Feeding & Nutrition

The old cat had started leaving food, not refusing it the way she'd refused things in her youth, but leaving it, eating a mouthful and walking off as if the bowl had reminded her of something she'd rather forget, and the weight, which had always sat solid on her bones, began to slip. The vet said old age, partly, and teeth, partly, and try something she can't resist, which is a tall order from a cat who'd resisted most things by the age of fourteen.

I'd been cooking prawns one evening, peeling them into the sink, and the heads and shells, which I'd have composted without a thought, sat there smelling of the sea in a way the cat appeared from two rooms to investigate. She'd never cared for prawns before, but the smell of the raw heads stopped her, and on a hunch I put a couple in a pan with water and let them simmer into a thin stock the colour of weak tea.

She drank it. Not ate, drank, lapping the warm broth from a saucer the way she'd lapped nothing in months, and the partner, arriving home, stopped in the doorway and said the flat smelled like a pier, which was fair, because it did, and the seafood note hung in the hall long after the pan was washed. The cat didn't care about the opinion of the room, she cared about the broth, and the broth, plainly, was the thing she'd been waiting for.

I made it a small ritual, the heads from my own cooking saved in a tub, simmered gently, cooled, poured warm over a little of her food or served alone, and the leaving stopped, the weight steadied, and she started meeting the saucer with the focus of a cat who'd found the one warm thing worth getting up for. The partner tolerated the smell on the grounds that a cat eating is worth a pier-scented hallway, which is the kind of bargain only a person who loves both the cat and the cook would strike.

The vet, when I mentioned the prawn heads, raised an eyebrow at the salt and said go easy, a cat's kidneys don't thank you for the sea, so I rinsed the shells and kept the stock pale, more suggestion than soup, and watched her thrive on less than I'd feared. The old girl, who'd been sliding, found a reason to finish the bowl, and the reason was the smell of the sea in a pan, which is the most cat thing I've ever watched happen.

What I didn't expect was how the small act changed the evening. The simmer became a signal she learned, the sound of the pan meaning the warm thing was coming, and she'd appear by the stove with a look that said she remembered this from somewhere, the hunt, the sea, the warm prey, translated into a saucer by a person who'd finally guessed right. The partner hated the smell, the cat loved the broth, and I stood between them pleased to have solved the only problem the vet had left me with.

She's older now, and the broth still comes, the heads still saved, the hallway still briefly a pier, and the weight holds, which is the whole point. The prawn heads I simmered were never a recipe, they were a guess that landed, and the guess, more than the food, is what the old cat seems to have forgiven me for, the years of bowls she'd walked away from finally answered by the sea she'd always, it turns out, been able to smell from two rooms away.