, still in their husks (the seller politely offers to shuck them for free), and a dense, lemony homemade pound cake. "Child, that thunderstorm yesterday rolled in right when I put these in the oven, so you let me know how it turned out," the lady tells me. Delicious!

Back home, the eggplant was salted, cubed and cooked down to an ugly (yet flavorful) mush with olive oil, crushed garlic cloves and some thyme and oregano from my herb garden. Some of the tomatoes were sliced and slow-roasted with olive oil, salt and thyme and tossed -- along with the eggplant mush, slivers of fresh basil and more olive oil -- into hot pasta.

Tonight the rest of tomatoes will be sliced and topped with more fresh basil, blue cheese nuggets, prosciutto and vinaigrette for dinner. The menu will be rounded out by corn sauteed in a nugget of sweet butter and just a smidgen of bacon grease.

I'm already looking forward to next Saturday! Imagine the possibilities.

(The tomato salad was way prettier -- and yummier -- than it looks in this photo).

So What Do You Get Cats For Their Birthdays?

2010-07-10T06:33:00.000-05:00

Yesterday, I received seven birthday cards in the mail. Which threw me a little because my birthday isn't for three months.

On the other hand, my sister's birthday was yesterday. I wondered if some of our family members and/or mutual friends had gotten us confused again . It happens. Then I saw the cards were all from PetSmart. And they were addressed to Henry, Sammy, Nettie, CJ, Koko, Ernie and Roxie.

Is it that time again already?

What do you get cats for their birthdays?

The obvious presents -- kitty condos, catnip toys, scratching posts -- have all been done before. Over and over.

The not-so-obvious gifts: electronic, self-scooping litter boxes, grooming sets, water fountains, well, those have been done, too.

There's always the practical route. But I wouldn't want flea medicine or laxatives (even beef or tuna-flavored) for my birthday. Why would they?

The most unpopular birthday gift to date? According to Henry, Sammy, Koko, Nettie and CJ, that would be July 24, 2005, when Ernie came to be their birthday present/little brother. Henry is still pissed at me about it.

None of which solves my current dilemma. But I still have a few weeks to mull it over. Since PetSmart included some birthday coupons with the cards, whatever I get probably will come from there.

Any ideas?

Andrew Jackson Slept Here (And So Did I*)

2010-07-05T21:39:00.000-05:00

"I'm sorry, but breakfast will be late this morning," the hostess at The Cottage Plantation informed us as we enjoyed the misty morning view from the main building's back veranda. "It's going to take a little while to get this skinned and into the pot."

"This" turned out to be a raccoon that got busted in the night while trying to steal the plantation cats' food, and now sat regarding us calmly, if inquisitively, from the confines of an animal trap.

Much to all the guests' (and the prisoner's) relief, 'coon really wasn't on the menu and we were all soon sitting down to a full Southern breakfast of eggs, bacon, grits, biscuits with homemade jam and fresh blueberries in the formal dining room, while the captive 'coon (who was actually damned good company) was transported to the surrounding woods and set free.

So began the 4th of July -- with life, liberty and pursuit of happiness -- just like our forefathers promised us.

The Cottage Plantation in St. Francisville, La., is not quite as old as our Nation, but comes close. The original four-room cottage was built in the last decade of the 18th century. And while George Washington never slept here, another future President, Andrew Jackson, did stay a while on his way back to Natchez from the Battle of 1812.

While the term "plantation" calls to mind a certain grandeur, The Cottage is really more of a really nice, if genteelly shabby, farmhouse. Unlike a neighboring plantation, Rosedown, which underwent a multi-million renovation some years ago, the historic sections of The Cottage wear a slightly worn mantle of benign neglect.

This was a little like staying in your grandmother's house, if your grandmother was a Southern aristocrat who lost her money long ago.

It was certainly a cut above my accommodations during my last trip to St. Francisville as a Girl Scout 40 years ago. Then, I had to cook my own dinner over a campfire and sleep in a screened tent with a bunch of other pre-pubescent girls. Here, I was served in-room coffee in demitasse cups with fresh-cut flowers on a silver tray.

When in St. Francisville, you tour a lot of plantation homes. In addition to The Cottage, I also caught tours at the much-fancier Rosedown, where I was charmed by a nest of resident baby barn swallows, and The Myrtles, America's most haunted house.

Other than that it was lots of good Louisiana cooking, a ferry ride across the False River to Cajun country and the scenic route home through fields and fields of sugar cane, eating boiled peanuts while smelling 4th of July barbecue roasting over dozens of roadside pits.

All in all, it was the perfect 4th.

*But not at the same time.

Freak Out

2010-06-18T17:06:00.000-05:00

It's 7:30 Wednesday night. Which can mean only one thing: It's time for Koko to get his freak on.

One minute he's curled up on the sofa, purring away. The next he's on the counter top his big white-rimmed green eyes agog. His head jerks back and forth. His abbreviated little tail twitches spasmodically. He's turned into a little Anamatronic kitty.

And then he's off.

A blur of black streaks like a shot across the room, bounces off the wall with all four feet, twists in mid-air and takes off down the hallway. The entire house shakes under the thunder of four paws galloping. He races through the house, one, two, three, four times skidding through turns, claws scrabbling frantically for traction.

Streak. Bounce. Boing. Twist. Zoom. Bow. Bam.

The other six cats look up with bemused expressions, then drift back to sleep. They've seen it before.

Koko makes his victory lap, then leaps into my lap. And a sort of exorcism takes place.

The wild green eyes blink, grow peaceful , close. His tense frame stretches, sags, relaxes. Four little paws, still warm from tearing up the floorboards, reach out to touch me. He purrs. He's asleep. It's as if the last few minutes never happened.

Except they do, every week, like a live-theater mini-episode of "The Incredible Hulk" or "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde."

Just what the hell is it? Does anybody else's cat do this?

I guess sometimes a kitty just needs to get his ya-yas out.

The Shedding Season

2010-06-11T21:09:00.001-05:00

Recently, I've started waking up looking like the bearded lady in a circus sideshow. At first I thought it was another damn menopausal symptom. As if the weight gain, night sweats and waning hormone-induced hissy fits weren't enough to make reaching the mid-century mark suck. Then I realized I don't have orange hair. Oh, right, it's the feline shedding season.

Time to break out the FURminator. If you are a cat owner and you don't have one, what are you waiting for? Get you to a Pet Smart. This is the only thing that is going to keep you sane this summer. Unless you just happen to relax by vacuuming 20 times a day. And rubbing a lint brush over your entire body 50 times a day.

FURminators are pet brushes, but not just any regular brushes. The teeth are tiny razors which thin out the cat's undergrowth, the source of shedding and major cause for hairballs. At first, I was skeptical, and then when I started using it I was horrified. That's a lot of hair to be coming off one little cat! Was I going to wind up with a litter of wrinkled, hairless little freakazoid kitties like Rachel's Mrs. Whiskerson on "Friends?"

Fortunately, the answer was "no," although I did wind up with a big enough pile to knit a cat fur sweater or even build another cat or two if I was so inclined. (I'm not; seven's enough. But, then, I think I once said six was enough, too.)

As with any process involving cats, the brushing does not go as smoothly as it does on the TV infomercial (see also my posts about flea treatments and the Pedi-Paws Nail Trimmer). Unlike the nail-trimmer, however, the FURminator occasionally makes it out of the junk drawer BECAUSE IT WORKS.

Granted three of my seven would rather walk across a hot stove top (and have done just that) to escape the Furminator. The other four would gladly let me brush them bald-headed.

I guess none of them have ever watched "Friends."

Calling All Cats

2010-06-03T19:21:00.000-05:00

Do you wonder why some cats respond to their names and others don't? Well, you probably have better things to wonder about, but I don't.

Some people (mostly "dog" people") would have you believe that cats are incapable of learning their names. Not true. Even at the crowded House Where The Black Cat Lives, each cat knows his or her own name. Well there was that brief period long ago when Ernie thought he was Koko, an identity crisis that has since cleared itself up.

Not only do they know their names, but they can sort out the plethora of silly and downright embarrassing nicknames I have bestowed upon each of them over the years. To wit:

Henry -- Henri, Monsieur Henri (or sometimes just Monsieur), Hen-Hen, Handsome Boy, Dreamsicle Kitty, Bubba

Sammy - Sammy Bear, Sam I Am, Samster, Sammy Lee Magee

Nettie - Nettie Louise, Net-Net, Weezie, Weezabit

CJ - Celie Jo, Ceej, CJ Sweet Girl, Princess Fluffybutt

Koko - Ko, Kokomo Magee, Kokobean, Beanie-Weanie, Big Eyed Boy

Ernie - Ernie H, Ernesto, Big E

Roxanne - Roxie, Rox, Roxanneroxannadana, Roxita, Missy Anne.

And they all go by Pretty Kitty. No false modesty within my crew.

So, I can see where the occasional state of name confusion might ensue. But I'm convinced it's really a control issue. And, yes, they are the ones in control.

Henry likes to play this little game where he half-turns his head in my direction when I call him, a gesture that clearly says, "I want you to know that I recognize that I am being paged. I also want you to know that I am not coming."

He is also quite capable of pretending he doesn't care that I've been gone after a long vacation. Eventually he will saunter my way and, with total indifference, offer up his ears to be scratched as if to say "Well, since you're here..." I don't call him Monsieur Henri for nothing; he is soooo French.

Sammy, on the other hand. is too much of an attention whore to ever carry off that whole insouciant act. I look at him, say his name and he gets all happy. Every time.

I like to think I can even summon my cats telepathically. They always seem to know exactly what I am thinking (not that they care what I think).

The fact is cats will come when called if they believe there is something in it for them. Pure and simple. Just like humans.

Which gets me thinking. I know what I call them, but what do they call me? One would think "Mama" but that's really a name I call myself, isn't it?

Well, whatever it is, I bet they think they've got me well trained.

And they are right.

Stormy Weather

2010-05-16T19:46:00.000-05:00

Well, it was one of those weekends.

Stormy weather. And my man and I weren't together.

So on that note -- and because I hate to drink alone -- let's all raise a glass to the late, lovely Lena Horne.

The weather let up enough for me to get this shot of my lilies -- the prettiest thing in my yard right now.

But mostly I stayed in the kitchen.

On the menu: one of my favorite pasta dishes -- lemon fusilli with arugula. Ina Garten, do you ever come up with a bad recipe?

I'm growing my own arugula this year, and for the first time I get what all the fuss is about. The freshly harvested leaves have a peppery bite to them -- much tastier that the packaged arugula in the grocery store. Because my arugula leaves are getting a little sparse, I had to supplement with some fresh basil which also works with the lemon and tomatoes in this dish.

The first summer cherries are starting to hit the produce stands (how I wish we could grow them here -- they are my favorite) and I celebrated with a cherry clafouti. I've eaten this yummy dessert -- a cross between a pudding and cake -- numerous times in France, but have never attempted to make it at home until today. Easy, easy, easy.

Cherry Clafouti

1 cup sour cream

1 cup ricotta cheese

1/2 cup flour

3-4 Tablespoons granulated sugar

2 eggs

2 cups pitted fresh cherries

powdered sugar

Mix the first five ingredients together. Pour into a Pyrex pie pan. Drop the cherries over the top. Bake at 350 for about 45 minutes until puffed and just starting to turn brown. Dust the top with powdered sugar. Serve while still slightly warm.

And then, after all that food, it was time for a rainy day nap.

A Cat Mama's Mother's Day

2010-05-09T21:11:00.000-05:00

For most mothers, today was a day of cards, flowers, phone calls and dinner out on the kids. For me it was the usual: an overturned water bowl, eight litter boxes in need of scooping, seven cans of cat food to be opened, two broken up cat fights, and a hairball or two -- my Mother's Day presents.

All that said, being a cat mama isn't so very different from being a regular mama (except that I'll never have to put braces on them or send them to college).

My babies need regular meals and a warm bed (mine) to sleep in.

When they don't feel good or when they wake up in the night with a bad dream, they need a cuddle.

They ...

Ignore my requests for affection -- except when I'm trying to read or talk on the phone.

Leave their toys scattered all over the house for me to pick up. Their favorite toy, by the way, is the one their brother/sister is playing with.

Chase each other through the house despite my constant pleas and threats to stop.

Get into fights with their siblings and are punished with time outs.

Hate going to the doctor and have to be coaxed with toys and treats.

Refuse to take their medicine no matter how sick they are.

Are finicky eaters and much prefer junk food to anything with nutritional value.

Are jealous of one another and constantly compete for my attention.

Are devoted to one another and often conspire together against me.

Know when I am mad at them and do cute things to make me forget.

Know when I am sad for any reason and do cute things to make me forget.

Are always there for me.

Are my pride, my joy, my seven reasons for living.

And isnt' that what being a mama is all about?

Happy Mother's Day!

My Life in the Blogosphere

2010-04-27T19:29:00.001-05:00

Somehow or other the first anniversary of my life as a blogger quietly slipped by me. My how time flies when you're having fun.

People are attracted to blogging for many reasons, it seems.

Some are looking for fame, fortune and a book deal.

Some just have something to say.

My goal was simply professional survival.

I have always lived on the outer fringes of technology. I only replaced the lap-top I lost in Katrina a little over a year ago -- and I hadn't missed it. But I work in public relations, and with all the industry buzz about social media and at least eight years to go until retirement, I knew I couldn't just ignore it and hope it would go away.

So I jumped feet first into the world of Facebook and Blogger (sorry never much developed an appetite for twittering).

And I was hooked.

