Okra is one of those vegetables that people down here must have. We use it a lot. If you want a good, ole Southern dish, you pretty much had better like the stuff. I can take it or leave it...except in gumbo. You gotta have okra in gumbo or it just ain't gumbo. So, we put a lot of okra in the freezer for off-season cooking. That is just what was happening in the kitchen a couple of days ago. Mark graciously chopped about a half bushel of the pods and readied them for the freezer while I canned tomatoes. The whole time all of this activity was taking place in my tiny kitchen, Bat (the resident cat) lounged on the floor. I have gotten accustomed to doing the "cat step dance" as I work. It takes fancy footwork to avoid stumbling over this huge fellow!
At some point, Mark dropped an okra and Bat pounced. Perhaps he thought it was a lizard or frog, I am not sure, but either way, he claimed it. There was no going back. It was his. After he batted it around for a while it became obvious that I needed to do something about his attacks. He was becoming oblivious to my needing the floor. A simple fix was to thread the okra pod onto a piece of string and dangle it from a chair. There, he could battle the menacing okra but still stay somewhat out from underfoot. This made life a lot easier for me as I knew where he was at all times...attacking that rogue okra!
Bat is two years old but is still a kitten at heart. When he is outside, he can run off a lot of energy but, on rainy days, he has to be entertained. To my way of thinking, if a vegetable can be a play toy that will keep a cat out of the way, I am willing to sacrifice one! That single okra kept the cat amused for over an hour giving us time to finish our canning. It is no wonder folks down here love okra so much!
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