One has to watch what one eats.
My husband is very, very good during the daytime. I offer him a cake with his tea and with a wisdom and gravity akin to the Dalai Lama he refuses. “No, thankyou”, he intones, donning a face which would not look out-of-place at the Vatican,” not for me.”
This usually has the effect of making me irate, because I want that cake. And now, I feel that because he isn’t indulging, I shouldn’t either.
And I have a short furious inner dialogue about whether I should forego it, which usually ends in me giving myself permission.
And my cake disappears. Phil’s cake stays there all afternoon, and all evening. And though it’s silent – mainly because it’s made of butter, flour, sugar and eggs – it shouts. Here, it says, eat me. I’m spare. Just knocking about here on the working surface next to the microwave. Choose me, if only because of that pretty pink flower I’m sporting atop my jaunty icing.
I glower at it and reach for an apple.
During the night, the damnedest thing happens to that small innocent fairy cake.
It vanishes, much like those Victorian illusions of old. It disappears into thin air.
It is part of an ongoing mystery in our house, one which has the children chortling and hurling accusations around with happy abandon.
We buy packed lunch cakes: individually packed, one a day; and while I open a packet with 12 in it, only six are ever used in packed lunch boxes.
We cook a sponge cake, sinfully sugary and put it on the side: and I can only ever remember putting about half out onto people’s tea plates.
The truth is – and it is something I have spoken about before – there is a nighttime influence at work here.
It concerns the dog, who sleeps all evening, snoring noisily and emanating flatulently, and wakes at ten sharp for a turn round the garden and a doggie biscuit or two.
One minute he’s hairily comatose; the next erect and triangle eared, his eyes boring into Phil’s soul.
Wearily, my husband gets up and pads downstairs to let the dog out. And that’s when the cakes disappear. I’ll say no more.
Yesterday was the first of the Christmas Fairs. Phil took the family to Maddie’s school to support the annual fund-raising effort, and returned laden with a huge sumptuous sponge cake.
When I came down this morning, a paltry third of the original sat, surrounded by crumbs, in its wrapper.
No words were needed. I lifted the offending evidence high so the children could see it. They grinned widely.Time to call their father to account for the mysterious disappearance of two-thirds of the sponge cake.
Phil appeared round the kitchen door a second later with a tall tale to end all tall tales.
It was the cat, he said.
Bizarre as it may seem, this was not beyond the bounds of possibility.
Kit Kat: 17 years old in human years, 85 in cat years, a cat who encapsulates fury and demands satisfaction in every carefully engineered confrontation. Kit Kat: split-faced tortoiseshell Boadicea, a hard of hearing wailing banshee who walks on four paws to the uncompromising beat of her own timpani.
Her motto: rules are but puny human cobwebs to be swept aside with one imperious paw.
Phil’s story is as follows: he went downstairs to take out the cake from its cellophane wrapper to elicit one small slice. (Honest). He left it out on the side next to the cooker.
I have long been sceptical of my cat’s “But I’m far too frail to jump up there onto that working surface” act. Clearly she is Spring Heeled Jack in a small fluffy tortoiseshell disguise.
She jumped up and accessed the cake effortlessly.
Had this been Macaulay the Dog, the cake would have disappeared entirely within ten seconds and the dog would have spent the evening looking large, ill and sorry for himself.
But Kit Kat has an alternative approach to ruining next week’s packed lunch fodder: she daintily eats the very top layer. Just enough so that it renders the cake inedible, but not enough to prevent it remaining as a constant reminder of what might have been, but will never be.
We considered the plaintiff’s story. The cat was not going to wade in to help him with a character reference. It’s so bizarre I’m inclined to believe him. Felix is less accommodating and insists his father ate the lot.
Which would e a shame because-whether one is a cat or a Dad – one should watch what one eats.
Kate Shrewsday 
at her age she has earned the right to whatever she wants.
poor Phil, it’s his seret delight, sneaking some cake, and you mercilessly expose his foible to the world!
Which is just how my mother in law feels about cat and spouse, Sidey 😀
goodness, are you sure I am not she?
Really, Kate, could a sweet face of such design possibly be filled with stolen, fattening, gluten-packed, sugary nom-noms?
And now let’s discuss the cat! 😀
Sorry, Phil. Honestly it has nothing to do with being an understudy.