At first I had no earthly idea what I would blog about. My Recurring Gentleman Caller suggested I start with something familiar-- like cats. And so it began.

Over the past 12 months, the one blog has grown into three: "The House Where The Black Cat Lives," "Mike and Mary's Kitchen: Recipes and Memories from Point Cadet" (a tribute to my roots), and my Christmas vacation blog "Joyeux Noel, Ya'll: A Southern Girl's Christmas Adventure in Paris." I have become an ardent fan of many, many other blogs.

I have learned several lessons from my year as a blogger:

1.) Blogging is not difficult. I feel silly for letting myself be so intimidated.

2.) I am never going to get rich and famous blogging. I have maintained the same small -- yet dedicated -- core of followers since I started. And that's OK. I mostly do it for myself.

3.) That said, I am amazed at the number of people who have heard of me or who reference one of my blogs on Facebook, their web site or their own blog.

4.) I have met some amazing people via the blogosphere. Like Heather over at "The Duchess of Devonshire's Gossip Guide" who shares my quirky passion for 18th century history and all things baroque. And Cynthia at "Five Months Until Paris" who, like me, will turn 50 this year and plans to spend her big day in my favorite city. A woman after my own heart. What fun to share my own experiences with -- and look forward to living vicariously through her pending adventure.

5.) I've reconnected with old friends and discovered relatives I didn't even know I had.

6.) Most importantly, I've remembered something I'd almost forgotten about myself: I love to write. After nearly 30 years of churning out news releases and technical copy, I've rediscovered my own voice.

And I want to thank you for "listening" to it.

Le Printemps a la Maison Du Chat Noir

2010-04-21T18:37:00.000-05:00

Bonjour!

It's springtime at The House Where The Black Cat Lives, and I am in a mood francais -- but then when am I not?

Inspired by the blue doors and red geraniums of Paris, I gave the garage a long-overdue mini-makeover, well at least on the outside. The inside is a whole 'nother matter.

I really enjoy a glass of wine in the evening under the red market umbrella at the bistro table -- until the no see 'ems cruelly remind me that this is South Mississippi, not the South of France after all.

Last year's attempts at a Mississippi style vegetable garden produced less than stellar results, so this year I just put in a small herb garden and a stairstep container garden of tender lettuces, basil and marigolds -- again inspired by the windowbox and balcony potager gardens of Paris. The air is redolent of rosemary and lavender.

And what's a garden without a quirky statue? Monsieur Frog is a Katrina survivor. The obliging recovery crew spray-painted him acid green and left him by my mailbox in Bay St. Louis. Now restored to his original color, he holds court next to the lavender, mint and oregano. The lizards love to sun on him.

Having watched "Chocolat" yet AGAIN, I'm dreaming of putting a vine-draped arbor in my side yard where I can throw rustic dinner parties by candlelight -- something like the one in the May edition of Southern Living. I wonder how long it will take for the vines to get all drapey, lush and secretive. As with a haircut, I can handle the before and the after -- it's the in-between stage I dread. I do not have a green thumb.

As for the dinner party, I think this one will do, don't you?

You're all invited, of course.

Easter In New Orleans

2010-04-05T18:38:00.000-05:00

Spring brings out the best in this tawdry lady on the river. I'm not just talking about the azaleas and wisteria adding an extra bit of eye candy to the already lush landscape.

There's so much I love about New Orleans this time of year:

I love the Jello Shots walking (and drinking) their way down the six-mile stretch of the Crescent City Classic with their reality-checking motto ("It's not like we're gonna win!") emblazoned on their matching T-shirts.

I love the little old lady riding the Classic on her battery powered scooter. I especially love that when her batteries wind down, there's always a kindly stranger there to help push her along the route.

I love standing in front of the long-closed Kolb's brasserie on St. Charles and looking up at the balcony outside my old bedroom ...

... en route to the city's current brasserie, Luke, just a little farther down the street.

I love that New Orleans' fabulous seafood -- and wonderful chefs -- make it easy for me to be a good Catholic girl on Good Friday.

I love feeling like a Tennessee Williams heroine while sipping a drink called "Death in the Afternoon" at Cafe Amelie.

I love the Easter brioche with anise at Patisserie d'Or ...

...and the Creole Cream Cheese gelato at La Davina Gelateria.

I love the baby-faced, sailor-hatted bachelor party sweet-talking strangers into buying them a magnum-sized hurricane at Pat O'Brien's.

I love the intimate dining room (and the roast duck ... and the pecan pie) at Brigtsen's.

I love rubbing elbows with students, grandmas, thumb sucking toddlers, and tourists on the 9:30 p.m. streetcar run from Riverbend to Canal Street. I even love the good-natured ribbing from the long-suffering driver.

I love Easter-egg colored dresses and seersucker suits spilling out onto Jackson Square after Easter morning mass at St. Louis Cathedral.

I love taking the scents of New Orleans -- sweet olive and white ginger -- home with me in bath products from Hove perfumer.

I love knowing that no matter how often I return, New Orleans will always have something new -- yet familiar -- to entice and enchant me.

And just like that .... it's spring

2010-04-01T20:22:00.000-05:00

It seems like just yesterday, I was curled up here with my laptop, mug of hot chocolate at my elbow, watching fat snowflakes slowly drift outside my window.

Today the white blanket of snow covering my lawn, my trees, my cars has been replaced by a thick mantle of yellow pollen.

Spring has well and truly sprung. Let us give thanks because it's brought with it:

Itchy eyes and swollen sinuses. Thank you, pollen.

Home improvement projects. The ugly floor in my hallway no longer makes me recoil in disgust. Thank you, Recurring Gentleman Caller.

Gardening projects. Lilies, fat pots of geraniums, fern baskets and container gardens of tender lettuces all look pretty now, but doubtless will not survive the first heat spell. Thank you Lowes and Wal Mart for offering a guarantee on your bedding plants.

Company. My sister and her family came on their annual spring break vacation. We ate (a lot), walked (a little less), visited family and friends. Then ate some more. Our usual routine. It never gets old. Thanks for coming, ya'll

--Gross alert--Dead squirrels. I found two of them in the yard this week. Judging by the smell in my garage, I suspect there's at least one more. Thank you, anonymous rat-poison -laying neighbor-whoever-you-are for turning The House Where the Black Cat Lives into The House Where the Grey Squirrels Die. Not!

New kittens (maybe). Peggy Sue, matriarch of the Oak Grove kitties, who had been looking a little plump lately, looked noticeably less so today. Thank you (in advance) to whoever is looking for a new kitten. And to the Low Cost Spay and Neuter Clinic for promising to be there for me when she finishes reproducing.

Happy (Belated) St. Patrick's Day

2010-03-20T09:49:00.001-05:00

Somehow or other, St. Patrick's Day just slipped by me this year. But since some parades are still rolling this weekend, I'll just squeeze this photo in.

If you're still partying this weekend, drink a green beer or two for the kitties and me. We'll be up to our eyebrows/whiskers in home improvement projects.

Longing for Spring

2010-03-10T18:39:00.000-06:00

I think I'm not alone when I say I am heartily sick and tired of winter. Bring on springtime.

Last weekend I managed to fake it a little.

Daffodils are popping up in really weird areas of my yard. I suspect my master gardeners may be squirrels. No matter. I was able to pick just enough for a proper little tabletop spring bouquet. Thank you, squirrels.

And since the table looked so inviting, I decided to add to the ambiance with one of the fastest, tastiest and most colorful meals I've ever stolen, er adapted, from Bon Appetit Magazine: BLT Chicken. It's really easy.

First I chopped up about 3-4 strips of bacon (if you're a pork fiend, feel free to add more) and sauteed. Meanwhile, I made the mayonnaise dipping sauce -- 1/2 cup of mayonnaise mixed with lemon zest and chopped rosemary. Yum. I could eat this all on its own.

When the bacon was brown and almost crispy, I raised the heat and tossed some cumin seeds into the skillet (you want the seeds here, not the powder) with a handful of grape tomatoes and cooked in the bacon grease for a couple of minutes until I could smell the cumin and the tomatoes started to wrinkle. I said this recipe was fast, tasty and easy; I didn't say healthy.

Then I tossed several handfuls of baby spinach in with the tomatoes (the recipe calls for mixed baby greens but whatever) and wilted that down for about a minute then tossed the entire mixture with a tablespoon of red wine vinegar, some sea salt and freshly ground pepper.

While all that was going down, I pressed panko crumbs onto some chicken tenders and, in a separate skillet browned them in a few tablespoons of olive oil until cooked through, about 4-5 minutes. The original recipe calls for whole boneless chicken breasts, but that doubles the cooking time. And I'm all about getting it all out there FAST, so I use the tenders when I have them.

Serve the chicken on top of the wilted greens with lemon-rosemary mayo.

The flavors in this dish come together so well -- the brightness of the rosemary and lemon, the tartness of the vinegar, the smokiness of the bacon and cumin, the roasted sweetness of the tomatoes and the crunch of the panko. Good stuff.

Craving Krystal's

2010-02-25T19:28:00.000-06:00

You know that craving you would be ashamed to admit to your closest friends? The one that can hit any time of the day or night. And just WILL NOT go away until you give into it.

I constantly crave Krystal burgers. As I type this with one hand, I am reaching with the other into the depths of a Krystal's bag and fingering three empty little cardboard cartons. Damn, I knew I should've ordered the 4-pack!

When you want a sack of Krystal burgers, nothing BUT NOTHING else will do. Not McDonald's, Burger King nor Wendy's. Hardee's? Oh please.

My craving is genetic. It must be. My father's first after-school job was steaming burgers at one of the first Krystal's ever in Knoxville, Tenn. He spent the rest of his life trying -- and failing -- to replicate those square little wonder sliders at home.

When I lived in Bay St. Louis, where there were no actual Krystal's restaurants, many's the night I tossed a coat on over my jammies and cruised the freezer section at the Jitney Jungle. And microwaved the whole boxful of those little frozen 2-burger packs. In one sitting.

Hattiesburg, praise the Lord, still has an actual Krystal's -- with a drive-thru. Not the nice clean convenient one from my college days. No, this one is located in an area I rarely venture into when I am not being held hostage by my craving, one near the highway and interstate adjacent to a truck stop and past a parking lot full of potholes.

The true measure of my addiction is that I willingly schlep myself there on a fairly regular basis and wait in the drive-thru line at all hours with the stoned college students, truckers, and other people in cars lacking mufflers, brake lights and license plates. But then, who am I to judge?

Author Jill Connor Browne, better known as the Sweet Potato Queen, is also a self-professed Krystal fan. She writes that Krystal burgers are the perfect food to sneak into a movie. I disagree. The two unwritten rules of smuggling food into movie theaters (not that I have ever personally done this, but I was formerly a movie concession stand professional so you develop a sense for these things) is that said food must be noiseless and odorless.

Yes, biting into those soft, soft steamed buns, onions, wafer thin meat patties, mustard and soggy dill pickle chips will yield no tell-tale crunch. But that smell. That seductive aroma will wrap itself into a visible arrow pointing straight your head like one in a Bugs Bunny cartoon. That smell will narc you out every time. And let me tell you those theater managers are getting to be real hard asses about it. Or so I've heard.

What will I do if my beloved, yet grungy, Krystal's ever closes?

I suppose moving is a viable option. If I want to be totally honest, easy Krystal access may be one of the reasons I still live here. Then again, I could try to make my own. Daddy was never successful at it, but I came across this recipe that sounds like it just might work (except for the catsup. Seriously, who puts catsup on a Krystal burger? It's un-Southern!)

Now I have to say that the strained beef baby food part is weirding me out just a little. And it's probably a really key ingredient so it's not like you could just leave it out. Tell you what. You try it and let me know how it works.

While you're doing that, I'll make a repeat run through the Krystal's drive-thru. They're open all night you know!

Happy Mardi Gras From The House Where The Black Cat Lives

2010-02-15T09:37:00.001-06:00

The black cat says, "Laissez les bon temps rouler!"

Happy Valentine's Day From The House Where The Black Cat Lives

2010-02-14T09:00:00.000-06:00

This Valentine's Day, take a cue from Ernie and Roxie: Find the one you love and hold them tight.

Hell, Hattiesburg Still Frozen Over

2010-02-12T07:51:00.001-06:00

Now that it's been five days since the Saints won the Super Bowl, you'd think that hell would have had a chance to thaw out a little. But I awoke this morning to the landscape pictured above.

Now, for those who don't know, this isn't the Northeast. It's South Mississippi -- where it snows like this maybe once a decade. Except that we've gotten it now twice in two months.

Those pigs' wings must be getting awfully tired.

If you're not into building snowmen and making snow angels (or if you've already done that and looking for something else to do), Internet surfing is a perfect snow day activity. And I don't mean to all those practical sites where you research the best price on a new appliance. I mean those fun sites that have always intrigued you, but you never have the time to visit. Then again, if you're reading this, you're already ahead of me. (Public service message: Surf responsibly. Make sure your virus software is up to date before downloading files. Do not give out personal and/or credit card information on non-secure, non-trusted sites).

If you're a snowed-in cat lover, may I suggest you surf on over to the site "Stuff On My Cat." You will laugh until you cry.

And if you are also a dog lover, the sister site "Stuff On My Mutt" is pretty darn cute, too.

Happy Snow Day!

The Black Cat Sez "Who Dat?!"

2010-02-07T14:26:00.000-06:00

Remembering Cat Lady Redux

2010-02-04T21:29:00.000-06:00

Eight months ago, I posted this entry on this blog. In it, I announced the death of Hattiesburg's longtime cat lady, along with my memories of driving by her house when I was in college. I believe I even jocularly anointed myself as heiress to her title.

