The Night I Thought I Ate Cat...

...and kept eating.

I don't usually blog things in close-to-real time.  Well, one might make the argument that, recently, I don't often blog things at all, but this one's really too good to miss.

As usual, I came when called and sat down for dinner tonight with my host-family.  My host mom was off, at some one of her multiple fun lessons, likely - she takes Italian lessons, painting lessons, goes to theatre rehearsals, and goodness knows what all else - so it was just me, my host-sister "A.", and my host-dad.  Served were potatoes, carrots, and some slab of meat in creamy yellowish sauce, with water, a par-for-the-course meal around here.  Usually I recognize the meat as something normal, like chicken or beef, if, indeed, I bother to think about it at all.

I have been told that some people really focus on their food and take delight in what they eat.  Some skilled souls even seem able to mentally connect with their food on a daily basis.  I am not one of the souls thus blessed.  Depending on how distracted I am by actual or imaginative life, I may not progress as far as actually knowing what's on the plate in front of me.  Distracted by various litanies, conversations, or procrastinations inside my own head, and I'll eat idly and blindly, not bothering much about what I'm eating or how much of it I have - or haven't - eaten.  Good for consuming my own burnt cookies by the dozen, then flailing my hand around on the plate a bit before realizing, "Oh.  Drat.  I ate them all already."  Distracted by reading or writing any form of literature, poetry, or novel, and I might well either A.) Eat old shoe leather without noticing I had even chewed anything, B.) Starve to death in the same room as a gourmet meal because I haven't figured out who falls in love with Miss Brown or who killed Lady Helena yet.

When worrying about homework, experiencing a painful shoulder, and surrounded by conversation in French tonight, I fell closest to situation 1, above - litanies in own head taking cognitive precedence over physical reality.  Only a sudden question from my host sister recalled me back to the present table.

"Do you know what kind of meat it is?"

Huh?  What, who - me?  Meat...oh, yes, that's meat I'm eating.  Hm!  Come to think of it - chews meat meditatively - it's actually rather good.  Quite moist.

Then her question sunk in.  Do I -

"Should I?  Do I...want to?"  I asked her.

"What do you think it is?" she said, looking perhaps vaguely amused.

I stared at my plate and gave serious thought to the meat.  It wasn't chicken.  Nor beef.  Pork, maybe?  Except it looked a little too reddish for pork.  Hmm.  This was getting worrisome.

"Pork?"  I hazarded a guess. 

It occurred to me then that I had seen it defrosting on the counter that morning.  A situation that, even in my half-asleep state, had caused me to cross my fingers and pray a little bit, because I'm not much of a cook, but I'm pretty sure one of those major safe-food tips is that you don't want to leave meat flopped on a counter all day defrosting at room temperature.  Granted, it was wrapped in plastic, but all day long?  And on a countertop that, during the past week, has become host to not-so-infrequent visits by the large family of ants that are having a rollicking good time in the kitchen trashcan, to the apparent blithe unconcern of everyone but me?  No; this didn't seem like the best possible idea.  But, it's neither my house nor my meat, so what was I to do?  I shook my head, ate - something - for breakfast, and wandered off to catch the tram.

Ah, but now the question was, quid the state of the meat that morning, besides room-temp?  Long, chicken-breast-like shape, reddish then too.  Sort a beefy color, but a chicken shape.  This was not looking good.

"No; it's not a pig."  Was she slightly too amused about that?

"I have no idea," I gave up.  "Just tell me it's not something really weird, please."

"Oh, no; it's not weird for us," she said, not at all assuaging my fears.

I am not a typically adventurous eater, but I'll try many things on the basis of one question - that you tell me what it is before you make me eat it.  Now here I was in the middle of a rather good meal, suddenly fearing the worst.  I've heard they eat horse in this country...and of all the things I could never forgive myself if I knowingly ate, it would be a horse.  I haven't spent half my life around those animals, tending to their every need, and getting flung off into mud puddles and bitten on the butt in the process, only to eat one in Belgium.  No siree - no horse-eating for me!

I blanched, inspecting the morsel on my fork suspiciously.  I twirled it over and over, a safe distance from my face.  Did I dare to ask if it was horse, or should I try calculatus eliminatus and see if it was something else first?

"But it...is weird for me?"  spoken tentatively, eyeing A. and the forkful of...something...as if I wasn't sure which one of the two might bite me first.

"Well, if you've never eaten cat before, then - "

CAT?  She had to be kidding.  No one eats cats.  Well, maybe in rural Asia or something, but...No.  No-no-no-no-no.  It wasn't possible.  Was it?

