When the cat is away...

My husband is out of town. While his absence has many implication for my behavior, I mostly like to do things I can't get away with when he's around.

For instance: Blanche was watching me chop vegetables for a stew. I saw that in my packet of grape tomatoes, one was less than perfect. "I bet the dog will eat a tomato," the five-year-old voice in my head said. So I held out the tomato, and, like a good girl, she sat on the floor and gently took the tomato with her front teeth.

Matthew would yell at that. So I laughed, knowing I'd totally just gotten away with murder. But feeding the dog a tomato had an unexpected consequence: odor.

It turns out that a dog eating a tomato has a smell all its own. Sure, you've smelled tomatoes as you've eaten them in salads, maybe you've even noticed the smell when other people have eaten a tomato, you've probably smelled tomatoes cooking. But when a dirty basset hound eats a tomato, it smells like a fresh salad made from rancid garbage.