Just recently I became a member of a Facebook page entitled, "I Drove By Cat Lady's House When I was a student at USM." Now I'm not sure what surprises me the most:

a.) that there is actually a Facebook page dedicated to Cat Lady (whose name was actually Fannie "Goodie" Kyker),
b.) that the site has over 400 members, or
c.) that I joined this site (and actually posted something.)

Most surprising of all are the comments themselves. The page is really a lovely and touching tribute to a lady who obviously made a deep impression on many, many people -- even those who didn't really know her.

Many of the entries are tinged with sadness and regret at the thoughtless behavior of our younger selves and the pain some of us may have caused Miss Kyker.

Some are spirited defenses of a woman they say was kind and sweet, albeit definitely odd.

Others are affectionate remembrances of her feistiness and her refusal to let the bastards get her down.

Overriding all of it is a sense of sadness over the loss of an important cultural link to our past. It seems the world, well, at least Hattiesburg, is a less interesting place without her in it.

When you get right down to it, we Southerners prize eccentricity. We cultivate it. We honor those who have it.

After all, when we weren't driving past Cat Lady's house, a lot of USM students were hanging out in New Orleans, hob-nobbing with the Quarter characters.

Anybody, remember Ruthie the Duck Lady? Toward the end of her life, the many people who knew her only as that crazy lady spouting obscenities in a wedding dress and roller skates with her ducks waddling behind her, got together to ensure she got medical care, a roof over head, and when the time came a decent funeral.

So, Fannie RIP. You are remembered -- and missed -- here in Hattiesburg. And not just by your cats.

I would be honored to follow in your footsteps as Hattiesburg's cat lady.

Except suddenly, I don't think I'm worthy.

Blogger's Excuse: The Lightning Ate My Router

2010-01-31T19:55:00.000-06:00

Wow, has it really been three weeks since I've posted?! I have a good excuse -- well at least for last week. Write off the other two to post-holiday fatigue.

Last Saturday, a scarily close lightning strike hit a tree in my neighbor's yard, then zipped across the street to take out my wireless Internet router. And two of my three TV sets. The kitties and I were not happy.

But now I have a new, better, faster router (and a super-sized power strip) and a new, bigger, better flat screen HDTV. I am well and truly back in the blogging saddle.

Natural disasters can and do happen to anyone. Several years ago, lightning called at my sister's apartment. Literally. It came in through her doorbell. Had it not been for a big metal coat rack sitting smack dab in the middle of its path, the lightning bolt would have destroyed her entire home entertainment system.

In December 2008, a tornado topped off a pine tree in my back yard during its little rampage through Hattiesburg's Parkhaven neighborhood. It destroyed what Katrina had left of my neighbor's fence and left the neighborhood smelling piney-fresh, but otherwise did no harm.

And in 2005, well, you know.

I'm beginning to believe there may be a map somewhere with a big red "X" on my property. So I guess the moral to this story is: Invest in good power strips and make sure your electronics are always plugged into them. And unhook your cable when bad weather is in the forecast.

But natural disasters aren't all bad. According to the sports pundits, hell froze over last weekend in New Orleans. I'm pulling for a second deep freeze in Miami next Sunday.

Let's just hope Mother Nature doesn't get lost and stop by my house instead.

If she does, we'll all yell, "WHO DAT?"

I'm just saying.

My Feral Family

2010-01-10T13:31:00.000-06:00

With the recent sub-freezing temps in the 'burg, I've been turning my attention to my other kitties. Yes, for two and a half years now, I've been cheating on my kitties with a little feral family -- Peggy Sue, Tux, Pegasus, Fergus and Funny Face -- in Oak Grove.

Actually, my two cat families are related. Roxie, who now lives in my house, was once part of the feral group. She is the mother of Peggy Sue and maw-maw to the other four.

Though the Oak Grove kitties are hopelessly wild, there are subtle, but telling, little acknowledgements of the relationship between us.

They know the sound of my car. Rain or shine, Tux waits expectantly by the pine tree every evening waiting for me to come feed them. I notice recently that he has trained his little brother Fergus to stand lookout with him. A sort of passing of the torch.

And they talk to me. Did you know that cats usually meow as a way to communicate with (ie: manipulate) the humans around them? Adult cats don't meow to communicate with each other.

Most telling -- when I returned from vacation after Christmas, Peggy Sue actually ran past the food, rubbed up against my legs and let me pick her up for 10 whole seconds -- the first sign of affection she has ever shown me. It actually brought tears to my eyes.

Funny how little gestures like that forge bonds. These cats will never be mine in the way the other kitties are, but still the urge to protect them is just as strong.

When the cold snap threatened, I created a makeshift shelter for the kitties out of boxes, plastic wrap, old blankets and shower curtains, and my Recurring Gentleman Caller's waterproof, thermal sleeping bag (Shhhh! He doesn't know this yet ).

And it seems I'm not the only softie out there. The new next door neighbor has been leaving his garage door open so they'll have someplace warm to sleep at night.

Sometimes it takes a village to raise a feral colony.

So far, so good. Thus far, everyone seems to be surviving the cold just fine.

New Year's resolution: Trap the kitties and get them fixed. It's the ultimate thing I can do for them.

Happy New Year From The House Where The Black Cat Lives

2010-01-01T08:55:00.000-06:00

Despite being their namesake, the black cats around here don't really care for these New Year's Eve staples. The orange, grey and tortoiseshell kitties aren't crazy about them either.

Things got a little hairy at The House Where the Black Cats Live around midnight as the neighborhood erupted. We're all fine now, except for a few PTSD jitters. Champagne helps.

Here's to a happy 2010!

Back From Par-ee for a (Mostly) Joyous Reunion With Les Chats

2009-12-30T13:10:00.001-06:00

I'm back from Paris. Gawd, I love that place. Only thing was about Day 4, I started missing my babies something fierce. This always happens on long trips.

Paris, as Julia Child noted in her memoir, is a city of cats. But I only actually saw three of them while I was there due to the cold weather. Cats are no fools. They don't get out in it unless they have to.

I actually chose my restaurant one night based solely on the fact that they had an orange house cat just like my Henry. Yes, in Paris you will see cats and dogs in the restaurants. This one had a French attitude (as does Monsieur Henri) and only let me touch him twice before going upstairs.

By Christmas Day, I was reduced to petting the guy above at the Jacquemart-Andre museum -- a very beautiful place by the way.

Getting home took forever. Nothing like a little episode of international terrorism to spice up a transatlantic flight. But then again, it was probably the safest day to fly what with all the bag checks and frisking. I haven't been felt up that much since playing spin the bottle in 6th grade.

After 24 hours without sleep, it was wonderful to fall into my bed covered with cat hair, even if I did awake to Henry peeing on the pillow next to me. Just letting me know where he stands on the whole issue. Today, Henry, Nettie and CJ still aren't talking to me. Sammy, Roxie, Koko and Ernie are always glad to see me.

It's good to be home.

By the way, if you'd like to read more about to my trip to Paris, go here.

So What's Your Favorite Christmas Song?

2009-12-03T22:24:00.000-06:00

This time of year brings out the songbird in all of us. Even those of us that live with cats and can't sing. I don't know how that happened to me. My parents both had great voices. I must take after my Aunt Marie who was the only one of the four Soljan sisters asked not to sing in the St. Michael's church choir!

When I was a kid, my mom would round up all the kids in the neighborhood and whip us into shape for a night of caroling. She lined us up double file, smallest to tallest, holding lit candles and lanterns. Mama brought up the rear and kept us all in sync (if not in total harmony) with a toot on a toy recorder.

My favorite time caroling was the Christmas we lived in Baton Rouge. Our neighbors lavished hot chocolate and freshly baked cookies upon us. However, I think we got the warmest reception at my friend Lisa's house. Her parents were hosting a cocktail soiree. One gentleman jumped up on a chair and shouted "Bravo! Bravo!" We all thought he was drunk. And he might have been. Turns out he was also the head of the music department at LSU. My mom would never have had the nerve to ring their bell had she known that.

These days I carol solo at home along with The Rat Pack, Elvis and the swing and Big Band singers.

It got me thinking about people's favorites.

My daddy loved "Jingle Bell Rock" and used to sing it (making up the words) while we decorated the tree.

My mother's leanings were more spiritual. Her favorite was "O Holy Night." I have to agree that when it's well done, that one is goosebump-inducing.

My grandmother loved "Silver Bells." When I was little, I thought "the city" in the song was New Orleans. It's probably not, but that's still the place I visualize when I hear it.

The cats seem evenly divided over "Z'at You Santa Claus?" (the Louis Armstrong version) and Dean Martin's rendition of "Baby, It's Cold Outside."

As for me, these are great songs all, but the two Christmas songs I can (and do) listen to over and over are "Ave Maria" -- granted not strictly speaking just a Christmas hymn -- by anybody but especially love Barbra Streisand's version (though not a big fan of hers as a rule) and "Merry Christmas, Baby" by Elvis.

Now it's your turn. What's your favorite Christmas song? And why?

Happy Holidays from The House Where The Black Cat Lives

2009-12-03T16:27:00.000-06:00

Of Cats and Christmas Trees

2009-11-29T11:53:00.000-06:00

Putting up the Christmas tree was quite a production in my family. It took trips to five different tree lots to find an evergreen that met with my father's approval. We usually wound up with a Scotch pine. Their knotty, crooked stems engendered much un-Yule like cussing as my parents wrestled them into our unyielding tree stand.

Once the tree was up --albeit usually with a definite list -- the magic began. Twinkling tree lights reflected in my daddy's glasses. He sipped on his "toddy," ho-ho-ho'd and crooned Christmas carols in his lovely baritone. His favorite was "Jingle Bell Rock." He could never remember the words, and made up new ones every time he sang it. My mother carefully placed the ornaments they had collected together. Each one had a story.

Today, putting up the tree is a weekend chore I squeeze in between making dinner and doing laundry. The only tree lot I visit is the one in my closet. The "perfect" tree is the rather worn four-year old pre-lit that comes in three parts and slips effortlessly into place in minutes.

But that's not to say that tree decorating is short on drama -- or magic.

When the kitties entered my life seven years ago, the most fragile of my treasured heirloom ornaments, some inherited from my parents, others carefully saved for and bought every pay-day, went into storage to be gazed at lovingly as I placed the sturdier ornaments on the branches.

The year my mother passed away during the holidays I looked at them a little longer than usual.

For the cats, the Christmas tree was a great big cat toy decorated with smaller cat toys. I frequently came home to find the tree denuded and kittens slumbering peacefully amidst the boughs. The lights twinkled in their huge green and amber eyes as they used to twinkle in my daddy's glasses. It was still magical.

Then came December 2005. We found ourselves in our big new empty house in a new town. We had no furniture. No tree. No ornaments. Hurricane Katrina had taken all of it. And, boy, did we need a tree.

With a week to go until Christmas, I found a cheap pre-lit tree at Wal-Mart and a handful of ornaments at the dollar store. That night I pulled my air mattress up to the tree and drifted off to the tune of rustling branches and tiny cheap apple ornaments bouncing off the floor and walls. It may have been my favorite Christmas tree ever.

I still have that sad little tree, its limbs bent from four Christmases of supporting my kitties' growing weight. My ornament collection is growing, too.

My current tree is a reflection of my past and my present. I found five of my old ornaments buried in Katrina muck. Gold covered chocolate coins and St. Nicholas figures speak to my Croatian heritage. Santas painted on oyster and crab shells recall my hometown of Biloxi. Beautiful pewter renderings of Hattiesburg's architectural attractions pay homage to my new home. And, of course, there are kitty ornaments everywhere.

The cats are older now. Except for Koko's enthusiastic leap to the top the day the tree went up, this holiday season it appears that they will spend more time snoozing under the tree than they will climbing in it.

But the lights still twinkle in their eyes. I sip my toddy, place my ornaments and sing "Jingle Bell Rock." I make up the words because I've never learned the right ones.

And it's all still pure magic.

Happy Thanksgiving From The House Where The Black Cat Lives

2009-11-26T18:02:00.001-06:00

Have You Hugged Your Vet Today?

2009-11-20T16:49:00.000-06:00

Today is the day that I have been counting down all year. It's been circled in red on my calendar, and planned out as strategically as D-Day. Except it's V-Day. Vet Day.

No, not Veterans' Day -- that was last week. I mean Veterinarian Day, the day when all seven, yes all seven, of the cats go in for their annual physicals, shot updates and pedicures.

I look forward to this annual event about as much as the French aristocrats looked forward to that ride to the guillotine. I always feel like asking for a blindfold, a cigarette and a shot of whiskey beforehand.

Now why, in the name of God, you may well ask, would anybody in their right mind willingly undertake a maneuver involving seven cats at one time?

The same reason you rip the Band Aid off a healed sore and cannonball into a cold swimming hole. You just want to get it over with.

Preps begin the night before. As the kitties slumber peacefully -- all unawares of the fate awaiting them the next day -- I sneak the carriers into the house and into the back bedroom. The next morning, after breakfast, I line the carriers up -- doors open and forward facing in the hallway and cut off all means of egress.

Familiar with the term "herding cats"? Yep, that's just what's about to commence here.

As the kitties settle down for the first of many post-prandial naps of the day, I carry them away, by one, down the hall and into a waiting carrier. By the third trip, heads are up, whiskers twitching on the alert. Inevitably one or two will get away. Today CJ eluded capture. Never mind, she'll get hers next week.

Carriers are loaded, in formation, into the car. A warning call is placed to the Davis Veterinary Clinic. And the cat-mobile is underway.

