Penny Carnathan

Penny’s a Nurture And Hold (NAH): Nah, I won’t pull that out yet, it’s still got a green shoot. She likes dragonflies, lady bugs and new stuff only after weeding, pruning and fertilizing.

Kim Franke-Folstad

Kim’s a Want It Now (WIN): Everything pretty, everything now. She will resort to full-spectrum insecticides in desperate situations, and believes it’s her duty and right to buy new plants every weekend.

Both advocate Plant Choice (SOMEthing besides crotons. Please!), lots of color and low maintenance. We don’t agree on everything, but we’re smart enough to learn from each other - and from you.

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Willy the Garden Cat—Adventures of a Horti-feline

Posted Oct 27, 2009 by Loren Omoto

Updated Oct 28, 2009 at 08:58 PM

My cat Willy loves hanging out in the garden while I work. Wherever I am, he’s just a few feet away, sniffing the flowers or placidly curled up in the mulch.

Sometimes he’s a big help, like when he chases down runaway flower petals and wrestles them into submission.

Or when he stalks the dreaded Eastern lubber (that’s one to the left of Willy below.)

This can all be pretty grueling work, and Willy has gotten resourceful about keeping his strength up. Especially on warm days.

I always thought he was quite the helpful garden cat, and I had no reason to suspect otherwise. The seedlings that disappeared I blamed on bugs. The holes in the veggie bed? Armadillos. And the crushed patch in the otherwise lush bank of blue daze had to be the lawn service guys.

And then one day, I stepped outside when I was (apparently) not expected, and saw this. (That is a surprised cat face if ever I saw one.) He’s in the blue daze, doing more than just sitting, I might add!

But nothing screams “Guilty!” like this, just a second later:

I started watching Willy a little more carefully and discovered, when he thinks I’m not looking, he is not my big helper cat. He’s my garden pest.

He’s hard to catch with a camera—clearly seeking to avoid photographic evidence of misdeeds. But I’ve spied him eating flowers (and, to his credit, torpedo grass); scooping out latrines in seedbeds; and inviting nefarious kitties over for wild backyard squirrel hunts when he thinks no one’s home.

I even caught him trying to pull the blue sky vine off the shed!

Is there a moral to this story? I can’t think of one. Hey, we all enjoy the garden in our own ways. And that goes for cats, too.