ROFL….how indeed. Not a sugary nom jom passes his lips during the day… Although do not forget that that sweet face of such design has a rather strident moustache on it right now. Roll on the end of November, Amy 😀
Its surely better for him than munching sugary nom noms all day and then again at night. he’s halfway to being good.
Tehehe – let them all eat cake! My dog has been known to scoff half a loaf of bread, if some foolish person has left it to close to the edge of the counter; my hubby has been know to scoff a half block of chocolate in the middle of the night (I was sleep walking he claims feebly;) ).
Never work with husbands or animals, Gabrielle 😀
The cat certainly looks guilty. But did the cake show evidence of a knife, or delicate teeth? And can that little cat eat so much cake? I am inclined to go with Felix’s judgement in this matter.
The evidence was destroyed by the time I got to it, Banno: I can only surmise. The official story is that the cake had hundreds of little teeth marks on top. Hmmmm….
It is easy to create the effect of feline fang marks on icing, one only has to know how to wield a cocktail fork …
You sound unsettlingly like one who has actually tried this, Cindy…
Hilarious! 🙂
We can look back and laugh, Heather…but two thirds of a sponge cake….ouch….
Fair point. 😀 I guess it was the way you told the story that I found funny, but the situation reminds me very much of one day towards the end of my summer holiday when I was about to start high school. I was getting rather nervous and upset, so as I treat I had got some oat biscuits with glace cherries on, which my Mum and I had made. HOWEVER, our beloved golden Labrador, Tom, came and ate them when my back was turned – the last ones! So as if it wasn’t bad enough the holidays were almost finished, the biscuits almost certainly were!! 😀 I loved Tom to bits, though, so I didn’t hold it against him for more than minutes.
You have to love them 😀 Labradors and retrievers do love their grub…hilarious is right, Heather: we’ve been chortling even through bewailing the loss of the cake….
Cat with a sweet tooth???? Unusual to say the least. Husbands with sweet teeth are more common, I find.
I think you should gain a cake tin to sit these delicious items within… it would just fit in that corner by the microwave 🙂
You are right, Pseu. I used to have loads when I was cooking huge batches of cakes. Now they are a distant memory. Time to re-equip!
Hilarious – even to another sweet toothed male, Kate. Jekyll and Hyde, I reckon.
Love to you both.
Dad
Thanks Dad. You’re right there.
I love the thought that the thief just took the top! Is anyone going to be brave enough to try the rest? Phil, perhaps?
It has already been despatched to the great cakehole in the sky, Speccy. We know not whose.
Did you check whiskers – man and cat’s – for evidence? One good thing about a moustache is that it stores cake DNA.
Eeeeeeew…….
Top of the cake missing! its the cat – lets be fair to Phil. Slices, thats another matter altogether.
He has since confessed to one slice, Rosemary 😀 The rest was the cat….
Reminds me a little of a cat some friends had years ago, their’s was a totally vegetarian household, even the cat and dog were fed veggie food, and the cat one day must have had enough as he came back from his travels dragging an oven-ready chicken proudly into their kitchen!
ROFL Clever soul! How in heavens name must it gave got the chicken through the cat flap 😀
The first post of yours I ever read was, I think, about Phil’s love of sponge cake. I am firmly in Felix’s camp on this one.
Yes: I have to say, Andra, the evidence is damning….
Andra and I discussed this at length over lunch this past week. She is strongly in defense of the cat. I believe your husband has been falsely accused, that the cat is guilty, and that more sponge cake is necessary for testing.
Dear Kate,
As a cat lover for many a long year, I give this posting a Triple-A rating! So many cats I’ve known who have favored me with their feline foibles, but nary a one was a cake eater.
Elisa loved dried apricots and munched contentedly on them for long minutes.
Jeremiah favored cardboard boxes. He’d hunker down in one and systematically pull it apart tossing his head upward with abandon so that cardboard shards rained down on the carpet.
Noah favored butter and if I unwittingly left the cover off the butter dish I’d find next morning the soft top scooped down into a valley and the rasp of his tongue on the remaining butter.
Thirteen cats I’ve lived with and none with a taste for cake. Ah! I see I need to train their palates!
Peace.
🙂 And you, Dee. A cat with a cardboard box thing going! Well I never. I would have loved to see Jeremiah painting the carper cardboard-coloured.Kit Kat is a very naughty butter snaffler too. It’s a wonder there is anything left in my larder, isn’t it?
