I don’t believe in ghosts. But I believe in ghost cats.

There are certain places that my departed cats seem to like hanging around. They’re basically the same places they liked to be when they actually walked on four legs–any place where they might get fed, or could play with water.

Often I’ll be standing at the kitchen sink, or at one of the bathroom sinks, and I’ll feel that familiar delicate brushing of the back of my leg with their whiskers or the side of their face, inquiring if dinner is going to be soon. Or the slight flick of their tail as they circle me, winding between my legs and making it impossible for me to take a step for fear of squashing them. Sometimes I’ll feel the cool, “bop bop bop” of a tiny nose tapping against my leg, sniffing for who knows what.

I’ll turn around, and sometimes it’s my actual, living cats. But sometimes there is nothing there.

I’ll look around to see if maybe one of them brushed past me and quickly left the room, but usually I’ll see them both snoozing on their cat beds on the dining room table. Beds that, inexplicably, they refused to get inside, but will make biscuits on the top until they flatten out and become mattresses instead of hidey caves.

They don’t just make themselves known by touch. I’ll also hear them going down the stairs. Always down, never up. I’m not sure why. I’ll be sitting on the couch, right next to the stairs, and hear the unmistakable padding of paws down the stairs, each one followed by the slight click of their toenails. I would like to say that sometimes it’s my actual cats, but there’s never a cat there. Our floors are creaky, but they don’t mimic the sound of a cat walking down the stairs.

But most unsettling is seeing them. I mean, I don’t see them. But my two cats do. Always in our bedroom or closet, and always on the ceiling. They will both pause, look up at the same spot on the ceiling, and then their eyes will dart back and forth, back and forth, always looking at exactly the same spot. I have followed their gaze many times, looking for a bug, or a spider, or a swaying spider web, or a shadow, or a flash of light from outside. There is never anything there. I think, maybe it’s a sound coming from the HVAC system, or a bird or squirrel on the roof, but I never hear anything.

This mostly happens in our walk-in closet, where we have one of our cats’ ashes.

If I thought there were a ghost of a person in my house, I would move the hell out. Even if it was someone I knew and loved. That’s just too creepy. But the cats? I don’t know, it’s kind of reassuring. Like they’re just visiting to make sure everything is ok, maybe giving our cats some pointers about getting at the hidden snacks, sniffing the different foods they’re eating, sniffing their butts.

Our cats don’t seem too concerned about it, so I guess it’s ok with me.

Mediterranean Mashup: A Delicious Disaster

I made up a recipe awhile back for pizza with a Mediterranean theme—spinach, artichoke hearts, kalamata olives, feta cheese, etc. I painstakingly took photos of each step as I made it, intending to post the recipe here. Then I looked at the photos: The pizza itself, with each topping added one by one. It was essentially the same photo over and over. That’s not how this works! That’s not how any of this works!

I never said I was especially bright.

So, I invited my friend Karen over one night, and we re-enacted the making of the pizza, with “action shots” instead of pizza shots. Ok, there are a few pizza shots too.

Let’s start with the first photo, above. This shows you everything you will need to make the pizza—except the fresh oregano and basil. I thought of those after I took the photo.

ARGH! I mentioned artichoke hearts, but I didn’t use them this time, so they are not pictured above. But really, wouldn’t artichokes be overkill at this point? Use them if you like, though. They are good. Use the softest parts, chop them into small chunks and add them with the rest of the toppings in Step 8.

Here’s a complete list of ingredients (minus the artichokes):

Pizza dough (or premade pizza crust)
Ricotta cheese (low fat)
Mozzarella cheese (part skim)
Feta cheese (fat free)
Frozen spinach
Fresh oregano and basil (or dried)
Sundried tomatoes
Garlic (any kind—fresh/chopped, jar/minced, or pre-roasted cloves like I used here)
Kalamata olives
Seasonings—salt, pepper, red pepper flakes

Step 1:

Preheat oven to 375. I put it on convection bake. If you have a pizza stone, even better! Let it sit in the oven to heat up.

Step 2:

Microwave the frozen spinach until thawed, dump in a strainer (I sometimes call it a colander, what do you call it?) and press it down to get as much liquid out as possible. I used a paper towel to absorb some of the liquid. Watch out, that spinach can be very hot. Let it sit there and cool.

