My first cat, Simmy, loved lefse.

Lefse is one of the joys of Northern eating: a soft, floppy Norwegian flatbread made (these days) mostly from potatoes. Usually eaten rolled up with jam or butter-and-sugar, you can actually eat pretty much anything in it; Norwegians, I've heard, eat their hotdogs rolled up in a slice of lefse. Think Norwegian tortilla.

(The name, in fact, comes from the same old Germanic root as loaf: “little loaf,” it meant originally.)

Presumably, Simmy had acquired this unusual (in a cat) taste in the home of her first “owner,” a co-worker of mine of Danish extraction. I gather that they ate a lot of junk food there as well: at the rattle of a potato chip bag, Simmy would immediately apparate out of nowhere.

Now where is that lefse? I thought when I got to the bottom of the grocery bag that night. I'm sure I put it in the ba—SIMMY!

I rushed into the temple, which is where—being a temple cat of the first order—Simmy always took her spoils. Sure enough. She'd just managed to open the package, but had yet to have the first bite.

The expression of resignation on her face when I took the lefse away was probably the clearest example of interspecies communication that I've ever seen in my life. I could tell exactly what she was thinking.

Now isn't that just the Law of the Jungle? The little animal does all the work, and the big animal comes along and takes it off of them.

At this remove of years I can't remember whether or not I eventually gave poor Simmy a taste of the lefse that she'd worked so hard to hunt.

I'm guessing, probably not.

In this Season of the Dead, I remember stumpy-tailed Simmy Batbane, best of cats.