With military efficiency, the awaiting vet team unloads the car, whisks the carriers past the other waiting cats and d-o-g-s into the exam room. Amid much mewing, yowling, and hissing, carriers are numbered, syringes filled, ears, eyes and teeth examined, weight measured, shots administered and claws trimmed. The usual suspects are whisked aside for urine tests.

In less than an hour, we're all back home, and the cats are enjoying their well-deserved treats.

So to Dr. Chip, Dr. Davis, both Rebeccas, Sarah, Michelle, Brooke and all the other folks down at the Davis Veterinary Clinic I send hugs and thank yous from the House Where the Black Cat Lives. You guys make my crazy life possible.

I think I'll have that shot of whiskey now.

Sleeping With Cats

2009-11-13T20:54:00.000-06:00

The temperature is starting to dip in the 'burg. The last few nights it actually got down into the 30s and 40s. To borrow a phrase from the Inuits, "It was a three cat night." Actually they would say three dog night since that's how they keep warm up there on the ice, by sleeping with their dogs. And you thought that was just a 60's-70's rock band.

I should confess right now, I just fibbed up there a sentence or two ago. Last night was easily a seven cat night. I just didn't want to seem all whine-y and princess-y. God knows South Mississippi is not exactly the Arctic Circle. Cold here is a relative -- and fleeting -- term. And my cats are not as big as those sled dogs -- although they probably eat as much judging from my last Pet Smart receipt.

Bottom line: When it does get cold in Hattiesburg, it is especially cold in my house. It's one of those charming raised cottages with the original windows -- and drafty as all get out. You don't want to know what my gas bill is. I wish I didn't.

While I'm watching my hard-earned dollars slip through the cracks in my woefully inadequate insulation, it's nice, especially, in this economy, to have my fur babies snuggled all around me. Even if they do hog the bed and cause me to sleep in weirdly contorted positions.

There are perks to being a cat mama.

My Merry Band of Mutants

2009-11-01T12:39:00.001-06:00

Photos: Ernie and a close up of one of his paws.

I think all of my babies are just beautiful. But beauty is in the eye of the beholder. And to some beholders some of my cats have looks that only a cat mama could love.

Like their mother (the biological one, not me), Nettie and C.J. have a little bit of every color in catdom mixed in their coats. The correct term for this coloration is "tortoiseshell." The popular term is "those ugly cats." But we don't use the "u" word at The House Where the Black Cat Lives. I believe all little girls, even feline ones, should be told they are beautiful every day.

Like Joseph, C.J. wears her amazing -- and fluffy -- Technicolor dream coat very successfully-- she is a bona fide beauty. A non-cat person once told me her sister Nettie's fur resembled what they imagined dragon puke looks like. That was harsh. For the record, Miss Nettie Louise is the smartest of all my cats. Brains trump beauty any day. And she doesn't take any crap from her prettier brothers. Torties are also known for their tempers.

Like their mama (again the biological one) C.J. and her brother Koko, sport abbreviated little tails, the results of a genetic mutation caused by inbreeding. Insert bad joke about the South here. They may not have much, but they're proud of what they've got. While his brothers, Henry and Sammy walk around flourishing their long, luxuriant appendages, Koko wags his like a dog. I call him my puppy cat. C.J., on the other hand, has the merest suggestion of a fluffy pouf on her rump. That, her shy nature and loping run have earned her the nickname "Bunny Cat."

Then there's Ernie and his many, many toes. He's what's known as a polydactyl. But most people refer to felines with this condition as Hemingway cats after the writer (and Ernie's namesake) who was very fond of them. Those extra toes -- yeah, another one of those genetic mutations associated with inbreeding.

Now, Ernie is no average mutant, but a super-mutating overachiever: He has extra toes on both his front AND back paws, a rarity even in the polydactyl world. The poor little thing walks way pigeon-toed. I'm just glad he's got extra toes instead of extra heads. But then again he'd probably be worth a lot more that way. I love him, but he's pretty worthless as he is.

He also has a ground-dragging belly of the type usually seen only in the beer aisle of your neighborhood Wal-Mart. It swings from side to side when he runs. I don't think there is a recessive gene associated with that. What can I say? My boy likes his kibble.

Ironically, Ernie is not biologically related to my other mutant kitties -- at least as far as I know but who can really be sure about stray cats? I'd say from the looks of things they all come from good Southern stock. Although I think their mama, Celie, may actually have been a Japanese bobtail.

While researching polydactylism, I came across the web site for the Ernest Hemingway home on Key West . There's like 60 cats living there, half of them polydactyls. Weirdly enough (or not considering this is Key West), the home is a popular site for weddings.

Hmmmmmmm. I always thought of cat ladydom as just an eccentric lifestyle choice. Now I'm starting to see some business opportunities in it.

The House Where the Black Cat Lives and Wedding Chapel. I like it.

Happy Halloween from The House Where the Black Cat Lives

2009-10-30T21:29:00.001-05:00

A Haunting Weekend in New Orleans

2009-10-25T18:33:00.000-05:00

New Orleans is one of my two favorite cities in the world. And I am so lucky that it is only a two-hour drive and, therefore, accessible at whim, as opposed to my other favorite city which is an ocean away and not as easy to get to on the spur of the moment.

While this may sound odd, New Orleans has always been where I go when my inner batteries wind down.

You can have your bucolic weekends in the country, the sun-soaked beach getaways, the bracing mountain hikes. Give me a day or so -- heck, even a few hours -- in this filthy, stinking, decaying, dysfunctional yet WONDERFUL city, and I can take on the world again.

If ever my batteries needed recharging, it was this weekend. As always, New Orleans did not disappoint. The weather was beautiful, the food was great, and the city was full of haunted happenings.

I ate the seven-course "taste of New Orleans sampler" at the Upperline. The gumbo, duck with ginger peach sauce, barbecue shrimp and the bread pudding with toffee sauce were divine. The turtle soup, fried green tomatoes remoulade and duck etouffee were good, but not great. On the whole, I think this art-filled restaurant in the Garden District realized its glory days a decade ago, but still it was worth a visit.

On the other hand, my meal at Bacco in the Quarter --oyster artichoke soup and lobster ravioli with caviar -- was every bit as fabulous as it sounds.

I always look forward to taste revelations in New Orleans. This weekend it was the unexpected, yet delightful, seasonal pairing of Louisiana satsuma with fennel in a scoop of gelato at La Davina Gelateria on St. Peter.

Got my Halloween fix with two tours, the Friends of the Cabildo's "Ghostly Gallivant" and The Historic New Orleans Collection's "Historic Haunts." Now I can hear my more high-falutin' friends tsk-tsking my low-brow choices, but these were not the overpriced, lurid and inaccurate ghost tours that draw in the flip-flop and T-shirt crowd slurping down hurricanes from plastic go-cups. These two tours, attended largely by locals, were carefully researched history lessons as much as ghost stories.

Lest you think me a snob, I did hob-nob with the go-cup packin' Midwestern tourists at the "Boo" Carre Halloween parade Saturday night. The second annual parade, sponsored by Blaine Kern, the name behind those incredible Mardi Gras floats, offered the same level of witty, detailed rides -- and the great throws -- as what you'll see a few months down the road. Check out my haul in the photo above. And, nope, I didn't even have to show 'em.

Some of my favorite vignettes from this weekend:

Two nuns in billowing white habits floating past like ghostly apparitions bearing flowers.

Ladies of a certain age, bedecked in the full purple and red regalia of The Red Hat Society, walking single-file past the burlesque and tranny shows of Bourbon Street .

A middle-aged man, wheeling his bike home, as he sadly shook his head and loudly bemoaned the number of heterosexuals taking over the old neighborhood.

I believe that last remark may have been aimed at my Recurring Gentleman Caller and me. We had chosen that moment for an impromptu, and we thought discreet, PDA.

Only in New Orleans could my boring, normal life ever be considered an exotic alternative lifestyle.

Now do you see why I love this city?

The Football Pizza Gourmet

2009-10-18T17:28:00.000-05:00

As much as I love fall, I can't say I'm a football fan --although I am always happy when the Saints or the University of Southern Mississippi Golden Eagles win as they both did this weekend.

However, when you live within a stone's throw of a football stadium, as I do, like it or not, football lives at your house during the fall. The kitties aren't sports fans, either. They hide in the closets and under the bed when the booming stadium sound system brings every touchdown, field goal and half-time show number into our family room.

I've learned to adapt. Except for one thing. It seems that every time we have a home game invariably, I get a craving for pizza -- piping hot, cheese-dripping pizza. And that's too bad because while you can't always predict the outcome of a football game, you can lay money on not getting a pizza delivered to your doorstep in less than two hours on gameday in Hattiesburg. And that's only assuming you make it through on the continuously busy pizza delivery phone lines.

You have three options when your craving, like mine, just won't go away. You can wait and wait and wait knowing your pizza, if and when you get it, probably will be cold and possibly not even what you ordered.

You can brave the throngs of tail-gaters and go get it, not a job for the faint of heart.

Or you can make it yourself.

I usually choose option 3. Two things I always have in my kitchen: ready-made pizza crusts and chocolate.

I must say I am turning into something of a pizza gourmet.

Some of my favorite creations: prosciutto, goat cheese and basil pizza; fried artichoke and spinach pizza, and, quite possibly my favorite, the one I made yesterday, barbecue chicken pizza. It was a great way of finishing off Thursday night's rotisserie chicken and summer's half-used bottle of BBQ sauce.

BBQ Chicken Pizza

1 large ready made pizza crust (Boboli, Mama Mary's or the like)

Cooked chicken cut into bite-size chunks (about 2 cups). May also use leftover pork roast.

1/2-1 cup of BBQ sauce

1 sliced green pepper

1 sliced red onion

2 cloves of garlic, minced

1 1/2 cups of shredded Mexican cheese or a Colby/Monterey Jack mix

2 T olive oil separated

2 T chopped fresh cilantro (optional)

Salt and pepper to taste

Preheat over to 450 degrees. Brush pizza crust with 1 T of olive oil, then brush the crust lightly with BBQ sauce to taste (I use about 1/4 cup). Heat remaining olive oil in skillet and saute pepper, garlic and red onion with salt and pepper until crisp-tender. Scatter over the BBQ sauce on the crust. Toss the chicken chunks in the remaining BBQ sauce. to coat evenly Scatter over the veggies on the pizza. Scatter cheese over all.

Lower oven temp to 425 degrees.

Place pizza directly on the middle oven rack. Bake about 10 minutes.

Remove from oven. Sprinkle with chopped cilantro

I think this may become the official pizza of The House Where the Black Cat Lives.

Go Eagles!

Musings on a Rainy Fall Weekend at The House Where The Black Cat Lives

2009-10-12T20:23:00.000-05:00

It was a long rainy holiday weekend here at The House Where The Black Cat Lives. Usually October is quite dry, but not this year. So what does one do when you have four days off and the weekend isn't conducive to much else?

Decorate the house for fall.
Bake pumpkin chocolate chip muffins in honor of the season. For the recipe, visit my other blog Mike and Mary's Kitchen: Recipes and Memories from Point Cadet.
Take the cat with the neverending urinary tract infection to the vet one more time. I swear Koko's bladder should be lined with gold by now considering all the money I've thrown at fixing it.
Read. Right now almost through "Laura Rider's Masterpiece," by Jane Hamilton. Pretty good. Great 1950s vintage looking cover jacket though the book is set now.
Shop for my costume for the office Halloween party. Our department's theme is "Pirates of the Arctic." Got the pirate part down. Not sure yet about the Arctic. Anybody got any ideas?
Watch Anouk Aimee movies on TCM. I can see why she is such a style icon. I covet everything she wears.
Wish it were a five-day weekend.

The House Where The Black Cat Lives Goes Green

2009-10-01T21:07:00.000-05:00

Don't be alarmed by the title of this post. I have not turned into one of those annoyingly ardent environmentalists.

You won't find bamboo flooring or solar-powered anything (not even a calculator) at the House Where the Black Cat Lives.

But sometimes it just makes sense--morally and financially -- to do the green thing. Therefore, I van pool to work, recycle and use natural homemade house cleaning products. Frankly, there's not much that vinegar and baking soda can't cleanse, sterilize or deodorize.

Since I'm doing my part, I thought it was time the cats chipped in and did theirs.

Last week their litter boxes went green.

Anyone who reads this blog more or less regularly knows I have a lot of cats. Following the one for each plus one more formula, I have eight litter boxes. Which get emptied into the trash every week. That's a lot of kitty litter sitting around in landfills.

The average scoopable cat litter is made of all kinds of unnatural stuff with names you can't pronounce. But you don't have to be able to say it to know that its probably not biodegradable.

Actually, I didn't know that until I saw it on TV.

So I began searching for an alternative. First I tried Feline Pine, one of the first "natural" kitty litters. Outside of being ungodly expensive, it bore an uncanny resemblance to the kibble that I feed them. Since feeding and scooping are both among my 4 a.m. pre-work chores, I thought it best to avoid an unfortunate mix-up before it occurred.

Also the litter had an unnervingly strong pine aroma. Unnerving because it reminded me of the smell of all those toppled pine trees oozing sap after Katrina. Not one of my fondest memories. So ix-nay on the Feline Pine.

Next I tried some new stuff made of ground up corn and baking soda. It looked like sawdust, had a nice soft texture and a very pleasant scent.

I love it.

The cats hate it. Or they're waiting for a special occasion to use it. I'm beginning to wonder (and worry). Just how long can they hold it?