I didn’t take a photo of that part. I got distracted by something shiny.

Step 3:

Roll out the dough.

This turned out to be more challenging than we thought. Sometimes I’ll get a premade, already baked crust, so you can dive right in with adding the toppings. This time I got a fresh ball of pizza dough, thinking that the texture would be better. That was true, but it took some wrestling and a lot of flour to get the dough rolled out. Make sure to leave the dough in the fridge until you’re ready to use it. Once it warms up, it’s harder to work with.

We put a light layer of flour on a piece of parchment paper (the pizza will stay on this during cooking) and used a rolling pin to roll the dough out as thin as possible.

Oops, I lied. Sorry. We didn’t put the dough on the parchment paper, and it was hard to pull it off the countertop. Put the parchment paper down first, then a layer of flour, then the dough.

I would like to say that we ended up with a perfect circle, but it was more like a lopsided square. Someday I’m going to learn how to throw a pizza to make it round.

Before adding any toppings, brush the whole surface of the dough with olive oil (all the way to the edge).

Step 4:

Cheese!

Spread a thin layer of ricotta cheese on the dough, stopping at about an inch from the edge. I think we used most of the container. Add some salt and pepper, and red pepper flakes if you like it a little spicy. I like it a LOT spicy.

Step 5:

Add the spinach.

It’s easiest to use your fingers to drop pinches of the spinach all over the pizza.

Step 6:

Sprinkle on the entire bag (yes, the entire bag) of mozzarella cheese.

Finally, add the feta cheese. Just use as much as you like. We used the whole container.

Step 7:

Fresh oregano . . . and fresh basil.

Chop about a tablespoon of oregano (or dried), and as much basil as you like. We used about a quarter cup. Sprinkle these all over the pizza. I put these on now instead of the very end, so they wouldn’t get dried out while cooking.

Ok, I lied again. I made the mistake of putting them on at the end, and they got crispy. Don’t do that. Put them on now.

Step 8:

The rest of the toppings. Chop your sundried tomatoes, olives and garlic, and add those in any order you like.

We only took a photo of chopping our pre-roasted garlic, but we really did also chop the olives and sundried tomatoes. In any amount that you like. I used roughly a small handful of each.

This is where you can add chopped artichoke hearts if your heart (get it?) desires. I’m picky about mine: Even though everything in the can is edible, I usually strip off the outer layer of the artichoke heart before chopping because it’s a little stringy/chewy.

Man, I really need to get new knives.

Here’s roughly what the pizza will look like before it bakes. I hope for your sake that yours is round.

Step 9:

Into the oven!

Transfer the pizza, still on the parchment paper, to your preheated pizza stone. If you don’t have a pizza stone, you can place it directly on the center rack.

It was a good thing Karen was there, as the pizza transfer takes at least 3 hands. We had 4 hands, and still almost dropped it.

Bake for 15-20 minutes, checking often once you hit 15 minutes. If the cheese is melted and the crust is just slightly brown, it’s done.

Step 10:

Eat! Here’s the finished product.

It was delicious. Enjoy!

Cat of a Thousand Names

It all started with a case of gender confusion. One of our “twin” cats, Baxter (sister and brother, actually, but they were practically identical), had just passed away after a fairly long and ugly battle with stomach cancer. I wasn’t ready for another cat, but my family had other ideas.

I left for a trip just before the 4th of July, and my parting instructions were: “Don’t get another cat while I’m gone. But if you do, make sure it’s a girl. We don’t want another boy cat beating up poor Betty.” We loved Baxter more than anything, but he really could be an asshole when he wanted to be. Which was any time (1) Betty was anywhere near, (2) he spied something on a surface that should be knocked off–preferably glass and breakable–and (3), breakfast time, which could start as early as 4am with insistent yowling. So, basically most of the time.

There’s Betty. A softy at heart, but always ready with a few claws if necessary.

I wasn’t surprised when I started getting texts with photos of an adorable orange and white kitten.

Enter Waldo.

