Cat tails

This morning I went outside to feed Mrs. Moustache and pregnant Penelope—but found a new large tough-looking whitish orange tomcat we will call Bruiser. He has a pugilist’s smashed up face, a dirty snout and was hanging around Moustache. He apparently wants to make kittens with Moustache (great yet more and more kittens!) He looked really mean and was not going to scare away easily. Dash to the rescue! Singling out Bruiser he gave chase and the cat took a powder.

Now, you probably recall that I have three inside cats, two of which are semi-feral kittens. Winnie our British Shorthair, brought from the States, fell in love with Frida the oldest feral incurring our assistance in kidnapping her from the wild side of life. Frida is finally becoming tame enough at the age of about 6 months such that people other than Esperando and I can approach her and pet her. The second and younger feral was briefly named Poppet and ran through some curious names before finally becoming Carmen (as in the Bizet gypsy and the latina Miranda). Carmen is still young and small and has been moved to a crate on my desk for the last 4 days because otherwise she will climb in a dresser drawer and stay hidden all day and sleep. She needs more exposure to watching humans come and go. Actually she is affectionate up close, but quite frightened to see a human towering over her when she is outside of her crate. The last two days she has come to the front of the crate and meowed at me, a good sign, so I take her out, pet her, then put her back again. Carmen has a tail deformity that makes her look bobtailed, although it is actually a curly tail like a piglet.

Picture this setting: Dash is outside; and Frida who was pouncing around playing has left the room, as has Winnie. Seizing the moment, I take Carmen out of the crate, and gently pet her, put her on the cat playstand while I drag some catnip mice along to which a long string had been tied. She is getting used to playing with me standing over her, a little worried but doing ok, when for some reason she freaks out and runs away from me racing across the room to under the chest in our bedroom.

The reason turns out to be that the string and the mouse has wrapped around and tied itself in a knot to her tail at a curly joint so this is racing after her. She is not amused. I crawl down on the floor and reach under the chest, grabbing both ends of the string hoping to gently drag her from under the chest, but she hisses and snarls and runs to the other end of the chest. The string is on firmly. I try to reach her with my bursitis arm but can’t reach far enough without some undue pain. She leaps from under the chest and runs to hide in the sitting room under the couch. I drag the couch from the wall and she runs to hide under the other dresser in her favorite drawer. Unfortunately the mouse part of the contraption has wrapped itself around the dresser leg, painfully pulling her tail. In fact I am worried the string will cut or even sever her tail if I try to open the drawer. I can hear her growling from pain inside the drawer. I finally realized the mouse is caught up and started to unwind it when there is a knocking at the door--the maids are alarmed! The front door has blown open and Frida had escaped! Go away. It’s fine, she’ll come back, don’t worry I say. They put Dash in the room. Great, I’m not sure what this kitten will do, but having Dash help me peer in the drawer is not what I need. More knocking, go away I say, don’t bother me right now—but Frida is outside! they said. While the maids are freaking out, I am worried about Carmen cutting or gnawing her tail off.

I finally unwind the mouse from the dresser leg, and she leaps across to an adjacent drawer taking mouse and string on her tail with her. When I open the first drawer there is only a mouse and string stretching across to the next drawer. I cut the mouse off so I can open the new drawer without issues and find Carmen huddled in the corner still with string tightly bound to her poor little squiggle tail. After calming her a bit I cut the string away. Happily her tail didn’t seem any the worse for wear—and she didn’t tear my arm off either.

In the meantime, Frida is recaptured by the two exuberant maids from the front porch and is apparently glad to be returned to the house. Now that I can turn my attention away from Carmen, I said Winnie is also gone. No! He’s not in your room! No. I trail along outside behind them trying to explain to them why I couldn’t deal with them earlier, but they are so focused on finding Winnie now that won’t even listen. I have a momentarily remembrance of the kitten that got run over, and thoughts of Bruiser who is probably spoiling for a fight. It takes a while to locate him, but the gardener finally encounters Winnie on a neighbor’s porch. Fortunately, he was spared an encounter Bruiser (this time). And thus, a tail was saved, a jailbreak was squelched, and life returns to relative calm at Casa Boleo.