Has anybody out there got a suggestion or tried something else that works? And please don't say shredded newspaper. Not going there.

As Kermit the Frog always said, "It's not easy being green."

A Cat Mama's Plea

2009-09-24T19:24:00.000-05:00

An occupational hazard of being a cat mama is that people give you a lot of stuff. And it all seems to have something to do with cats.

The cat coffee mug someone picked up on vacation because they "thought of me and couldn't pass it up." I have five of them.

Cat jewelry. Got the whole set.

Cat address book. Cat night light. Cat pillows.

Check. Check. Check.

From the classy to the kooky, if it's got a kitty on it, chances are I own it, possibly in multiples.

With the Christmas season looming, I seem to be getting a lot of catalogs "for the person who has everything,". I saw some cat stuff in those that even I don't own -- and don't want to. The cat mama action figure complete with cat hair and cat vomit for instance. Seriously.

So, with all due gratitude to all who have contributed to my kitty collection over the years, and to those of you who think that action figure is my perfect next birthday gift, I think it's time to say thank you but "enough."

I think I speak for cat mamas and papas everywhere (oh, ick, I just thought about that whole John/Mackenzie Phillips sickness. I can never listen to their music ever again.)

If you want to warm the cockles of a cat mama's heart, don't gift me, gift a cat, preferably one that isn't as spoiled as mine are.

Make a donation to a spay-neuter clinic or a shelter. Foster an abandoned kitten and find a home for it.

Better yet, adopt a shelter cat and become a cat parent yourself.

You'll get all this unconditional love.

And all my surplus cat stuff.

Restaurant Review: Southbound Bagel and Coffee Shop., Hattiesburg, MS

2009-09-19T14:13:00.000-05:00

I love to eat out. I love small businesses. And I love downtown Hattiesburg. So when a restaurant opens downtown, I try my best to give it my patronage because I really do want it to succeed. But some businesses make it hard to be supportive.

Bianchi's pizzeria is one such place (good pizza, nice atmosphere, consistently crappy service).

Southbound Bagel Shop, just down the street from the pizzeria, is another. Again, cute/funky hole-in-the-wall place with atmosphere to spare -- mismatched chairs, kitschy salt and pepper shakers, thermoses and lunchboxes lined up along ledges -- the sort of place that draws a hipster crowd in on Saturdays for bagels, omelets and sandwiches.

Now dives usually build their reputation on personality and friendly customer service as much as anything on their menu, but the vibe I get from the proprietors of Southbound Bagel is they're not terribly concerned about their patrons. I expect this in France or New York, but Hattiesburg? Whither, Southern hospitality?

The first time I tried to eat at the bagel place, the waifish, vacant-eyed barista told me they were closed -- their open door, "open" sign and still-lunching customers notwithstanding.

On my second visit, the turkey and cranberry sandwich on an "everything" bagel wasn't half bad, but the same blank-faced little counter-girl forgot to charge me and I had a hard time getting her attention afterward.

Today they were bustling with lots of too cool for school types with shaggy hair, scruffy beards and thrift shop attire. I ordered the Tuscan beef sandwich on a garlic bagel. I found a table and waited and waited and waited. Until finally the waif dropped an omelet in front of me. A Tuscan beef omelet. Not a sandwich. She seemed put out (or not, hard to tell with those perpetually vacant eyes) when I sent it back. "Well, we have a beef omelet, too" she mumbled. Silly me.

A few minutes later, she did scoot a sandwich in front of me. And it was Tuscan beef. But no garlic bagel. It was on pallid bread that had been dropped onto a griddle long enough to dry it out, but not long enough to actually toast or grill it. It looked, and tasted, like Styrofoam or that stuffing that comes out of a Naugahyde sofa. I tried to eat it, but the dried out bread kept crumbling and the beef filling (though delicious) was all minced up and I was not about to neglect my mother's teachings and pick it up with my fingers in public. There were no forks. I gave up half-way through. By this time, I had been in there trying to get fed for over an hour. My stomach was growling, and my temples were pounding from the effort of trying to communicate.

I left there hungry -- and disappointed.

Because I really did want to like it.

I'm Dreaming of a Parisian Christmas

2009-09-13T12:30:00.000-05:00

I'm toying with the idea of going to Paris for Christmas. I've never been there in the winter, and I can only imagine how beautiful the City of Light is when it is all decked out for Noel.

Of course there are a few issues I'll have to resolve here first -- find someone to take care of the cats, buy a winter coat, learn to speak French.

Every time I go to France, as enchanted as I am by the place, people and food, I am always a little embarrassed by my inadequate grasp of the language. Oh sure, I can get by. I studied French for four years in high school and college. In fact, I would venture to say I probably speak French better than most graduates of Monsieur Hebert's French II class at Biloxi High School.

Thanks to Monsieur Hebert, I can order off a menu, ask directions, introduce myself and state my age, hometown, occupation and number of children/siblings in short order (although the French don't really go in for that type of personal chit chat with strangers).

I can exclaim "Trop cher!" with proper amount of righteous indignation when le vendeur tries to charge me 80 euros for a scratched piece of silver plate at les marches aux puces.

But I can't jump into those spirited discussions en francais that are always going on in those no-longer-smoky cafes down every atmospheric alleyway in Le Quartier Latin. I can follow along pretty well, even form an opinion about what's being said. But by the time I've formulated a response, the lights are coming on and the bar tender is wiping down that amospheric zinc counter and turning those cute wicker bistro chairs onto those tiny little cafe tables.

Quel dommage!

I've thought of taking a refresher class, but they tend to focus more on grammar and syntax than actual conversation. Since I never bother with grammar and syntax in English, I'm willing to forgo them in my second language.

For conversational French, I've turned to podcasts. You'd be amazed at the sheer number and variety of the options out there.

I approach my French podcast lessons as I would a menu prix fixe at a French cafe.

For l'entree (appetizer), I start with "Coffee Break French." These basic, beginner's level sessions are tied up in neat 15-minute increments, just enough to polish off with a coffee and a cheese danish, if such were still allowed on my low-cholesterol diet. (That's something else I'm going to have to deal with over there. The French have never heard of cholesterol). Coffee Break French's ease gives me a confidence boost, imbuing me with the sense of competency I need to advance to le plat principal -- "Learn French by Podcast."

Like the French I learned in college, Learn French By Podcast's fast-paced conversational volleys are scenario-driven. However, instead of following the misadventures of those wacky gals Jeanette et Jacqueline at le supermarche , I am thrust into supposedly real-life situations, for example flirting with the cute guy walking his Lab in the park. ("Le Lab, c'est mon race preferee!" I'm supposed to coo seductively).

Or discussing wiring problems in my St. Germain de Pres flat with l'electrician. Clearly we have entered the realm of fantasy here. Even if I could afford the rents in St. Germain, the odds of getting an electrician or any contractor to show up in Paris, even in an emergency, would be just about nil, even if I spoke excellent French.

By now I'm feeling cocky, so before ordering the dessert course of my French podcast meal, I take one of those on-line competency tests to measure my clearly improved fluency. Flushed with my progress so far, I sign on for the "intermediate" level.

These tests, sadly, were not dreamed up by the benevolent Monsieur Hebert who wrote I was une tres bonne eleve in my yearbook.

No, le professeur who emails me to say, desolee, but I have not reached the intermediate level, clearly is French. I picture Madame Bessart, the imperious director of Le Cordon Bleu from the movie "Julie and Julia." Especially when she condescendingly wishes me continued success in my beginner's lessons (in perfect English as well as French).

Merde.

Oh, well, dessert wasn't on my diet anyway.

The OTHER House Where the Black Cat Lives

2009-09-03T09:32:00.001-05:00

There are cat people, and there are dog people.

Then there are cat people who think they're dog people. Take my hairdresser, Robert.

Robert is a total guy. A Harley-driving, rock and roll blaring, "dawg"-owning kind of guy. He doesn't like cats. He'll tell you so.

So imagine my surprise about a year ago when I walked up for an appointment to find a very skinny, very hostile tortoiseshell cat guarding a bowl of milk and kibble on the salon's front porch.

"Oh, we're just feeding her until she goes back where she came from."

Last time I counted, that porch now feeds and sleeps six cats, give or take a few, all descendants of that one little tortoiseshell.

A few months after the face-off with the hostile little tortie, I was greeted at Robert's door by the sweetest, most diminutive black kitten I had ever seen. "Pee-Wee" had recently wandered onto Robert's porch. The other cats were being mean to her, so Robert decided to take her in -- until he could find a home for her.

I guess I don't have to tell you how that turned out.

By my next appointment, Princess Pee-Wee was napping in the best seat in the house, as Robert, in paparazzi mode, snapped photos for the salon's web site.

While my color set, Robert cooed as he rubbed his nose against Pee Wee's head.

Poor Pee Wee. It's a shame your daddy doesn't like cats.

For the longest time, Pee Wee remained the world's smallest (and most spoiled) black kitten. Finally, she began to grow, mostly in her mid-section.

The next time I went to the salon, there were four more identical little Pee-Wees in residence.

Robert's dog-person credentials were now seriously being called into question.

Last Saturday, two of the kittens, now about nine weeks old, left together for their new home. After saying his goodbyes, Robert looked around the now much emptier salon and shook his head.

"Man, that was hard," he said, scooping up one of the remaining kittens and cuddling it close. "Much harder than I thought it would be."

It's always the dog people who fall the hardest.

After the Storm

2009-08-30T20:05:00.000-05:00

I debated whether to post yesterday. I think most people who read this blog, know me and my story. Not that it's that much different from so many "Katrina" stories. I wasn't sure I could add anything new to what we've all been inundated with over the past four years.

The thing is, every time I go there, I run the risk of tying that can to my tail, you know that "Oh-that's-Cathy-the-one-who-lost-her-house-in-the-storm" can.

I always cringed whenever some well-meaning soul introduced me that way a.) because I wasn't the only person (not even the only Cathy) who lost my house in the storm and b.) I never wanted to be defined by a situation that was not of my own making.

The best thing I can say about going through an event as massive and life-changing as Katrina is it really helps you figure out whether you are the person who always thought you were.

I think I am. Looking back at all my actions during and after the ordeal, I think I handled myself OK. I came out on the other side. I've moved on. Not that I came out totally unscathed. There's a lot of things that were important to me before the storm that I don't place nearly as much emphasis on these days. And, really, that's a good thing.

Right after the hurricane, I wrote the following diary entry as catharsis and also sent it out with my Christmas card in 2005. A lot of people said it spoke to them, so here it is again (I promise this is the last time). It remains my definitive statement on what I loved and lost in the storm.

THIS PROPERTY IS CONDEMNED (OCTOBER 2005)

Yesterday I visited the post-Katrina ruins of my house. A new message had been added to the makeshift bulletin board that once was my front porch. Next to life-affirming “I’m OK!” I painted in the early pre-cell phone coverage days and the Day-Glo search symbol the recovery crew left behind, city building inspectors had left a red calling card. It seems this property has been condemned.

In 1965, before Katrina, even before Camille came calling, Hollywood blew through Bay St. Louis transforming our little coastal city into a facsimile of a Depression-era Delta backdrop for the Robert Redford and Natalie Wood romance, “This Property Is Condemned”. Everyone in Bay St. Louis knows someone who was an extra in the movie. When I joined the 21st century and got a DVD player last April, I christened it with this Southern gothic trash wallow. Bad accents aside, it has always been a favorite of mine.

If I rummage among the rubble in my backyard, I may find my copy next to the carcasses of the DVD player and TV set. It would make a great photo -- me in a tattered party dress (I’m sure I have one hanging in a tree somewhere) standing dazedly amidst the ruins a la Natalie as Alva Starr. Trouble is, who’ll take the picture? Where’s Robert Redford when you need him?

I remember the first time I saw my house. It was my first house. I came late to home ownership, because I wouldn’t buy just any old place. It had to have wood floors and a front porch – someplace with character. One day, as I was driving home from work, I saw a For Sale by Owner sign in front of the perfect minuscule yard of a 1940s cottage. My brakes left tire tracks down Dunbar Avenue. This house had everything I wanted: a wood-burning fireplace, a claw-foot bathtub, and a winding gravel path, bordered by lush green ferns, leading up to a giant shady oak. The previous owner cried as she reluctantly handed me the keys. “I’ll take good care of it,” I promised.

And I did. I put pumpkins on the porch in fall, festooned the door with fresh garland at Christmas, hung wind chimes in trees and nestled bird baths in the ferns. My friend Lou dubbed my house The Fern Cottage. The name stuck.

It was not only my first home; I hoped it would be my last. I lovingly pored over decorating magazines, dog-eared photos, planned improvements. I added a dishwasher and floored the bathroom with period-appropriate honeycomb tile.

There was never a moment of buyer’s remorse. Every evening, when my tires crunched on the gravel drive and the “Welcoming Committee,” – my adopted stray cats, Martha Stewart, Joey and Miss Thang, greeted me by picket fence gate, my heart swelled with pride of ownership. I sat in my wicker rocker on the porch, read my mail and greeted the neighbors as they rode their bikes or strolled down to the water’s edge.

“Love your house,” they called to me.

I loved it, too.

It was the house where stray kitties raised their families knowing they would be loved. It was the house where my closest friends gathered for candlelit margarita parties and soft jazz. It was the house where I brought my mother to live the final good year of her life.

I last viewed my dream cottage – as it once was -- through a rain-spattered windshield. Wind gusts tossed about the branches of the oak tree. Six rescued kitties mewed mournfully in the backseat, but the Welcoming Committee refused to emerge from the crawlspace under the house. My eyes welled as we drove away toward our safe haven. I wasn’t sure what I would find when I returned.

