Once more into the fray and spray, dear Challenge!rs --

This Challenge! is dedicated to Catspaw in celebration of his homecoming and apparent miraculous recovery from surgery. So, jump into this one with both feet and make it really great!

Let's Have Another Cup of Cat Cra . . . uh, Coffee – Well, it seems that the coffee market is being undermined by runaway planting in Vietnam and Indonesia, flooding the market with cheap coffee. Meanwhile, consumption has been relatively flat. A Starbucks on every corner doesn't mean people are drinking more coffee; thus, the proliferation of gourmet offerings as customers' tastes continuing to get more rarefied. One coffee retailer in Atlanta sells something called "luwak" coffee, which it claims is picked by the common palm civet (Paradoxurus hermaphrodites), often described as catlike, but probably better thought of as an Asian version of a raccoon, coati or kinkajou. The palm civet is also known as the 'toddy cat,' for its fondness for the palm juice that is tapped to make a sweet liquor.

On coffee plantations, palm civets dine heavily on coffee cherries. However, they digest only the outer pulp of fruit, passing the coffee beans unharmed through their digestive systems. And because palm civets repeatedly deposit their droppings in piles at the same spots, the coffee beans are easily collected, roasted then brewed into kopi luwak--civet coffee. Kopi luwak is reputedly the best of all coffees because palm civets pluck and eat only the most perfectly ripe cherries! The price of a pound of kopi luwak coffee? $300.00

Whether the beans are affected as they go through the animal's gut is also unknown. For that matter, there is some debate about whether coffee called kopi luwak was ever anywhere near a palm civet. Asked how he knew the beans were really collected from civet scats, one coffee company representative said, "We operate on trust." As for the taste, he described the brew as "gamey".

One dealer described the same scene being repeated every time he tells someone about luwak coffee: "At some point in the story, when you explain how this cat eats only the perfectly ripe coffee cherries, the listener gets this cautious look on his face, and says, "Are you telling me that..." and the dealer always nods and says, "Yes, that's exactly right. Roasted cat-shit for $300 a pound."

GO FOR IT, CHALLENGE!RS!!!!

-- Áine