"Cat?  You have got to be kidding me."  I said, giving her my best sibling-to-sibling "oh, come on, lamebrain.  Knock it off" look.

Now, if I had the sense God gave seafood, I would have processed right away that A., though generally a very nice girl, is also a maniacal and well-practiced prankster, aka, a younger sibling.  The youngest of her siblings, actually, though she's a few years older than I.  And, though she usually spares me, I have witnessed a few incidences of sisterly love in this house that should have given me fair warning.  But one does not think entirely clearly when one has just been stopped in the middle of a veritable viande de mystère. 

"No, really!" she said, with a perfectly straight face.  "We don't believe in wasting anything useful here."  Broke into short explanation in French about waste and the environment and conscientiousness.  Seeing as A.) she is actually eco-conscious enough to turn off the water while washing her face and brushing her teeth, and B.) I never do know what social and political policies to expect Europeans to actually take seriously, seeing as they abide, as a whole, by so many that I consider nuts, I was backed into a tight spot.

"You're pulling my leg.  You have to be."  I maintained my best we-are-not-amused face.  I also went from 95% to only about 75% certain that it wasn't cat.

The American phrase did not phase her.  "No, really - just ask my dad!"  She turned to him, and asked him if it was or was not chat that he was eating.

Now, my host-dad is a quiet, ostensibly mild-mannered sort of person, but he is not without his own peculiar sense of humor.  He favors a salt-shaker that looks like a little red bird with a white, plumy tail, that sits on little wind-up wheels.  He got a big kick out of my reaction to it during the first few weeks here by asking me if I wanted salt on my potatoes until I said yes, and then winding it up and letting it careen towards me across the tablecloth.  I couldn't decide whether a speechless "What on Earth?" or giggling indulgence-of-my-inner-six-year-old was the more suitable reaction.

Today, however, he looked up from his dinner, and, without batting an eyelash, said something about chat that seemed to confirm A.'s demand.  Not-cat certainty plummeted to a close 60%.  I inspected the morsel on my fork as if it had suddenly grown decidedly grotesque.

"What, you never eat cat in America?" A. asked.  At this point, my brain was very conflicted.  I, you see, am a somewhat literal and trusting (read: gullible) person.  Because of this, I can also be a very suspicious person who is afraid of seeming too gullible (read: dumb).  Not-cat had fallen to around 50-50.  But, hadn't she said earlier that she knew it was unusual for me?

I had stopped eating completely.  But, I was also ravenously hungry, because Europeans apparently find between 8 and 9 pm a suitable time to have dinner, and my American stomach is fully convinced that this is something like 2 hours too late.  And, now that I'd had to stop eating it, I'd realized that that meat really was good.  Wait a sec...did that mean I was eating cat and liking it?

"They even tell you what race" - the usual translation she uses for breed - "of cat it is when you buy it at the boucherie."  You bought it at the butcher?!

Holy goodness, I was eating a cat.

Well, at least, I though so for a solid second or so, before reason rebooted.  Something felt...off.  Not-cat certainty had bottomed out at maybe 40%.

"Aren't you going to eat it?"  she prodded.  Hmm.  I have a sibling, and that seemed too eager.  Not-cat percentage began to rise again.  She was good, though - very good.  Would have made a darn good actress.  Then, she made the slip.

"My mom had an accident with the car the other day, and we didn't want to waste it, and so - "

Ding-ding-ding-ding-ding!!  And we have our answer, folks!  It is 100% not a cat!  Even I am not gullible enough to believe I am eating a roadkill cat for dinner!  Besides, it came in a package.

I said as much, and she admitted that okay, it wasn't road kill, but didn't I like cat, anyway?

I glowered at her.  I waggled the morsel of what-ever-it-was on my fork around.  I asked her if it was horse, very plaintively.   She assured me, in a much more credible fashion, that it wasn't.  Then I ate it.  All of it.  And it was really quite good, even though I was still only about 75% certain that it wasn't a house cat.  And 100% uncertain of what it might really be.

Finished, and starting on the carrots, I practically lept out of my chair when A. started laughing fit to kill.

"It was canard!" she said, gleefully.  "Duck!  Not cat." 

"I knew you were kidding!" I shouted, which might have been a slight overstatement of the fact.  I had not, precisely, known.  These things get difficult cross-culturally, you understand.  But I had strongly suspected she was kidding.

Then she gave me that look that meant mischief again.  "But would you still have eaten it if it was cat?"