Cocktails with My Cat: Tasty Tipples for Feline Fanatics, by Natalie Bovis (Running Press, 2024, $24.00, 144pp HB)
Cocktails with My Cat almost turned me, a dog person, into a cat person. The day after it arrived in the mail, I brought it to Starbucks to meet my cat friends and they all whooped and hollered and wanted a copy for themselves. The title alone is an unforgettable gem, quite the attention grabber.
Did You Know You Can Invent Drinks?
I don't drink so don't blame me for not knowing that drinks can be invented but now I just may go out and stock my empty home bar, now that I know how to create drinks, thanks to author Natalie Bovis, a bartending guru and instructor who also fosters kittens and cats and shares her life with eight rescue pets.
Quotes and Stories and 60 Recipes and More!
Bovis begins at the beginning with information on stocking your home bar with various items of glassware (showing eight of them), bar tools, and ingredients such as garnishes, eggs, liqueurs (cordials) and even shrubs (not the green growing kind). She also defines 'neat' and explains James Bond and 'shaken not stirred.'
Chapters two through seven lead with a 2-page intro
followed by almost a whole page story of one breed of cats or one particular cat in history ("Famous Felines") with a final sentence leading into the name or ingredients of the new drink, followed by its recipe. Chapters include those on rescues, wild cats, and the holidays, with the final chapter encouraging you to create your very own signature drink inspired by your own cat.
The Hardest Decision
The hardest job I had was to choose just one drink to show you. So I picked two: "Seven Seas and Six Toes" and "Treetops and Tropics." Enjoy!
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| Seven Seas and Six Toes |
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| Treetops and Tropics |
More Mocktails, Please
When (if. . . .) 'volume 2' comes out, I hope it features more 'mocktail' recipes (Cocktails has a few, thank you) and perhaps some photos to show off the drink colors to their best advantage. Even though many of the recipes in 'volume 1' are accompanied by whimsical illustrations and feature the storied cats, and drinks somewhere in the pictures if you search hard enough, I would love to see some of these as real-life colorful photos.
Should I have started with Preggatinis: Mixology for the Mom-to-Be?
I also have my eye on Edible Cocktails: From Garden to Glass - Seasonal Cocktails with a Fresh Twist.
And now to take a look at Drinking with My Dog!