“Maybe it’s all right,” I told myself two days later as my friend Judy and I climbed over fallen trees and downed power lines. As we worked our way down Dunbar, the damage grew worse block by horrifying block. Hope flickered when I saw the glimmer of a familiar tin roof through the debris. At first glance my little cottage seemed OK, battered, but still standing. Then I noticed the structure sagged nine feet away from its pier foundation. The porch where I read mail was ripped away. The deck, scene of so many margarita fests, was now a pile of boards. My walls and ceilings were gutted, and my possessions, what was left of them, were tumbled about in foul-smelling black gunk. The Fern Cottage was gone as surely as if it washed away with the storm surge into the Bay of St. Louis.

And yet, it’s still my home. Miraculously, Martha Stewart and her son Joey survived the storm and wait patiently every evening for their supper by the still-standing garden gate. With every new visit, the muck yields up another old memory: my grandmother’s punchbowl, now the proud survivor of two hurricanes; my grandparents’ wedding portrait; a coneflower painting bought on a trip to Salem, Mass.; an heirloom silver tray. All are packed away for my next home.

My new home has a front porch and wood floors. Soon it will have my reclaimed kitties strolling through a garden gate. I’ll put out pumpkins in the fall and evergreens in the winter. There will be a memorial garden for Miss Thang, the one absent member of the Welcoming Committee. It may even have ferns. But it won’t be quite the same.

Condemned or not, The Fern Cottage will always be my first house, and the home of my heart.

2009 UPDATE: For those of you who have asked for an update, the new place in Hattiesburg has started to feel like home. It took a while to get there. I don't wake up anymore thinking I'm back at the Fern Cottage. I had what remained of the Fern Cottage torn down a few months after the storm. It was a heart-wrenching decision, but it had to be done. Getting that over with really helped me move on.

When I drive down Dunbar Avenue (and I do from time to time), I've gotten over that sick to my stomach feeling. I go there now expecting to see a vacant lot .

I never was able to catch the "welcoming committee." They were never really mine. My neighbor across the street took over the task of feeding them. I occasionally catch a glimpse of one or two when I am in the area.

Will I ever go back? I'm no longer sure. The neighborhood just isn't the same. The insurance is unaffordable. But I still own the property, so the possibility is there.

When people ask me where I live, I still hesitate a little before I say "Hattiesburg". Because in my heart, I still live on the Coast.

And always will.

A Total GRITS weekend

2009-08-24T21:21:00.000-05:00

This past weekend was special. I got to shop. Eat good food. And, best of all, visit with two of my very best friends from college. I see Tana pretty frequently (she was one of the angels who provided me –and my cats- refuge after Katrina), but I hadn’t seen Cathy in 10 years.

In college we were inseparable. We partied together, shared secrets, dated the same guys and compared notes (no guy was ever as important as our friendship back then). I was a bridesmaid at her wedding.

Cathy had a business trip back to the Deep South, so we did what all good GRITS (Girls Raised in the South) do when they get together. We went to a fancy restaurant, drank wine and ate – what else – grits (with shrimp). And laughed. And talked. And talked. And laughed.

This time around our conversation revolved more around hot flashes than hot dates, but the years just seemed to melt away. It was over much too soon, but now we have one more shared memory.

Here’s hoping we don’t let another 10 years go by before we make another one.

My Homebody Weekend

2009-08-15T23:48:00.000-05:00

I love weekends where I actually see some forward motion in my life.

The House Where The Black Cat Lives renovation "to do" list is getting down to a manageable level -- though far from done.

This weekend, I finally got electricians over to put in all those light fixtures that have been sitting around in boxes since ... well, let's see since I moved in the house, I guess. I am particularly proud of the double pendant fixture over my island. It's starting to look like a kitchen in a decorating magazine. Or it will after the floors, the countertops and the backsplash are done. Small steps. But it sure looks a lot better than it did when I moved in.

When it is over, I'll be sure to post my "before" and "after" photos so you can see just what a project this has been.

While buying a birthday present for a friend of mine, I found a present for myself (isn't that how it always works: one for you, one for me), an adorable little portrait of a waving crab --by Coast artist, Elizabeth Huffmaster at Main Street Books here in the 'burg. (Just had to get in my plug for Coast artists and independent booksellers).

On Friday, I went for friends to see "Julie & Julia." I knew I would love it. And I did! Well, let's see it's about blogging, cooking and Paris. How could it miss? I have always loved Julia Child. What a rich life she lived. And what an inspiration. She achieved so much in her life -- most of it after age 40. Also great to see some of my favorite Paris haunts, E. Dehilleron, Shakespeare & Co., the markets on film. I must own this movie. And start cooking more. And go back to Paris. As many times as possible.

I think Julia would approve.

Middle Aged Crazy

2009-08-10T20:42:00.000-05:00

My cats and I are growing old together. And I think we all agree it sucks. The "growing old" part that is -- the "together" part is still cool.

With their last birthday, the Celie-ettes turned the equivalent of 44 human years old. That puts them well in the mid-part of their lives. Let's just say I've been there a little longer.

Out of nowhere, I seemed to have sprouted those unsightly skin tags on my neck that we used to call "Maw Maw beads" when I was a kid. Koko is sporting a white whisker he didn't used to have.
We're all grappling with aches, pains and limited range of movement. My air conditioning went out last weekend which means my back also went out after umpteen billion trips up to the attic to shop vac the drain pan and haul down the results. I've been hobbling hunched over ever since.

This morning Sammy landed flat-footed when he attempted one of his patented Superman leaps to the top of the bathroom door. Time was he could ace that move blindfolded. He's been staring at the door with this befuddled WTF look all day.

We go to bed earlier than we used to ... and have a harder time getting up. We're all a mite testier these days. And one of us has started using words like "mite" and "testy."

We're spending more time (and money) at the doctor's /vet's office. As the cats grow older they seem to stay on urinary tract health meds and laxatives. So far, I've managed to stay off those, but I have now officially joined the high cholesterol club. I have the prescription to prove it.

I think that medicine is just the beginning of what my 12-year-old doctor (and I am exaggerating only slightly ) has planned for me.

After I proudly told him I don't have a regular family physician because I am never sick, Dr. "Doogie" gave me a long lingering stare and said, "Miss Cathy you better get one because you are getting to be 'that age'."

Oh, "that age."

"That age" where long lingering stares from guys "his age" won't be followed up by offers to buy me a drink and other offers that will get his face slapped.

I have a feeling the only drink Dr. Doogie will ever offer me will involve barium. Rest assured, I will be the one paying for it.

But I'll probably still want to slap his face. Especially if he calls me "Miss Cathy" again.

My Stoner Kitties

2009-08-01T10:29:00.000-05:00

Let's get this straight. I don't do drugs. Don't approve of drugs. And if you're a kid reading this right now, I'm telling you "Don't do 'em."

All that said, I have been known to procure a little weed for my kitties. I'm talking cat nip. All totally legal and available at Target.

At the risk of sounding like a bad cat mama, if you want to liven up a dull Friday night, get your cats high on catnip. It's like watching a vintage Cheech and Chong movie. We had a huge cat-nip fest around here for the kitties' birthday last Friday. Catnip toys, catnip spray, catnip treats. They spent the whole night totally blissed out.

Henry is a total stoner. Sprinkle a little on his scratching pad and he lies on it spreadeagled, face down with his big, pink Bill Clinton-esque nose pressed into the cardboard. Unlike Clinton, however, Henry inhales.

Koko and Ernie are also big pot-heads. Koko gets so excited by it, he literally bounces off walls and runs laps around the house. Roxie takes the occasional toke. Sammy, Nettie and C.J., not as much. Apparently, it's a genetic thing. Some cats have the gene, some don't.

Given my cats' stoner tendencies, I've considered going organic and growing my own out in the garden. Then I had this vision of all the neighborhood strays descending on my yard. My neighborhood just won their hard-fought Historic District designation battle. Operating a crack house (kitty or otherwise) in these environs probably would break several of our neighborhood association's rules. Not that I would be the first to do so.

Maybe I can just grow it on my windowsill next to the parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme.

Happy Birthday to My Kitties!

2009-07-23T19:50:00.000-05:00

Tomorrow is the seventh anniversary of The House Where The Black Cat Lives. Five of the House's seven feline residents, including the titular black cat, were born on July 24, 2002.

I'll never forget that surreal visit to the veterinarian's office. Celie, the hideously ugly little stray I had been feeding had managed, outward appearances notwithstanding,to get herself knocked up. The doddering old vet hooked up his 16mm projector so I could watch a flickering red-hued vintage film about feline reproduction. I had a flash of deja vu back to the 6th grade.

I went home and started boiling water.

When Celie, barely more than a kitten herself, went into labor, she freaked out. It fell to me, the attending midwife, to nurture the five little drowned rat looking creatures she spat out over the course of that long night. I cut their umbilical cords, cleared the mucus from their nasal passages and kept them warm until Celie calmed down enough to nurse. Thank God for that cheesy film!

By the time dawn broke both cat mamas were exhausted. At least she got to stay home. I had to go to work.

Almost as soon as the kittens were weaned, Celie returned to her gypsy ways and eventually ran off for good. The first night of her absence, the kittens crawled from their nest into my bed. They've been there ever since.

The past seven years have been a rollercoaster -- and the cats have been right there with me through all of it.

During my mother's long final hospital illness, a grueling time when she often didn't recognize me, my comfort was coming home to my purring cats and their unconditional love.

When she died, they filled the void of what suddenly seemed like way too much free time --and made me feel a little less like a middle-aged orphan.

On July 24, 2005, my kitties' third birthday, a tiny, and utterly adorable grey tabby kitten with big ears and lots of extra toes crawled onto my deck. Ernie became the sixth feline resident of The House Where The Black Cat Lives. Now it's his birthday, too.

One month later, Hurricane Katrina destroyed the first House Where The Black Cat Lived. The need to find a temporary shelter for the cats, and a more permanent residence for all of us, helped keep me focused. And probably sane, too.

When we moved to the current House Where the Black Cat Lives, my cats turned the vast empty rooms into a home.

Two years later, Roxie, another stray came to stay. For Ernie, it was love at first sight. They remain inseparable.

While our permanent residents seem to have topped off, over the years The House Where The Black Cat Lives has served as temporary refuge and half-way house for a string of foster kittens.

There have been many broken lamps and pieces of bric a brac. Some shredded upholstery. A few cat fights. Four vet emergency room visits. And too many urinary tract infections (theirs) to count.

But it's a good life.

And so tomorrow, we will celebrate.

For one night, we will set aside the urinary tract health diet in favor of stuff with names like Tuna Florentine Souffle and Tuscan Chicken with Field Greens.

We'll open presents (and I guarantee you they will be far more interested in playing with the ribbon and tissue paper than with what's inside).

We'll inhale cat nip.

And we'll all drift off to sleep purring together as we have for the past seven years.

A house with cats is a happy house.

What I Did on My Summer Vacation (or my Life as a Beach Babe)

2009-07-15T19:03:00.000-05:00

I am not a summer vacation person. Maybe that’s because I possess the uber-fair skin that requires liberal application of SPF 50 just to take out the garbage. Or because I grew up in a beach town. Sun, sand and Wal-Mart sized souvenir shops hold little fascination for me. You are far more likely to see me strolling along the Seine in Paris in October than along one of Florida 's Gulf beaches in July.

However, it had been a grueling few weeks at work. And I haven’t lived on a coastline in three years.

So when my recurring gentleman caller (RGC) suggested a weekend getaway, the thought of sugar white sands, turquoise water and romantic sunset dinners al fresco sounded good (as did sleeping late and hotel-provided housekeeping).

And because I’m all about the food, my taste-buds, deprived of good seafood for the past three years, salivated at the mere suggestion of real shrimp po-boys, creamy crab bisque, succulent bay scallops and stuffed flounder. The deal was sealed.

The hotel suite, overlooking the Gulf, was spacious and beautiful with a wrap-around balcony. After a romantic stroll along the beach, we toasted our getaway with chilled Chardonnay on the balcony.

I called all my girl friends to ensure they were suitably envious.

The waves were as blue and beautiful as the brochure promised – you don’t see surf like that on the Mississippi Coast. The beaches were pristine – maybe too pristine. It was a little like a Disney beach. I felt sorry for the kids combing for shells. There weren’t any.

So here’s what I did on my summer vacation:

I rode the waves, something I hadn’t done since I was in high school.

I caught up on my sleep.

I slathered on sunscreen and sat in the sun while critters crawled all over and around me. Not bugs. Zinc-nosed kids with sand pails. We were at one of those “family friendly” resorts where the families are not comprised of cats. I am so not a kid person.

I read Vogue on the beach. The fall fashion forecast is for pannier skirts, peplum suits and draped tuxedos. Several pina coladas on the balcony helped that news go down much better.

I went shopping during a summer afternoon thunderstorm.

I ate greasy pizza at a charmless dive sandwiched between an arcade and a go-cart track …

and soggy tacos under a poolside pavilion during a rainstorm ...

and salsa and chips. For breakfast. Lunch. And dinner.

Turns out the RGC is not the foodie I am. In fact he has to be forced to eat more than one meal a day. I felt like I was on a “cruise to lose” – without the ship.

Our "romantic" dinner al fresco turned out to be a 9 pm run to KFC's drive-thru, washed down with vintage champagne on the balcony while we watched “Batman” projected on the hotel next to ours, compliments of our family friendly resort.

No scallops. No flounder. But the company – and the champagne --were excellent . And I came home three pounds lighter – when’s the last time THAT happened on a vacation?

