Cat Rice

You might wonder, what is a cat rice? Is it meal for a cat, or is it a meal with rice and cat meat? No, it’s not horrible or terrifying at all. We Indonesians do not eat cat (although some of us indeed consume snake blood, chips made from fried grasshopper, or lizard meat!). Cat rice is only a name for one of the most popular meal in my city, Semarang, the capital of Central Java Province in Java, Indonesia.
Its original name is “sega kucing” or “nasi kucing”. Sega or nasi means rice, and kucing means cat. It’s basically one ordinary Javanese meal with rice and any other dishes like fried chicken, roasted fish, soup, tempe (fermented soybean cake), tahu (tofu), or fried egg. Cat rice is served with tea, coffee, or orange juice.
Cat rice is usually sold in side street food stalls or cafes. Unlike any other cafes around the world which located in open spaces near pedestrian area, many food stalls in Indonesia are literally located in the edge of a street, even sometimes right on a sidewalk. This is what called “warung kaki lima” or five feet food stalls. I’ll write later about warung kaki lima in another article since it truly unique and sometimes funny.
In those food stalls, cat rice is served in small packs wrapped with food paper and a piece of used newspaper. The wrapper is stapled along with a small piece of another paper with a word written on it which indicate what kind of dish contained inside it, such as “AYAM” (chicken), “TELUR” (egg), “UDANG” (shrimp), or “TAHU” (tofu).
A café serves approximately up to 100 to 150 packs of cat rice at one time. The packs are put on one big table and customers can take them freely as many as they want. Then they eat it along with another additional dishes such as satay, kerupuk (flavored chips), quail eggs, or steamed chicken gizzard.
After the meal is over, the customers told the waiters/waitresses how many packs they take, how many and what kind of additional dishes they eat, and what softdrink they drank. Then the waiter will sum up the total price the customers must pay. Since the waiter cannot watch the activity of each customer they had at any given time, the customer can always lie about the amount of cat rice they consumed. But cat rice cafes is not just a café which serves foods. It also educates people about honesty, dignity, friendship, loyalty, and togetherness.
What really unique about cat rice is that its pack is really small so people had to take more than four of five packs at once before their hunger disappear. And since they hang out with friends, relatives, clients, or even with their beloved one, the amount of packs they consumed can be uncontrollable.
Because of the small packagings, cat rice is extremely cheap it often costs no more than Rp 500 each packs (nearly only US$ 6 cent each!). So, you can take 16 packs of cat rice if you have 1 dollar in your pocket. This extremely cheap price makes cat rice most popular among university students who had extremely limited financial power too.
Another special fact about cat rice is that the food stalls serve it opens around midnight until nearly dawn. They won’t be ready to serve their meals until 10 or 11 PM. So, cat rice cafes are basically treat the customers who suffers from midnight time hunger or simply just want to “begadang” (hang out in the middle of the night until late morning). The most popular cat rice café in Semarang, Warung Nasi Kucing Pak Gik or Mr Gik Cat Rice Café, opens at 11 PM to 5 AM daily. Hundreds of customers flock there every night, sometimes they even have to wait outside patiently for empty chairs or just empty spaces inside the café.
So, how does the meal associated with cats? Its name apparently originated from the portion of each pack which is exactly the same as the size of the food given to a cat. Most Indonesians who keep cats as their pets don’t feed them with canned cat food just like in the US or any other advanced nation, but simply with rice mixed with fish. And the portion is so tiny because they assumed those cats can find foods on their own as predators.
(Photo courtesy of subura2005.blogspot)