Figure 1 – Cookie kittens, IPhone photograph, (c) DE Wolf 2017.
What could be sweeter than a basket full of kittens? The photograph of Figure 1 is a hint. The answer, arguably, is a basket full of cookie kittens. Note I did not say kitten cookies, which are liable to be catnip and liver flavored, which could turn you off to cookies for ever, or at least a long time.
I found these at my local grocery store and snapped this less than perfectly framed image with my IPhone 6. I could not find any suitable quotes about cookie kittens; so the old Irish nursery rhyme must suffice.
“There once were two cats of Kilkenny,
Each thought there was one cat too many,
So they fought and they fit,
And they scratched and they bit,
Till, excepting their nails
And the tips of their tails,
Instead of two cats, there weren’t any.”
However, the story cannot end there. We have not connected cookie kittens with amazon warriors. As is often the case with nursery rhymes, the origin of the limerick is obscure., and is, in fact, a fascinating story in and of itself. Clearly, it leads to the term “Killkenny Cat,” a tenacious fighter, ready to go at it to the end.
In early Irish legend the vicinity of Kilkenny is associated with a monster cat, named Banghaisgidheach, who made its home in the Dunmore Caves in Kilkenny County. In the ancient Book of Leinster the amazon warrior Aithbel overcame the cat monster of Luchtigern. Or more specifically, in English at least:
“Aithbel, she was a jewel of a woman, mother of Ercoil, the wife of Midgna, Who killed the ten Fomorians in the strand at Tonn Chlidna, Who burned the seven wild men in the glen at Sliabh Eibhlenn, Who scattered the black fleet against which the men of Ireland failed, Who hunted the red hag that drowned her in the midst of the Barrow, Who trampled on the luchthigern in the door of Derc Ferna.”