See my helper? It’s Katie Kat, happy among the flowers.

What is she thinking? Who can know? Who has known the mind of a cat? Who can discern the thoughts and intents of a feline heart?

When she did this…

Husband asked me, “What did she do that for?”

How could I answer? I’m no cat psychologist. My big question at the time was how she was going to get back down?

No problem for Katie. It took a while…

But down she went…

…to mess about in the old “herb garden,” now a mixed bag of herbs, vegetables, and fruit bushes and vines (since the year I learned I was allergic to 60% of the herbs I was growing there!)

Can you find my other “helper”?

This is Emil, appearing when he hears me on the patio–always ready to lend a paw. Usually in the soil I’ve just planted with seeds or tender seedlings. Note the wire mesh surrounding the herb bed in the background. This was my first attempt at guarding it from two cats who find its shade inviting to lie in and its soil remarkably like a litter box.

It didn’t work. Right in front of me Emil pushed past it to go plop himself under the lovage clump’s shade. So next I tried laying it over my seeded areas.

Strike two! Emil just shoved it aside with his mighty nose and plonked his way through the area once shielded.

So… another idea.

This seems to work. Except the seedlings are getting smashed.

However, not as badly as the beds Emil helps me weed–like the poppies. Every time he sees me go near that bed, he leaps into it and bounds around like a nut. Now we have a lot of floppy poppies!

Ah, well. as I said in the last plant post, God does give us richly all things to enjoy. That includes both vegetable and animal categories. His word also exhorts us to develop patient perseverance (2 Pt 1:5-6; Jas 5:7). And cats serve well to exercise us in that!

*****