We have a trim little Snowshoe Siamese cat named Kit Kat who is a lizard chaser. This is a dangerous occupation in Southwest Florida -- not because of the Cuban anoles which are generally everywhere but because of the five-lined skinks that are secretively somewhere.

Cats on Pine Island catch and eat these skinks, usually in the spring or the fall when the skinks are jazzing and jittering in the leaves. If Kit Kat could talk she'd probably say, "I never met a skink I didn't want to eat." Vets may be in disagreement about this. But we have seen at least three dozen cats that have eaten five-lined skinks and afterwards suffered serious neural collapse. After the skink feast, the cats cannot walk. Some end up partially blind, palsied and perturbed for life. If they live. Many die.

If you want some facts on this phenomena, google my article for Gulf Coast Life Magazine. I still get email (after quite a few years) from the article I wrote about cats and skinks. Kit Kat is a hardy survivor. She wobbles when she walks, but she still gets skinks. After twelve years of the neural twitches, she still captures the elliptical and toxic lizards. I have talked to some veterinarians who believe the skink only becomes toxic at certain times of year and possibly, only when they are mating. Kit Kat's job remains as a bounty hunter of five-lined Florida skinks.

The other day, she surprised us by lying down in a bed of red and green chile that we order every autumn from a company in Hatch, New Mexico. Is this where Kit Kat got her appetite for eating things too hot to handle? By watching us eat red hot chile peppers?

We believe what doesn't kill you may heal you. In the case of chile peppers, there's plenty of evidence that these red hot wonders of the plant world are loaded with capsicum. Topically, capsicum can be used to heal the pain of osteo-arthritis, so states Dr. Andrew Weil. He also says that oil of capsicum can relieve toothache for months. Dr. Laura Shields has stated that eating chile can lower cholesterol (LDL) and prevent heart disease. Whatever: we eat it because we like it. And because we lived in New Mexico for most of our adult lives.

Kit Kat has no such story. The moment we opened our Hatch chile box, she came right up, lay down in a bed of chile peppers and stayed in a state of capsicumal bliss for quite a few hours.

Cats know best. Maybe the skinks mess up her nervous system but also promise her immortality. She's going on fifteen and, rattly or not, she's as kittenish as the day we got her. Nonetheless I'm not going to advise anyone to catch and roast a skink. Eat more chile. But before you do, lie down in a bed of it for a while and have some chile dreams on me.