Too Human

I love ‘em, but cats can be kinda jerks.

For over five years I have attempted to grow catnip in a pot on the deck. I started it from seed, tended the sprouts, thinned them, and then watched as they continued to thin themselves into near oblivion. Since catnip is a perennial, I have allowed the spindly survivors of that early from-seed attempt to grow back each summer, each time as gawky as the last. I decided it was due to the northern exposure of the deck, and just forgot about the pot, which has proceeded to produce sad little catnip specimens ever since.

This year, while hunting for garden stakes in an attempt to corral my anything but Obedient Plants, I stumbled across two nicely started pots of catnip for sale. It looked a little like what my pathetic pot had been producing, had I elected to use steroids and growth hormones instead of indifference. I bought them, transplanted them into two unused pots hanging around the house, and stuck them on the deck with the substandard pot and watched the new pots take off.

About a month after I got it, something ripped up one of the plants overnight. I trimmed it and hoped for the best. I moved the other pot to a position a little more secure, but a week later the same thing happened to the other plant. The plants were reduced to something above the runty catnip, but didn’t recover their robust original condition.

I went away for two weeks for business, and came back to the new catnip plants preparing to bloom. I trimmed back all the dead and dying shoots, and kept on eye on the buds, waiting for their peak, just before bloom ripeness. I then trimmed the buds and gave them to my cats, thinking it would be a true treat.

They mostly ignored it.

Except for Morgen, last year’s kitten, this year’s adolescent. She rolled, munched without swallowing, and incubated the buds. Once she’d really released the aroma, two of the other cats showed some appreciation for the buds, although I have to say that the entire event was a bit of a let down.

Fast forward to this morning. Two more flower-budded stem tips were just about ready to bloom, so I plucked them and brought them in for Morgen. After five minutes of traditional stare-down time, she yielded to temptation and gave them her undivided attention. She was too busy getting down with the nip to notice that Lyta Alexander was coming up on her rear while Evening was approaching from just behind her head. Evening pounced first, and grabbed the bud she’d been rubbing her head on. While Morgen was thusly engaged with defending the honor of her herb, Lyta grabbed the bud that Morgen had had her ass on.

They’re like kids. Don’t want it until some other kid has it.

Similar Posts

One Comment

  1. One year we planted catnip the whole length of the south wall of my grandmother’s house. Our cats of that time, Little Big Cat, Kitten, and Taz LOVED to lie on the sidewalk next to the catnip, sometimes rolling over on their backs to play with the leaves. Just when it was about to bud my (then) new landlord sent a yard work crew through and they tore out ALL of the catnip planted against the wall of my grandmother’s house. When I called him I was really upset. I explained that his yard workers had torn out plants that we had been cultivating, some for YEARS, he didn’t care. He said that he owned the property right up to the south wall of Nana’s house and he would do as he pleased. So then we stopped doing anything in the yard except what we had to do to continue to use the walkway to the outside world. Now he never sends anyone to do anything here.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *