Colanders. What are they? Most people have one in their kitchen, and yet how many of us truly stop to consider the colander? I would wager very few. A colander has holes. The holes let water out. This is, by any reasonable measure, remarkable.
I was thinking about colanders yesterday evening when Koko knocked one off the counter in the apple barn kitchen. He stared at it for exactly eleven seconds — I timed it — and then walked away. Yum Yum sniffed it once. The implications were chilling. My moustache began to tingle, which as longtime readers of this column know, is never without significance. Why would a cat of Koko’s intellectual caliber deliberately select a colander from among all the objects on the counter? What was he trying to tell me?
It is worth noting that Pickax has seen three kitchen-related arsons this year alone, which for a town of three thousand seems, well, about average for Pickax. I myself happened to be in the vicinity of two of them, which is simply coincidence and hardly worth mentioning, and yet people do mention it, don’t they? Why is that?
But back to colanders. They come in many sizes. Some are metal. Some are plastic. Is one better than the other? Who can say. I purchased a stainless steel colander last spring using a modest K Fund allocation designated for “journalistic research equipment,” which my accountant assures me is perfectly standard. It cost fourteen dollars, which I found excessive, though I could of course buy the factory. I chose not to. The colander works adequately, when it is not being commandeered by cats whose motives remain opaque and possibly prophetic.
My neighbor Old Sam tells me his grandmother used a colander every day. What did she strain? He couldn’t remember. This is the kind of detail that Moose County is losing, and frankly I cannot be expected to preserve it all myself, though I do try, at considerable personal inconvenience. Just last week someone asked if they could borrow my colander. I said no. One cannot be too careful. People borrow colanders, then they borrow cats. I know how these things escalate.
Koko has just knocked the colander off the counter again. Twice in two days. My moustache is in a state of full alert. I don’t yet know what it means, but I suspect Moose County will find out soon enough, probably in the form of a small fire or an unexplained death.
Colanders.
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