He was the cutest little thing, athletic and possessing an impressive alley cat swagger at only 3 months. We decided to keep the name Waldo, thinking how fun it would be ask “Where’s Waldo?” every time we were looking for him. There’s no way that would get old, right?

The time came to have Waldo neutered. I took him to the home of the woman his foster mom recommended for his last distemper shot, and she offered to make the appointment through the vet she works with. She flipped him around to have a look at his rear end, and said “Uh . . . I think you mean spayed. This one is a girl!”

Enter Wilma.

We didn’t want to change his–er, her name too drastically, and Wilma was a good fit with Betty, if you’re a fan of the Flintstones. Their coloring even matched their names: Betty has black hair, and Wilma is mostly orange. Cute, right?

Except that somehow the gender switch activated a naming switch, and we started calling her everything under the sun. Wilmer, Wilderama, Wilmy, Wilma Lou, Wilma Lou Hoo, Willy Wonka, Little Willy Willy Won’t . . . Go Home, Silly Willy, Little Willy, Willy Loman, Willy Willy Oxenfree. And probably more that I can’t think of now.

Every morning when it’s time for breakfast, I’ll start calling all of her names (and a few for Betty, just to make sure she doesn’t feel left out), and by the time I finish running through them all, they have both finished eating and are settling down for their morning nap.

Next, I suppose we’ll have to round out the family with a Fred, Barney, Pebbles, Bam-Bam and Dino. I can only imagine how long breakfast will take.

 

 

Looking at life from behind: In no particular order

I have an empty photo frame that has been hanging on our stairway wall for three years. Every now and then, my daughter will ask why I haven’t put any photos in it. Until now, I could honestly say “I have no idea!”

It’s not like we don’t have photos in frames all over the house. We have tons of them. All happy, smiling faces of our family at different points in our lives—soon after J. was born, at the beach, us beaming and her peering out from her Baby Bjorn with an expression both concerned and nearsighted. A posed family Christmas photo when J. was about 6 and S. was a toddler, where only I noticed the slight yellowish bruise on her cheek from the latest episode of S.’s “enthusiastically throwing board books” phase. In front of the Eiffel Tower, the week after Princess Diana died, long before we had any idea how full and chaotic the next 20 years would be.

I kind of felt like, “been there, done that” in the hanging photos department. But the stairway wall was bare, and needed something. So up went the photo frame, and there it sat. Somehow filling it with more of the same types of photos didn’t seem right. This frame should have its own special type of photos.

But what?

Recently I was transferring photos from an old hard drive to my laptop, and it struck me: The photos that I found most poignant were the ones taken from the back. Photos that spoke to me not through the expressions on the subjects’ faces, but their poses, their posture, their surroundings. The photos where no one felt obligated to create a “hey we’re having fun” face, but were simply going about their business, thinking who knows what.

Here’s one of my favorites: A perfect late spring day, after coming home from a joint birthday party for both kids. He was three, she was seven. We had to explain to S. what a pinwheel was, but he was fascinated. He didn’t let go of that pinwheel the rest of the afternoon. Here he’s taking a breather and watching the rest of the kids running and doing cartwheels in the yard. Who knows what was going through his head? Not knowing, I’m free to make up stories about what could have been happening in the photo.

Here’s another one–walking to our first ride on the Tower of Terror (and many more to come):

And there are more:

Even though I know the back story (sorry, pun really wasn’t intended but I like it so I’m keeping it) for all these photos—after all, I was always the photographer—it makes me happy to think that they could have been telling any number of stories. I can make up new ones to match them if I want. There are no faces or expressions to prove me wrong.

Which reminds me of something I sometimes think about: What are the stories of the people who randomly appear in your family photos? What were they doing at that moment? I know what we were doing, but their narrative was completely different that day. And come to think of it, wouldn’t it be cool to be able to locate all the family photos that YOU have randomly appeared in? Those photos alone could tell the entire story of your life, in no particular order.

But that’s a whole separate line of musing that I’ll get into later.

J. and I finally took that empty photo frame off the wall and filled it with a crooked collage of our favorite photos. It took some wrestling (“Aw man, now there’s a HAIR between the two pieces of glass! Ok, take it apart again.”), but now it accurately represents us: Not perfect, a little askew, slightly messy, memories overlapping, mostly happy.