Something happened to the kitchen today and nobody asked my opinion of it first, which I want on record before I explain the rest.
It started with a smell. Not a bad smell exactly — I want to be fair about this — but an aggressive one, the kind that doesn’t stay politely in one room the way a smell is supposed to. It came out from under the kitchen door like it had somewhere to be. Sharp and warm and a little bit sweet underneath, with something sitting on top of it that made my whiskers do a thing I don’t love, a kind of involuntary flinch-and-lean, curious and offended at the same time. I have never smelled anything quite like it, and I have smelled the inside of the shoe closet, so that’s saying something.
I followed it to the source, which is standard procedure. A cat does not ignore a smell that strong and simply hope it resolves itself.
She was at the counter with a wooden board in front of her, and there were small pale lumps on it that she kept peeling with her fingers, and every lump she peeled made the smell get worse, in the sense that it got stronger, in the sense that it got more interesting, in the sense that I needed to be closer to it immediately. I put my front paws up on the edge of the counter to conduct a proper inspection and was informed, in the voice she uses when she means it, that I was not part of this operation. I was returned to the floor. I did not enjoy this.
I want to be clear that I was not trying to eat the lumps. I don’t even know what the lumps were doing there. I was simply trying to gather information, which is different, and which she would understand if she ever let me finish a single investigation without narrating “no” over the top of it.
Denied the counter, I did what any reasonable animal would do and took up a position in the kitchen doorway, sitting very straight, watching everything, making sure she knew I was watching. There was a green sprig of something on the board too, small and feathery, and every time she touched it the smell shifted again, got woodier, sharper, like it was trying to overtake the first smell entirely. I did not trust the sprig. I have never trusted anything that comes in a bundle held together with a twist tie.
The oven made its low warming sound, the one that means it’s thinking about getting hot, and I settled in properly because I understood this was going to be a long one. There is a particular kind of afternoon that belongs to the oven — the whole apartment slowly gets warmer around the edges, and the smell stops being a single sharp thing and starts becoming a fog that owns every room, including the ones I sleep in, including my own fur eventually, if I’m not careful about where I lie down. I was not going to let that happen without supervising every stage of it.
At some point she put a metal pan into the oven and shut the door on it, and I sat directly in front of that door for a length of time I will not apologize for. You can see the food through the little window if you get low enough and tilt your head, and I did that, repeatedly, even though nothing in there was moving and nothing in there smelled any different up close than it did from across the room. I just wanted to be sure nothing was happening in there that I hadn’t approved.
She stepped over me twice. She said my name once in the tone that means you are in the way and you know it. I did not move, because the whole point of guarding something is that you don’t get to leave right when it might matter.
The timer went off with its flat little beeping, which always makes me sit up straighter even though I know exactly what it is and it has never once meant anything was wrong. She pulled the pan out with two folded cloths and set it on top of the stove, and the smell that came off it when she lifted the foil nearly knocked me sideways — it had gone from sharp to something deeper, roasted, almost sweet at the edges, and I stopped being suspicious of it and started being furious that none of it seemed to be coming toward me.
I said so. Loudly, more than once, in the voice reserved for genuine grievances rather than routine commentary.
She looked down at me for a second, and then — and I want this part recorded accurately, because it matters — she cut off a small plain piece from the side, one that hadn’t been anywhere near the lumps or the sprig, and set it down on the floor tile in front of me to cool. Just for me. Unseasoned, unbothered by whatever had been happening in that pan all afternoon, still a little warm.
I ate it in the manner of someone accepting a formal apology. Slowly, so she’d understand the gravity of it.
I still don’t fully trust the rest of whatever was in that pan. The smell held on well into the evening, drifting into the back room, sitting faintly in the sweater on the reading chair when I went to check on it later, which I did not appreciate — that sweater has a scent profile I consider settled business, and I don’t need a second one competing with it. But I’ve decided, on balance, having reviewed all the evidence and eaten my piece of it, that whatever went on in that kitchen today was conducted under my supervision, with my knowledge, and, as of the moment that piece of chicken hit the floor, my full and formal approval.
I would still like to be consulted earlier next time. A smell that size deserves some warning.