Dear Kate,
It’s Dee again. I got so into the appetites of the cats with whom I’ve lived that I forgot to thank you for commenting on my Saturday posting. I’ve never forgotten that experience or the day it happened. It was pure gift.
Quite wonderful, Dee. For him to choose that moment, in the middle of such every day normality: ecstasy right at the heart of the living, breathing world. I loved the post.
Ah, a cat with a sweet tooth is it?
I once baked a tube cake to take to a birthday party for my sister-in-law. The cake was cooling on the counter while I was busy doing other things. When I came in, there was a big chunk eaten out of the bottom of the cake. Frantic as no other cake was there time to make, I carefully chiseled the cake around when the feline dined, frosted the cake, and put a PlaySchool animal in the hole and wrote “hi”. We took it to Maura’s and the family ate, then went for the birthday cake. I said not a word, nor did Tom, until Maura finally saw and started laughing. Family lore.
A cat who prowls for sugar? I think Tortoise deserves it but am a bit sad that the mystery is now spoiled. I think it makes a good children’s story Kate?
It probably would, Tammy 😀 My two were in fits over the whole thing…
Tigger shares Kit Kat’s motto: rules are but puny human cobwebs to be swept aside with one imperious paw.
But Tigger doesn’t like people food. At all. So . . . when the cake disappears . . . I know into which belly it went. 😀
That is most convenient, Nancy 😀 How obliging of Tigger…
My tabby Pippin is a known butter and salt fiend, and will quickly lick all the butter from an unguarded slice of toast or the salt right off the potato chip in your hand. Still, I’m afraid I suspect someone taller and less furry than KitKat in the disappearance of the cakes. 🙂
The tragedy is, Elizabeth, that we will never know 😀 However you are far from the only visitor who has drawn such a conclusion…
She is such a beautiful cat – and at 85 I think one might feel justified in pampering oneself in whatever way comes to mind, or eye… Which is not to say that I necessarily believe Phil’s version of events. 🙂
Ah, you fair-minded soul, Ruth. Everyone comes out well from your version of events. I think we’ll settle for your take on things 🙂
I would say, almost certainly, it was Kit Kat. At her age she would need all the sugar she can get to give her energy to jump onto the counter! Phil, on the other hand, would cut a neat small slice, to be enlarged later during the night, lol!
You have a Christie-esque approach to detective detail, Denise. And, I suspect, very accurate conclusions.
Surely that picture of innocence would not have . . . Yet, there IS that tiny pink tongue, perhaps just cleaning the last crumb from her whiskers?
There’s insufficient evidence for a conviction of either suspect, I say; and I suggest, too, that a cake tin is in order!
I think, Karen, that that is an excellent idea!
Oh yes, cat’s do eat cake. I KNOW!
Must catch up with you on that story, Nuvofelt!
I have to lose 20 more pounds. I’ve had no cake or ice cream for 9 weeks. I ain’t afeard of the Lord’s wrath any more. This is worse than hell could possibly be.
I’m right there with you. Life’s no fun without cake.
No question: Kit Kat did it.
The Siamese who controlled my teen years once licked the strawberry icing off a newly frosted cake. But her favorite was lemon chiffon pound cake–she just bit chunks out of them, even one we thought was safe behind cupboard doors.
The thing is, though, when a cat reaches senior citizen status, she deserves her little pleasures.
Aha: I knew you’d find me some concrete cat cake-eating evidence, Kathy 😀 And she became Houdini in order to access the cakes! Cupboard doors!
I am jealous of your husband’s lack of interest in these sweets!~!
When I was in my early twenties I had a miserable rat-bag cat named Lucy. She was, in every way, a horrible cat – with one redeeming feature: I could read her mind – so I always knew what she up to. But one event always springs to mind when I think of her. It was towards the end of her life, and she was mellowing slightly. I was sitting at the breakfast table, when the door opened, and Lucy poked her head around it. I then had a vision of her entering the room, skipping across to me with her tail erect – jumping up on to my lap, then on to the table, and then (ridiculously) removing the toast from my lips, and eating it. Clearly she was telegraphing her intentions because two seconds later that very event occurred. Now I’m a dog owner, and I have to rely entirely upon body language, and it’s not half as much fun.
I know. That cat telegraphing does add a dimension to life.