How to eat tamales in February

The Christmas season in Mexico has been a wonderful long season of religious based customs enfolding the community which we have participated in second hand. The first part of this is Las Posadas which we are told is celebrated much more in mainland Mexico than here in Baja. It generally involves an extended family group, with part of the group representing the Virgin and St. Joseph outside at night with candles seeking room at the inn musically through the verses of a traditional Christmas carol. For their part the innkeeper group rejects their entreaties several times before letting them into the house, where the party continues with food, drink and piñata breaking. This kicks the season off on December 16.

Today we participated in the end of the Mexican Christmas celebration. Today is El Día de los Reyes or Epiphany (the last day of Christmas) and the day “we three kings of orient are” i.e., Melchor, Gaspar, and Balthazar, representing Europe, Arabia, and Africa, arrived on horse, camel and elephant, bringing respectively gold, frankincense and myrrh to the baby Jesus. Here, as in many parts of the world, this is celebrated by eating a Three King’s cake. While in France with the Oldest Daughter, Esperando ate the galette des Rois. This is a kind of cake with a trinket or a bean hidden inside. The person who gets the piece of cake with the trinket becomes "king" for a day.

Here in Mexico our Three King’s cake is called a rosca, which is defined in my Spanish dictionary as a pastry ring. Well it was a large pastry ring of a kind of mild fruit cake (not unlike a hot cross bun in flavor) with five baby Jesus’ baked into it. We had about 15 to 20 people at Esperando’s office who all came to have some cake. The trick is each person has to slice their own piece and if the knife cuts into a Baby Jesus or He is in the piece you get, then on February 2 you along with the other four chumps are responsible for bringing enough tamales to fed the same 15 to 20 people. Along with the cake we were served champurrado, a sort of a hot chocolate beverage which is made from maseca which is dough for flour tortillas which you then brown in a skillet (which thickens the beverage); milk; Mexican hot chocolate (a 3-inch round flat disk about ½-inch thick composed of chocolate, sugar, cinnamon and ground almonds); and cocoa. The result is kind of a thickened hot chocolate that is not so sweet, but interesting and tasty.

February 2 (tamale D-day) is the Feast of Candelaria or Candlemas which is the Feast of the Presentation of Jesus at the Temple. We were told by our assembled partygoers that the best place to buy tamales for this important day is in front of the church where a wholesale tamale undertaking is going on. I claimed one of the Baby Jesus’. I don’t know who organizes the tamale purchasing but I guess I will find out. Good grief!! A really excellent excuse to break the new diet and a validation for eating tamales to boot!!

If you want to know how to eat a tamale, click here.

A new year

Gosh here it is January 3 already! January 1 came and went without much fanfare from us as we were in bed by 9 pm, but we were awakened at midnight by firecrackers, car honkings, and the fire siren going off. What a bunch of dull people we are. We have been having a nice quiet vacation from household staff and guests over Christmas. The guesthouse has been shut from Christmas Eve through January 5.

We have been doing our own cooking and enjoying that, but I am not as good at keeping the house clean as my staff is—just plain laziness—can’t blame it on anything else! The mopping part is the part I hate worst, I have to walk all the way back to the laundry room, try to get the mop not too soppy and manage to wash the floor in my room and the kitchen on one mop’s worth of water. Then of course I have to wait 20 minutes for the floor to dry because of course the mop IS too soppy. All my nice long fingernails have broken off over the holidays with the housework and are back to the nubs that I used to have in Denver. I will be glad to have maids back who do a much better job of this than I do. Also I have been digging around in the cook’s recipe files these last few days looking for some new dishes for her to try in the coming months. I also finally found and bought shelf lining paper so that should keep them busy for a bit since we are minus houseguests at the moment.

Esperando has been busy working every day up on the Casa Abeja. Yesterday he got the main electrical in, and today he and the Lads have pulled all the old tongue-and-groove off and put all new beautiful tongue-and-groove on the north side of the house. No way a bee could squeeze between those boards now. Today Esperando found a receipt in the wall for some guy that owned our house in 1977, it was stuffed in the wall to an addition that was made. Apparently the guy was an engineer at the mine, and the Lads know of the family. We are curious to get our hands on who has owned our house. We believe it was built in 1885 by the French.

January 5 all my staff will be back, Esperando will go back to work, and the Architect will get the bathroom roughed in. Then it is for us to buy a tub, bath sinks, faucets, toilet and the like so we can have a functioning bath. By the way, Penelope is pregnant again.