Things to do with vodka:
Make vanilla extract
Make amaretto
Use as a fluidizer for hydrophobic pharmacological drugs
Rescue cats from antifreeze poisoning
I've only done the first two, myself, but according to one of the doctors at the school the bit about cats is true. See, anti-freeze does terrible things to an animal (or small child) that consumes it. It gets into the gears of metabolism and gums them up, by latching onto a particular enzyme that deals with alcohol (which does show up as a by product of a working organism). Puppies like anti-freeze because it tastes sweet, so they show up in emergency rooms not infrequently. For them the antidote works fine. It was developed for people, of course, but you just dose the dog on the same basic parameters.
In cats, however, the antidote doesn't work, at least not nearly so easily. By sextupling the dose, it turns out it works just fine, but it took a few years to figure that out. In the meantime, vets found they could treat cats by dosing them with ethanol--i.e. alcohol--which kept enough alcohol-metabolizing enzymes busy that they didn't get dead-ended by the antifreeze. Bodies are pretty good at getting rid of toxins eventually. The cat would get over the poisoning, albeit with a nasty hangover.
Long live novel uses for liquor.
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