Best of all, I am home – a place full of cats and NO KIDS!

And I have the rest of the week off.

If I still have a craving for seafood (and I do), I can drive 80 miles to Biloxi and eat all I want while dabbling my toes in the surf-less brown waters of my home state. It may not be as pretty, but it does offer interesting beachcombing, especially since Katrina.

Sounds like the perfect summer vacation.

In Style with Monsieur Henri

2009-07-09T20:42:00.000-05:00

I am always astonished when I get compliments related to my appearance these days. I used to work in a women's boutique. Occasionally I still browse through a copy of Vogue. However, recently I've pretty much adopted the late Gilda Radner's fashion credo: I base my wardrobe around what doesn't itch.

When your daily toilette takes place before the crack of dawn, you're lucky to make it out the door wearing shoes that match each other let alone the rest of your ensemble.

That I ever leave the house looking at all presentable is due to the eternal vigilance of Monsieur Henri (aka Henry Aloysius Willis), the resident stylist at The House Where the Black Cat Lives.

Henry, I've decided, is French. Well, actually, he decided. I just acknowledge it. Not only is he absurdly handsome (well, all my cats are), he has that je ne sais quoi quality that comes from being comfortable in his own , um, fur.

If Henry actually wore a shirt, he would be way too sexy for it.

Now, Henry, like many good-looking guys, can be a bit shallow. If he were human, he'd be one of those rock stars who dates only supermodels. When I hang around the house in ratty bedclothes, dirty hair, glasses and no make-up, Henry doesn't want to know me. Dress me up and make me up, however, and he's all snuggles, purrs and tender nibbles on the elbow.

He is such a guy.

I'm not sure when Henry's obsession with his looks switched over to mine. It may have been right after Hurricane Katrina when my personal style -- and hygiene -- went out with the power and water. Henry stayed meticulously groomed throughout the whole ordeal.

His styling instincts kicked into high gear when I started getting up at 4:00 am. No doubt alarmed by some of my fashion choices that first week, he staged an intervention that has yet to end.

When I get out of the shower, Henry's waiting on the bath mat. As I flip through my closet, Henry rides shotgun on my vanity, giving each possibility an up and down scrutiny. If I am tempted to skip the makeup, Henry knocks over my cosmetic case, forcing me to reconsider as I pick up dozens of make-up brushes and mascara wands.

"You're looking a little washed out," his twitching whiskers suggest. "Would it kill you to put on some lipstick and blush?"

Henry is there through every flick of the hairbrush, every stroke of the blush brush and every slick of lip gloss.

What can I say? I am Henry's creation.

A Surreal Week In Heaven

2009-07-02T17:57:00.000-05:00

Wow, it's been a crazy week. I am glad to be having a four-day weekend.

I bet St. Peter wouldn't mind having a long weekend, too, after fending off paparazzi at the Pearly Gates all week. (Random musing: Do they even let paparazzi into heaven? )

Can you imagine a random group like Ed McMahon, Michael Jackson, Farrah Fawcett, Billy Mays and Karl Malden just showing up at your gate one day? These are not people I can imagine sitting around a dinner table for an hour or two let alone hanging out together for all eternity. If Heaven is anything like the way it was portrayed in "Defending Your Life," then there must have been some surreal conversations during "check in."

"Sir, you'll have to speak up a little. I can barely hear you. And, please don't grab your crotch. It's really not appropriate here."

"Yes, ma'am, I understand you're already an angel, but we really need to fill out the paperwork and make it official."

"No, sir, this isn't a sweepstakes entry form. You're in Heaven. You're already a winner."

"Sir, I'm sure that's a very nice Shamwow, but we're not allowed to accept gifts here. No, I can't accept the Oxi-Clean either. And please lower your voice. People are trying to get their eternal rest."

I must confess right now, I feel a smidgen of guilt about Billy. I think I may have killed him. Just the day before he "passed," I turned off the TV mid-pitch during one of his ads. I may even have said, "God, I wish we could just get this annoying guy and his big mouth off the planet."

I didn't mean it, Billy. I'm sure you were a really nice guy and truly believed in all those products you hawked. I feel so bad now that I never bought any of them. If I go out and buy some Mighty Putty, are we good?

Ed, I feel bad about you, too. All those years you believed in me and sent me those Publisher's Clearinghouse sweepstakes entries. I just threw them in the trash. Maybe you were right and I was already a winner. If that's the case, the joke's on me and we'll laugh about it later.

Karl, I'm glad you had such long, rich life. You were a great actor and richly deserved that Oscar for "A Streetcar Named Desire." But you know why I really loved you? Your nose was shaped exactly like my daddy's -- except much larger. I could never look at you without thinking of him. Look him up now you're up there. He's a great guy, and he loved watching you on "The Streets of San Francisco."

Michael, I was never really a fan of yours, and I cannot even begin to understand the way you conducted your life, but I always admired your talent. In my life, there have always been people who have called me on my bad decisions. I wish someone could have done the same for you.

Farrah, I always believed you were more than "the hair" -- although I did try to wear your hairstyle for a while in the 1970s. Since I'm in confessional mode, I must admit that on my initial salon visit, I carried a photo of Jaclyn Smith's Wella Balsam ad in with me. I guess the stylist was so accustomed to accommodating requests for a "Farrah" that my 'do turned out looking more like yours. I apologize that I didn't wear it better. Genetically, it just wasn't in the cards for me. But then, there could really only be one Farrah.

Thanks for the memories, guys. Rest in peace.

A Taste of Paris in the Piney Woods

2009-06-28T08:49:00.000-05:00

If I had a bumpersticker on my car (which I don't) it would say, "I'd rather be in Paris!"

Lately, I'm beginning to think that I'm already there.

Don't get me wrong, I love Hattiesburg. It has its own brand of Southern charm. Historic neighborhoods overflow with interesting architecture, azaleas, wisteria, camellias, hydrangeas, and crape myrtles. Mouth-watering aromas emanate from dozens of BBQ joints and catfish shacks -- some of them quite upscale. Syrupy accents make even bad news sound good. And the code of good manners -- everyone says ma'am, sir, please and thank you here -- just makes life downright pleasant.

Lately I've also been hearing a lot of Madam, Monsieur, s'il vous plait and merci.

It seems that Hattiesburg is turning into the Paris of the Piney Woods.

It started quietly enough when C'est La Vie opened its doors in a strip mall on Hardy Street a few years ago. The French-bred owners introduced Hattiesburg to real croissants, sables, eclairs, religieuses, tartes and all the other too-pretty-to-eat-but-you'd-be-crazy-not-to delicacies normally found in a Left Bank patisserie.

And generations of Hattiesburgians, raised on Sundays at Shipley's donuts, ate it all up.

Then Cafe Boheme opened its doors in a restored old house across from the Hattiesburg Zoo. With it muted decor, soft jazz and menus of coffees, teas, baked goods (croissants, pain au chocolat) and daily lunch specials, it has the ambiance of a salon de the tucked away in the heart of Le Marais.

Just the other day I noticed that a genuine Parisian bistro is serving lunch in a building once occupied by an Italian restaurant and, years ago, a Chinese place.

While I'm a little perplexed by this sudden Gallic turn of events, I think it's formidable. Every one needs a little Paris every now and again. Especially if you're me.

I'm not saying I'm cancelling my annual pilgrimage to the City of the Light.

But it probably will be a little easier to handle my withdrawal symptoms the next time I return home.

Merci, Hattiesburg. Merci beaucoup.

Wine and Whining

2009-06-20T10:23:00.001-05:00

Back in Mississippi and it's hotter 'n hell. Over 100 degrees yesterday. Enjoyed my sojourn in and around DC.

The Navy public affairs conference was very informative -- great speakers, including our new Undersecretary of the Navy -- and lots and lots of gouge on social media. It's a brave new world out there for those of us born before 1985. Hope I can keep up with it. Frankly, I'm surprised I've taken to blogging as I have.

Got a chance to spend some time with old friends, Mike and Diane, during a visit to their winery in Purcellville, Va. What a great place! They've been growing their own grapes and making wine for a while now.

A few years ago they undertook a massive restoration of their old barn. It opened as their tasting room last November. It is truly gorgeous, all Amish-restored with antiques, artwork, music and Amish cheeses. And of course great wine. Read all about it at their website, http://www.sunsethillsvineyard.com/

Diane, my New Orleans running buddy back in the day, took me on a tour of charming Leesburg. One of my favorite stops was lunch at The Wine Kitchen, http://www.thewinekitchen.com/ a wine bar/restaurant. I enjoyed their artisanal cheese tray and a portobello and goat cheese panini --washed down with Chardonnay from Sunset Hills of course. I wish our wine bar here in the 'burg served food. It puzzles me why a place with great ambiance and great wine falls so short in that department.

Also spent some down time hanging with my sister and family. Of course no visit with them is complete without takeout from our favorite Afghan place (yummy lamb kabobs with some kind of garlic/coriander sauce that I am still trying to duplicate, cumin rice with chickpeas and grilled naan bread to scoop it all up with). Other must-do stops are Trader Joe's (love their olive tapenade) and the Mediterranean Bakery -- a foodie paradise that sells prepared foods, meats, cheeses, baked goods, spices, legumes, packaged goods, refrigerated yogurts, dips and spreads and anything else you need to tie on the feed bag Med style. I hauled home a bag of red lentils, a Turkish enameled handled coffee pot (I'll use it for making hot chocolate), a wooden mortar and pestle, anise biscotti, a package of lavosh bread, vacuum packed chestnuts and dried ginger root. This is also where I score essence of anise for all my Christmas baking.

All good things must come to an end. This week at work has been a killer. The city has been working on plumbing in my area so showers at my house have been a little rusty of late. The heat is grueling. And the kitties, while glad to have me back, are punishing me for my long absence with little "presents" left in corners and closets.

Gosh, it's great to be home.

Every Neighborhood Needs a Cat Lady

2009-06-12T18:39:00.000-05:00

In my opinion, every neighborhood needs a few essential residents.

The neighbors who put on over-the-top Christmas displays that strain the city's power supply and create traffic jams for weeks on end.

The do-gooder who delivers the latest neighborhood gossip along with the homemade cookies.

The recluse who is never seen during the daylight hours.

And the Cat Lady.

The last position recently became vacant. Today, a friend of mine sent the death notice for Hattiesburg's long-time Cat Lady. I'm not sure how long she held this distinction. In her funeral directions, she specified that her age not be posted in the newspapers.

Back when I was in college, nearly 30 years ago, "Cat Lady's House" was on the tour all new freshmen took shortly after arriving in town. It also included a stop at the drive-through funeral home. Sadly, the "Elvis is Alive" museum was not open then.

I never actually met "Cat Lady." Going by what I read in her obit, she was a true Southern eccentric (and you know how I love those) -- well-bred, well-educated, active in the arts and politics. According to local lore, she owned at least 50 cats at one time. I also heard that she once drove a dead person around town to look at the Christmas lights. The last part wasn't in the paper.

So now Hattiesburg is Cat Lady-less -- a sorry state of affairs for a Southern town. Where will the freshman tour go now? The drive-through funeral home closed years ago. I believe the Elvis is Alive museum has also followed its namesake to that big Graceland in the sky.

I think I should apply for the Cat Lady job. If you know anything at all about my family, I certainly have the pedigree. And the cats.

But is seven enough?

Cooking with Koko

2009-06-05T07:00:00.000-05:00

Koko (full name Kokomo Magee Willis) is the sous chef at The House Where the Black Cat Lives

Of all my cats he is the only one who shares my penchant for all things culinary. He's like the rat in Ratatouille. Except he's a cat.

On Saturday mornings, he likes nothing better than curling up next to me on the sofa, head in my lap, all four paws touching me, and easing into the weekend watching Food Network. Looking back on it, I should have named him Emeril.

Wherever he is, whatever he is doing, at the sound of kitchen cabinets opening, he comes skidding into the kitchen. He knows the fun is about to commence.

I don't approve of cats being on the kitchen counter during meal preparation. Or anytime for that matter but try enforcing that one when they're there all day and you're not. But dinner wouldn't be dinner without Koko perched on the island, neck stretched, eyes agog, perpetually engaged.

Koko has a particular fondness for dishes involving dairy products -- omelets, gratins and cream sauces rank among his favorites. After writing my post about eating aligot in Paris a few weeks ago, I had a craving for it. I had a hunch that with all those dairy products, Koko also would approve. I was right.

The recipe is simple enough. But there aren't many places -- make that any places -- that carry creme fraiche and artisanal cheeses in the 'burg. So I've had to adapt the recipe using a mixture of sour cream and heavy cream for the cream fraiche and subbing out the best cheddar I can find for the traditional cantal. Still it works. It reminds me a lot of a cheesy potato recipe my mom always made. Any time I can combine two loves, French cooking and my mama's cooking, it's a good thing.

I'm heading out to the Washington, DC, area for a work-related conference next week. While there, I'm also going to have a chance to hang with my sister, who lives in the area. Unlike the 'burg, the District and its environs are full of gourmet food markets and artisanal cheese shops. I'm thinking I'll be able to score the real ingredients there, and that I'll be whipping up authentic aligot for the family by this time next week.

Yummy. I can't wait. Neither can Koko. I see him in the corner trying to stow away in my suitcase.

