My husband received a charming and whimsical card on his 60th birthday depicting a gardener and three cats behaving themselves very nicely on an allotment. This set me thinking about gardening and pets.
We have no pets because we enjoy the bird life of our back garden. Our resident blackbirds become tamer every year: last month I eyeballed a young one sneaking under the netting for a raspberry. We are also regularly visited by pigeons, collared doves, robins, now starting to sing their autumn songs, sparrows, bluetits and the occasional wren. We do not use insecticides, and any snails we find are thrown over the hedge into the park. Cabbage white butterflies frustrate me, but I reason that caterpillars only attack weak plants and can be quickly dealt with. Leaf miners annoy me but I accept this is the price I pay for organic spinach and cut out the affected bits.
We have at least three frogs in the front and back borders: one medium large and two small; ants who have avoided nesting under the greenhouse this year, and bats that I see at dusk. The house martins who nested up the road have left for Africa, another indication of the changing seasons.
No cats. My allotment experience of cats is not of well behaved moggies who sit in wheelbarrows, rather cats who dig holes in the middle of vegetable beds and then poo. Cats are not welcome. Having said that, I met a charming animal at a barbecue this weekend who follows her owner around the garden. She looked like a neat and respectable black and white cat, a paragon of good behaviour. Our hosts' veggie plot was doing well. I hope my assumptions are correct.
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