What Do Bess and Stephen Colbert Have in Common?

I pulled out my copy of Mastering the Art of French Cooking and tried to commune with the spirit of Julia Child like that scene in Ratatouille where the rat communes with the dead chef. I had inherited the book from my grandma. It came to me in pristine condition. It had clearly spent more time on the bookshelf than in the kitchen (actually, it had probably never even seen the inside of the kitchen), and retained a comforting grandma's-house smell. So instead of communing with Julia, I communed with my grandma. Who I don't remember cooking much besides lamb chops and something she called "junk soup" and who detested cats.

She was, however, extremely fond of chocolate, to the point that my cousin distributed See's Candies at her funeral and everyone agreed it had been a fitting memorial gesture. I flipped through the dessert chapter. Julia hadn't done much with chocolate. In my head, I substituted chocolate chips for fresh fruit in the clafoutis, the tarts, the apple Charlotte.

And then I realized I have been going about this whole Cooking for Your Cat project all wrong.

If I were cooking French food for my grandma, I would cook with as much chocolate as possible. If I am cooking for Bess, I should use the food that she likes (though not chocolate, obviously, because it's very bad for her). Close observation over the past year has revealed that Bess likes: salmon, crab, shrimp, cottage cheese, orange juice, marrow bones (probably) and anything that makes her think she's getting away with something. Plus the ingredients in commercial wet cat food, most of which I cannot reproduce without the benefits of science. Oh, and pet cookies.

Very simple. In theory. (Except for all the vitamins and random stuff like riboflavin.) In practice, it all sounds like a recipe for a particularly disgusting bouillabaisse. But maybe that's what makes cats happy? Well, my cat.

We shall see...