Aligot

2 pounds potatoes, peeled and cubed (plain russet potatoes are fine)
3/4 teaspoon salt
1/8 teaspoon ground white pepper
6 tablespoons butter
1 1/2 - 2 cups crème fraiche (substitute equal parts sour cream and heavy cream)
1 clove garlic, crushed but kept intact
3 cups grated tomme fraiche de cantal cheese (substitute good-quality white cheddar or Gruyere)

Boil the potatoes for about 20 minutes, until they turn tender and drain them. Mash them with a potato masher and vigorously mix in the salt, pepper, and butter for about 2 to 3 minutes, until the potatoes fluff up a bit. Set them aside in the pan for a moment.

Slice the garlic and saute lightly in a dab of butter to infuse it. Then In a medium saucepan over medium heat, bring the crème fraiche and garlic to just steaming. Remove the garlic and pour the steaming crème fraiche into the mashed potatoes and transfer the pan of potatoes to the stove top over low heat. Using a sturdy wooden spoon, beat the crème fraiche into potatoes.

Raise the heat to medium and beat in the cheese, 1/2 cup at a time. Continue beating the mixture over the heat until it forms a smooth, velvety texture with ribbons of cheese. Pour onto warm plates and serve immediately.

The Cat Mama Gets on Her Soapbox

2009-06-01T09:47:00.000-05:00

As heartwarming as spring and summer are with their overall themes of new life and rebirth, this can be a very chilling time of year for cat lovers. Trees and flowers aren't the only things busting out these days. This is peak kitten season.

Most of these newborns will wind up abandoned, dead or in shelters where their odds of being adopted, frankly, are less than 20 percent. And we all know what happens to the rest of them.

Living as I do in a college town, I also know that this is the time of year when college students return home and the strays they "adopted" and fed throughout the school year will be turned out to the curb along with the saggy old sofa bought at the Salvation Army. The rationale is that "someone else" will feed them. It is unlikely that anyone will. And these poor creatures who, for the most part have never had to fend for themselves, will suffer a very, very long downward spiral of hunger and abuse before they finally starve to death, are run over or are maimed and/or killed by other animals or sick humans.

If you don't believe me about that last part, read this. It will chill your blood. http://www.miamiherald.com/486/story/1056523.html

Over the years, I have adopted over 10 stray kitties. In each case I have spayed /neutered and vaccinated them. I also have helped find loving homes for at least as many kittens, four of which I had to hand-feed from a bottle.

The point of this is not to nominate myself for sainthood -- it really is a labor of love for me -- but to help shed light on a growing problem that too many people don't want to see.

As I write this, I am taking care of a second little feral family: Peggy Sue, the daughter of my Roxie, and her two nearly grown children, Pegasus and Tux. They are the last (I hope) of a feral cat colony. They are good kitties, albeit skittish.

I hope that with patience I will still be able to catch them, spay/neuter them and either release them so I can continue feeding them or find homes for them with people who have the patience to tame them. It can be done. Roxie was once part of their colony, and, in a remarkably short time, she turned from a scrawny little wild thing into a plump and affectionate model cat who loves nothing more than cuddling and having her face rubbed.

Please, please, please if you adopt a cat (or a dog), spay or neuter it as soon as you can. It is the only way to end the spiral. Yes, it is expensive, very expensive, but a lot of states and counties offer assistance programs to those who manage feral cat colonies. Some shelters and veterinary offices also offer discounts during peak season.

You can find out more about Mississippi's Spay & Neuter program at the link below. Many other states offer similar programs.

http://www.msspan.org/bigfixrig.htm

If you do find yourself with a new litter on your hands, please make an effort to find loving homes for them yourself rather than dumping them on a shelter. The shelters are full this time of year, and they do not have the resources to take care of them.

Interview the folks looking for a cat and ensure their motives are pure, especially around Halloween or the full moon. As you know from reading that article link above, there are a lot of sickos in the world.

Your veterinarian can be a great resource guide. Believe it or not, most of them are vets because they truly love animals, not just to make money. My vet has been wonderful in offering me discounted services for worming and fixing feral kittens. He has also helped me with new home referrals.

Finally, if you want to help and don't have the time or inclination to catch/trap, foster-parent, or find new homes for them yourself, consider making a donation to those non-profit groups who do. In most cases, your donation will be tax deductible. Just do a little research to make sure your group truly is non-profit and that they are on the up and up when it comes to humane treatment of their charges.

OK. That's my rant for today. Stepping down off the soapbox now. I will return to our regularly scheduled blog next post. Thank you so much for reading this.

Rediscovering the Public Library

2009-05-25T08:40:00.000-05:00

Happy Memorial Day! It's raining cats (and dogs) here. Has been for the past few days so it's been a wash as far as holiday weekends go. Since I can't really work in the yard or cook out, I've been reading. As much as I can with Miss Nettie in my lap. She views any open book or magazine as an invitation to lounge.

As mentioned in an earlier post, I use my commute to catch up on my reading. After several months of making the folks at Books a Million a little richer, I remembered I have a library card and decided to patronize them. They get the same books as the bookstores do. And they're free. Can't beat that.

I have always loved libraries since I got my first card at the Old Biloxi library some 43 years ago. I still remember the first two books I checked out, a modern illustrated Cinderella and a Madeleine book (apparently setting the stage for my love of Paris).

My mother signed me up for the summer reading program. I faithfully read two books a week (actually more like 4-5) and got a certificate (and a fudgesicle) at the reading program's graduation ceremony. From then on, I was hooked.

I am excited to have had an excuse to re-connect with the Hattiesburg Library. If you haven't been, it is a lovely building with sculptures, murals and a Mississippi room. Well worth a stop just to sight-see if you happen to be in town.

Not to copy Oprah, but I thought the readers among us might appreciate my take on some of the books out there. We're all short on time, and there's nothing I hate worse than committing 10 hours or so to a dog of a book.

Here are some of my recent favorites. They are particularly good on rainy days with a cup of tea, a cookie and a cat (or two or three) curled up in your lap.

The School of Essential Ingredients by Erica Bauermeister.
Anyone who reads cookbooks as if they're novels, will love this story of a cooking class and how the students use that time to deal with other areas of their lives, from encroaching Alzheimer's to the death of a spouse. The plot is a little contrived, but the writing is lyrical. The descriptions of the food are so vivid, that you'll put down the book and head straight to the kitchen.

Suite Francaise by Irene Nemirovsky
This book, set in France on the eve of the Nazi occupation, was published a few years ago, after lying hidden and unknown for 64 years. Nemirovsky, already an established author, related how people of different classes reacted to the occupation and war. Her intent, as indicated in the notes she wrote in the margins of her manuscript, was to follow her fictional characters' lives through the war. She never got the chance. Nemirovsky, a Jew, was arrested and deported to Auschwitz in 1942. She died there. This posthumous book is memorable, not only for it's beautiful writing, but for the tragedy of the author. The book has been edited only slightly and includes the author's notes as well as letters from her agent and friends trying to discover her whereabouts in the dark days after her deportation. It will break your heart.

So will The Zookeeper's Wife by Diane Ackerman .
Unlike Nemirovsky's true-to-life-fiction about the Nazi occupation, this is a non-fiction book written like a novel. It details the lives of the keepers of the Warsaw Zoo who used their home and the cages of their closed zoo as an Underground Railroad for refugees from their city's Jewish ghetto. Some of the passages will make you shake in horror and wonder how anyone raised in this environment ever turned out half-way normal.

The Girl with No Shadow by Joanne Harris
This is another one for food lovers (or more precisely chocolate lovers). It is the sequel to Chocolat. If you loved that book (or the movie), you'll love this one too. A word of warning: stock up on some Godiva before even opening the cover.

Happy reading!

Missing Paris

2009-05-20T18:59:00.001-05:00

It's hard to believe it's been two years since my first visit to Paris. Lately I've been feeling that I could use a little Paris.

I love Paris in the spring time. And in the fall. I’m sure I’d love it in the summer and winter, too. Except I haven’t been then.

Yet.

A lot of my friends don’t get my love affair with Paris. They say it’s dirty, rude, overpriced.

Yeah, formidable ain’t it?

My frame of reference for dirty is New Orleans (another city I adore) so I have a high tolerance for filth. And Parisians strike me as formal, like the old-time Southerners I was raised around, rather than rude. So that doesn’t bother me either.

My deep and abiding affection for Paris really has nothing to do with the usual tourist attractions. I’m hooked on those perfect little moments that can happen only in this city. Moments like …

That first sinfully rich sip of hot chocolate poured from a little silver pitcher at Laduree. And if it’s accompanied by a bite of a delicate rose-flavored maccaron - even better.

Aromatic roasted chestnuts plucked from a paper cone on a crisp fall day outside the Musee d’Orsay.

Aligot – an Auvergnant specialty of potatoes, garlic and cheese whipped in a gleaming copper pot tableside at L’Ambassade d'Auvergne. It’s a beautiful thing.

Sipping champagne while watching the sunset from my tiny 5th floor balcony at Hotel Caron de Beaumarchais …

… and smiling when I spy the occupant of the Marais apartment opposite me scoop up her cats and kiss their noses as she walks in the door. I have the same joyous reunion with my cats every day after work

Paying homage to the Lady with the Unicorn tapestries in all their breathtaking splendor at Musee de Cluny.

Chocolate shops on every street corner. And feeling free to indulge because I know I'm going to walk it off that day.

Catching another American’s eye in the street and sharing an unspoken “Hey, can you believe we’re in Paris?” moment.

The orgasmic experience that is Saturday morning market day. The bountiful produce. The ripening cheeses. The exotic spices. I just want to buy one of everything and go cook up a Babette’s feast for all of Paris.

The musical chattering of French school children as they walk in double file formation down the street – a tableau straight out of a Madeleine book.

The elderly man in a plaid jacket flirting with me in raspy Maurice Chevalier tones “Madame, vous etes seule. Moi aussi, je suis seule.” Oh, non, non, non grand-pere. But thanks for noticing.

The young man who sweeps my heavy suitcase up onto his shoulder, hauls it down the metro stairs and sets it at my feet with a wink and a bow. Oh, that Gallic charm.

Shuffling through dried leaves in the Place des Vosges while a string quartet plays Vivaldi.

Music everywhere - in the parks, museums, subway stations. It's as if I'm the star of a movie and this is the soundtrack.

Buying a pain au chocolat as an afternoon pick-me-up and not feeling guilty because all those skinny French women are having one, too.

Discovering small museums with private art collections and jewelbox tearooms.

Shopkeepers who carefully wrap all my purchases like presents instead of heaving them into a bag.

Scoring bargains at Monoprix -- Target with a French accent.

“Licking the windows,” as the French call window-shopping. And with good reason. The clothes are scrumptious.

Admiring how elegantly an impeccably groomed woman tucks into a big split bone for its creamy marrow. I envy her table presence.

Steak, frites, walnut salad and profiteroles at L’Entrecote. It will be a sad day when someone finally cracks the code to that fabulous secret steak sauce.

Going someplace crowded and noisy for dinner. Noise always sounds better in French.

Being mistaken for French -- by a French person. There is no greater compliment.

All the other magical moments I haven’t discovered.

Yet.

Front Porch Editorial

2009-05-15T21:16:00.000-05:00

It's still spring but we're settling into our summer rhythm here in the neighborhood.

The ice cream truck rolls round in late afternoon. The mosquito foggers make their rounds at dusk. Kids roam the neighborhood in posses on their bikes arguing over the things that matter to kids. After dinner folks cut their grass, water their gardens, put the finishing touches on home construction projects before the first big summer heat wave hits.

I drink it all in from my front porch swing at The House Where the Black Cat Lives, discreetly hidden behind a hedge of holly and juniper.

That's something I learned from my cats. If you just sit quietly by the window and observe long enough eventually -inevitably - something of interest will come to you. I don't need to look far.

My neighbors are adding a sun room to their house. This fact probably wouldn't be noteworthy if they hadn't already added on so much over the years. The original structure, a 1920s bungalow, now sports a Rapunzel's tower. And an imposing three-story fortress. And a gazebo. And a fountain. And an assortment of gingerbread, iron grill work and stone masonry.

On top of all that, it's large. Very large. And pink. Very pink. To quote my favorite style guru, Tim Gunn, it's a lot of look.

And people do look. Actually they stare.

I like my neighborhood. It's old, diverse and has character. The melange of architectural styles range from Hollywood Spanish and Tudor cottages to asbestos-shingled 1950s tract houses. Until recently we weren't too snobby. We were who we were, our architectural differences be damned. But then we decided to try to turn ourselves into an Historic District with all that goes along with that. Now we have Rules.

Not that that's a bad thing, but I suspect that the people who make "the Rules" do not approve of my neighbors' addition. I'm pretty sure they do not approve of many of their additions. I also suspect my neighbors take a certain pride and pleasure in NOT following the Rules.

I'm not sure whose side I'm on. On the one hand, I'm all for historic preservation. I've seen too many unpretty examples of what happens when the past is not preserved or preserved badly.

On the other hand, I am a strong supporter of the rights of the individual. Believe me if I wanted to live in a place with covenants, there are many other places I could live. But I live here. And I like it. And you know what .... I like my neighbors' house. It's odd. It's quirky. It's unique.

One evening a family new to the neighborhood cruised by on bikes. As they approached, they slowed, they gaped, they pointed. And then the littlest girl, a child of about seven gasped, "Look Mommy. Isn't that the most beautiful house you ever saw?"

I felt that way the first time I spied my Barbie's Dream House under the Christmas tree. I felt that way the first time I saw Cinderella's castle at Disney World. I felt that way the first time I saw Versailles. All these structures are a little over the top -- but exactly perfect just as they are. And who is to say the pink house isn't perfect just as it is? Certainly not I.

I hope my neighbors enjoy their new sun room.