Cat soup

Annabelle skipped out of her school and made a bee-line for home, for possibly the first time ever, she didn’t stop to aimlessly chatter with her friends.
Cookery class had been great! She could have gone home with the tomato and basil soup that she’d made, but no! She wanted to impress her parent s by making her own soup at home with ingredients from the cupboard. After all, that was the advice from Miss Knowles, her teacher.

“Use whatever is left over in the cupboard” she had instructed.

She slung open the food cupboard at home and was shocked by the sheer lack of ingredients. A tin of spaghetti, a can of artichoke hearts and six digestive biscuits – Not your usual soup elements!

 But Anabelle was feeling resourceful and popped outside to see what she could find in the garden. Her dad had told her never to eat the wild mushrooms which was a shame, as they stood to attention almost demanding to be deployed.

After a few minutes scurrying about, Annabelle was struggling. A wild berry suddenly plopped to the ground. Annabelle eyed it up but again had been told never to eat these. But nobody had ever told her not to eat the leaves from the deciduous tree which they thought was a some kind of mix between an ash and an alder, but nobody was quite sure.

So Annabelle picked up half a bucket of these leaves, mixed them with some stock and the tin of artichoke hearts for good measure and set it off on a low simmer.

After 15-20 minutes, there was a smell that Annabelle wasn’t sure if she liked or not but it was certainly pungent. She ran the finished soup through a sieve and poured it into bowls for Mum, Dad and brother Robbie.

Her family were delighted when called for dinner, although Robbie put a finger up his nose – Admittedly, this was not strange behaviour for Robbie.

Mum tried the soup first. She smelt, sipped, gulped followed by a swallow. As fast as it had gone down, it came back up, as Mum spat it out spraying Dad straight between the eyes as he was about to try the first spoonful.

Mum’s finger went a funny shade of green for a minute as she tried to restore her ability to speak.

Mum tried to be polite but the words that she said came out as “Tssshok thhge hulrribigle schugtuff oghutshyrdle”.

“ I think she’s telling you to throw the soup way outside” said Dad “We’ll have spaghetti on toast for tea”.

But Annabelle left the bowls of soup outside. Miss Knowles along with that bald man from Masterchef had said something about rescuing a dish that had gone wrong, that’s what she would do tomorrow!.

The following morning, the family sat at the breakfast table. During their cornflakes, Robbie suddenly spat out his cornflakes and once again, Dad took it between the eyes.

“I just saw a bright green lizard” he cried.

A few minutes later Ananbelle shrieked spraying toast everywhere

“I just saw a frog” she cried.

Having thoroughly searched the house, they did indeed find a luminous green figure cowering beneath Grandpa’s old chair. But this was no lizard and no frog. This was Bubbles the cat and he had turned bright, luminous green!

Annabelle shot outside and her suspicions were confirmed. Bubbles had drunk all the soup!

Over the next few days. they washed Bubbles with shampoo galore, they made Bubbles drink loads of water, they took Bubbles to the vet. but all to no avail.

But on the fourth day, during a particularly shouty soap opera, Bubbles suddenly let out a huge burp. There was a green luminous cloud that slowly drifted out of the window and Bubbles almost before their eyes, returned to her normal, light ginger colour.

From that day onwards, whenever Bubbles burped, you could just make out a little green cloud, the end of Bubbles tail was a definite pea colour and however little light there was, Bubbles always stood out.

Oh, and for reasons that nobody really knew, Dad suddenly word glasses at every meal time.

© Chris White