The splitter splatter of little feet

So we had a quilt guild meeting last night.

The creation of committees--including a refreshment committee--was on the agenda, but the board members were supposed to bring something for this meeting.

Last month, before the board was created, I had been at the initial planning meeting and had volunteered to bring some cookies to that meeting as well. That time, I forgot until the last minute and picked something up at the grocery store, then misjudged rush hour and arrived after the refreshments had already been consumed.

This month I planned to redeem myself by bringing something homemade. I had a busy but relaxed day yesterday, getting the treasury report up to date and fiddling around with the membership list. I made a lovely refreshment that the recipe calls "blondies" (as opposed to brownies, you know), which are essentially a chocolate chip bar cookie.

They looked done before the time was up, but I left them in and they didn't burn or anything, so that was good. I poked them with a knife when I took them out and they seemed okay inside - maybe a little soft, but I decided that was just because they were still hot.

So I left the pan on a wire rack (thanks Dad! If I hadn't had that, I'd have left the pan on top of the stove...) to cool while I got the last of my things together. When I went back downstairs and looked in the pan, there were these random depressions in the surface, as if it had not, in fact, been fully cooked, and had fallen a bit, but only in certain spots.

Then it occurred to me that these certain spots were all of a certain size and a certain shape, and that's when I realized that my freaking cat had walked across the pan, leaving footprints in the still-hot cookie stuff. Of course I immediately went into salvage mode...Is there time to make more? (Nope) How bad is it? Can it be fixed? Has this thing really come to pass?

It's true that the cat has taken to walking across the counters because, even though she always always ALWAYS has fresh water in her own private spot by her food, she never never NEVER drinks there, so she is forced (by circumstances, don't you see?) to seek her liquid sustenance elsewhere. Like mainly in the kitchen sink. My grand plan to thwart her evil machinations has been to keep the dishes always washed and the sink dried out with a cloth so she'll learn not to bother. (What are you laughing at? I COULD wash my dishes as soon as they're used.)

I examined the dessert closely and didn't find any actual SIGN of the cat, other than, you know, the footprints. Maybe it was my imagination. She had been lying on the stairs all afternoon. Maybe she was still there. Maybe I made this all up. But no, there she was, lying on the couch. Still. The stuff was hot. Don't animals have instincts? Wouldn't she have gone around? I went over and checked her feet. No crumbs. I actually got down and smelled her feet.

They smelled like cat litter. The dessert stayed home.


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