Siamese, if you please sir

Another cat submission from Hunter Ten Broeck, owner of WaterWise Landscapes Incorporated, in Albuquerque, NM.This stray visitor stopped by the 'Tiger Eyes' Sumac, which is just changing to its brilliant fall colors.

The Hunter and the Housemaid

Ella and Cypress Vine

Barbara Pleasant writes the long-running Gardening Know How column in Mother Earth News and the GrowVeg Blog. She submitted the following tales about her two garden cats.

"I have two cats, Leon and Ella. Named for my late father, Leon, is the head cat and my special boy. When we got new puppies a year ago, he broke my heart by going to live in the woods for three weeks. This trauma reminded me that relations with felines are set up on their terms, with humans and their abandonment issues small matters compared to a full food bowl."

Leon

"Theoretically, Leon earns his keep by catching mice, voles and other unwanted creatures, and he is a good enough predator for our rural place in Southwest Virginia. But he has a show-off attitude that compels him to share his kills, so he often stages the kills, gladiator style, in the downstairs bathtub. And, while I can't say for sure that the two baby king snakes we found slithering through the house this summer were Leon's doing, I have my suspicions.

"Ella is the ladies' maid who seldom ventures more than a few steps beyond the deck, preoccupied as she tends to be with matters inside the house. She monitors the water bowl, the doors and windows, and becomes a maniac complainer when things are out of order. Ella has us well trained now, but every time I think of this little OCD kitty in a foster home with six other kitties, I don't know how she did it. At the adoption event, how did this crochety cat who doesn't like to be picked up manage to charm us by purring in our arms? Can cats analyze a situation and change their behavior to get what they want?"

Leon and artichokes

 

A Sunny Haven

Helen Yoest of Gardening With Confidence and author of Plants with Benefits submitted this week's pretty kitty:

"Meet Sunny, the garden cat. We didn't start out wanting a cat, but then one day a yellow cat with yellow eyes showed up on the back porch. Sunny adopted us.  We did all the right things to try and find his owner. We put up pictured posters with a phone number to call, we posted on pet-finding sites, we even got in touch with local vets, etc.  Some of the responses were really sad. There were a lot of missing cats that fit out cat's description. We had people come by who were hopeful that it was their lost cat and others coming over to see if it was their cat so they could close that chapter of their life. (They didn't want the cat back, but wanted to know he was OKay.) We even had people call to say it was probably their cat, but they were heading out of town and could they come by in a week or two to pick him up. We started getting very defensive of this animal. We wanted him to go to his rightful owner, but only if it was someone who wanted him and who treated him well.  Within a week, we were crossing our fingers that no one would claim her, and she would be ours to keep. That was two-and-a-half years ago. The vet figures he was under a year old when she showed up.

"Sunny is extremely sweet, has a dog sister, Pepperhttp://gardeningwithconfidence.com/blog/2013/06/13/gardening-pepper/. They play/wrestle a lot. The best part of Sunny is that he leaves the birds alone, he is an excellent vole-er, and sometimes burps chipmunk. We are there for him when he needs us, but otherwise he is on his own, and has found a wonderful home in Helen's Haven."

 

http://gardeningwithconfidence.com/blog/

Stardust Memories

 

 

This week's kitty was sent in from Eileen Daniel. She has a total of four kitties and all love the herbs and flowers in her garden.

"This is Ziggy, from Pensacola,  Florida. Ziggy was rescued two years ago by his human mama, after some crack heads had abandoned him at a rental house. Ziggy is believed to be Siamese & possibly Maine Coon."

Mark of the Cat

This week's cat was submitted by Lynn Title of Lanham, MD.

Lynn writes, "Tilde (named for the diacritical mark, because she has one on each shoulder) is a nine-year-old former feral kitten (from the D'Arcy Street PG County Animal Shelter, where all three of my cats come from) who is now a thoroughly-domesticated "sucky cat".  She is an indoor-outdoor cat, and keeps the local mole and vole population down.  Last week she presented me with a newly-killed rabbit nearly as big as herself!

"The photos were taken in my back yard, in late afternoon, atop a stacked-stone wall I built myself using free stone I brought home from highway and construction sites near a friend's house in Brunswick, MD; for years every time I went up there I came home with all the fallen stone my poor Corolla wagon would hold, enough to build another couple more feet of wall.  The plant behind Tilde is a Scotch broom.  They want alkaline soil and sharp drainage, so there is chicken-grit mixed into the soil, and it is mounded above the rest of the bed. In front is a variegated liriope."

Alles Gute zum Katzentag!

This is "Katze" -- cat in German. See lots more of Katze here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/tillwe/7870838/in/set-196466/.

These photos are by Till Westermayer aka Tillwe of Freiburg, Germany. You can find his blog at http://blog.till-westermayer.de/ and his Flickr page at http://www.flickr.com/photos/tillwe/.

Cats Supplies Make Great Garden Tools

As a two-cat household, we go through a lot of litter and as a bonus to that, I get to re-use the litter containers in my garden. I wonder if the kitty litter manufacturers know of this direct connection between cat loves and die-hard/thrifty gardeners or is it just a happy, natural coincidence?

Here is a picture of the kitty litter containers I've been using for watering my home garden and community garden plot. This is Aldi's store brand and the plastic label slips right off and I put it in the recycling bin along with my plastic grocery bags. (Tidy Cat has much the same model.) It is the perfect size for watering and mixing in liquid organic fertilizer. It stores well and does not tip easily. I line up several in a row as a wall for my Faerie Garden when they are not in use. Their squared-off shape makes them much better than many round watering cans. I especially like that they have a big opening for filling up easily at a hose spigot.

I like the large, square, lidded kitty litter buckets as well for storing compost and potting soils. The only drawback I notice is that they can crack down the side and the lids break occasionally. I don't buy my litter in such large quantities though, so I post an occasional note on my neighborhood yahoo list and ask if anyone has extras and always have good luck getting several.

What cat-related supplies do you use in your garden?

UPDATE:
Here is a great DIY Project for making your own self-watering containers using kitty litter buckets:
http://washingtongardener.blogspot.com/2015/08/diy-selfiwatering-kitty-litter.html