Naughty Kitty

March 5, 2016

I went into the kitchen last night, to fetch my nightly allotment of peanuts. When I returned to the living room, Scout the Cat was perched on an end table and lapping up Caparone Vineyard’s wonderful sangiovese, from my wine glass.

So now I have a wine-sipping cat, and artistic vintners and great guys Marc and Dave Caparone, of Paso Robles, California have a new customer.

Scout’s tastes are very un-catlike. She eats whole grain bread, watermelon, strawberries and corn on the cob. She goes into a nightly conniption fit when I make my salad, as spinach and other greens make her batshit crazy with joy. I have to hold the spinach leaves because it is difficult for her to pick up the greens from the oak floor. This has led to some inadvertent cat bites on my delicate fingers.

Father and son Caparone only make red wines, unfined (their term) and unfiltered, in their beautiful, narrow microclimate valley above the Pacific Ocean. They bottle a mean cabernet, a luscious zinfandel, a worshipful nebbiolo and the aforementioned ruby-red sangiovese. Scout has shown no interest in the other varietals, but last night it was like she was in a party scene from “Breakfast at Tiffany’s.”

I picked up the wine glass and pooh-poohed my naughty kitty, who looked at me like I had just put her in rehab. I have written this before: Every living creature gets high. With songbirds and raccoons, it’s fermented berries. There is nothing more pathetic than watching drunken goldfinches on a blackberry bender lurching on an electric wire. Heck, cows eat wild marijuana—even worms imbibe. Politicians drink three-day-old cherry Kool-Aid. So God (if He exists) is the universal inventor/dispenser of High.

(From the desk and window ledge and sofa back of Scout Cat Baldwin, for Cat Fancy Magazine) “Caparone Sangiovese is rich and fruity, melony even, with just a hint of catnip and cardinal wing, and a crunch of salad green. Serve this wine with salmon, tuna, cod, lobster, chicken breast, Big Mac, Fritos, and mouse sushi. 4 Meows—highest rating.”

Marc and Dave, you may want to put a “cat caution” label on your sangiovese, next to the one about pregnant women. I suspect Scout the fine feline is not alone.

 

“Fish gotta swim, birds gotta fly” . . .

 

And cats just want to have fu-un.

 

 

 

 

About Eugene Jones Baldwin

I am a writer: non-fiction, fiction, journalism (Alton Telegraph), essays (The Genehouse Chronicles) and have a website: eugenebaldwin.com. I've published a couple dozen short stories and had eleven plays produced. Current projects: "Brother of the Stones" (available on Kindle), a book of short stories; "The Faithful Husband of the Rain, short stories"; "A Black Soldier's Letters Home, WWII,;" "There is No Color in Justice," a commentary on racism; "Ratkillers," a new play. I am an avocational archaeologist and I take parts of my collection of several thousand Indian artifacts (personal finds) to schools, nature centers, libraries etc. and talk about the 20,000 year history of The First people in Illinois. (See link to website) I'm also a playwright (eleven plays produced), musician, historian (authority on the Underground Railroad in Illinois, the Tuskegee Airmen) and teacher.
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