No discussion of gardening would be complete without envisioning the roles that pets play in your gardening. If your vegetable garden is invaded by woodchucks, who are cheerfully eating your beets, squash, and anything else they desire, then your best friend is indeed a dog. Dogs love the chase, and they are capable of catching and killing those woodchucks. Maybe you are a vegetarian, but Fido most definitely is not. You can use this to your advantage with coons as well. Raccoons are smart. The evening you check your ears of corn and say tomorrow they will be ready to pick, that will be the evening the raccoons come and pick the ears off the stalks, then daintily strip the husks off the corn, and greedily eat all those ears of corn you were dreaming of smothering with butter. Hanging rags soaked in gasoline next to the corn does not work. Leaving a radio on in the corn patch does not work. A dog next to the corn patch does work. If your dog is in the house and barking like crazy at midnight, better check that corn for masked bandits.
Less well known are the benefits of garden cats. I remember one particular summer in Scotland when I was picking our black raspberries. They were planted in a circle. Being an unmannerly sort of bramble they had grown into a nearly impenetrable patch. I was picking berries around the edge of the patch and reaching deep into the center when all of a sudden a furry body leapt into the air in front of my face and grabbed a bird off a berry limb. My heart stopped. I nearly fainted. With heart pounding, I stooped down and peered into the grass around the bushes’ base. It was Tiger, munching on birdmeat. Tiger staked out the black raspberry patch each summer he lived with us, and we picked more berries while he resided here than before or since. These were the only acrobatic performances I ever saw him do.
Frisky, on the other hand, loved rabbit, and the rabbits loved our lettuce and garden greens. Eventually I was no longer startled by certain sound effects in the vegetable garden, such as a crunching noise that sounded just like someone eating peanut brittle. That was Friskie, who saved the rabbit legs until last. If you find that unsettling, ask yourself when you last savored a chicken or turkey leg and your hypocrisy will be cured. You, however, probably don’t eat the bones as well as the meat. When a cat was not hungry, it just enjoyed the thrill of the chase, with the rabbit staying about 25 feet ahead of the cat, and stopping to eat clover the moment the cat stopped, and hopping on again when the chase resumed. Those leisurely lopes around the garden were entertaining to the cat and to us, and though the rabbit may not have been amused, it did not seem terrified either.
Anyone who allows their cats outdoors fears that they will be run over. I remember years ago sitting in my law office and discussing a case with a client. I had an office in my home, and my desk faced the interior of the room with my back towards Route 14. The client set next to my desk, facing the road. Suddenly the client stood up and shouted, “Your cat just got run over.” I heard a screech of brakes and the acceleration of a car that drove off. I ran outside. Charcoal was in the highway, dead. I picked her up and laid her on the lawn. Her head was crushed, but I knew it was her, because she had a very unusual coat. Each hair near the skin was white, but the color changed to gray and then black as it neared the end of each hair shaft. When the wind blew, the appearance of her color changed. I felt miserable. I terminated the client interview, and my husband buried her in the back yard.
That night my husband and I went to a movie theater. I was hoping that an adventure movie would help take my mind off my sadness. Instead I just felt miserable throughout the movie. When we drove home and got out of the car, I heard a meow. That made me even more miserable because Charcoal always greeted us when we came home. This cat meowed some more and even brushed against me. We turned on the outside lights. It was a black cat, a very friendly black cat, which kept meowing at us. It couldn’t possibly be Charcoal, but who was it? So I picked the cat up and took it into our kitchen. It did indeed look very much like Charcoal, even the coat. After several minutes of close examination of this cat, who very much enjoyed the fuss, we decided it really was Charcoal. Suddenly, I was elated, but the awful heavy feeling in my chest and stomach from the depression of losing her did not go away for some time. I had both feelings at the same time, which was very strange.
If you have ever read Lincoln Steffens’ story, “A Miserable Merry Christmas”, you will know just the feeling I had. Steffens was a journalist and author in the late 19th and early 20th century. He wrote a story about a Christmas in his childhood when he told his parents that all he wanted for Christmas was a pony and nothing else. They asked if there wasn’t some toy or game he wanted in case they did not get him a pony, but he stubbornly insisted on the pony or nothing. Christmas morning came, and his brother got toys, and his friends came to see his presents, but he had nothing. The hours whiled away with all the other children enjoying the day. At dusk he was sitting outside on the stoop when he saw a man leading a pony down the street. The man stopped at this house and asked if it was the Steffens’ residence. He apologized for being late. Steffens recounted the strange mixture of feelings, the joy along with the sadness that wouldn’t evaporate just because he finally got his heart’s desire. That was how I felt with Charcoal’s reappearance. But then, who was the cat that was killed? We had never seen another cat with a coat like Charcoal’s. Irrationally, I walked to the grave the next day. It couldn’t possibly be the same cat, but somehow I had to see the grave myself. The grave was as my husband had left it, all intact. We called her the miracle cat.
Charcoal died at age 17 of cancer. I held her in my lap at the vets, when she was put to sleep. She could no longer eat, and then had trouble drinking. I carried her outside to the garden in her last days so she could enjoy the fresh air and hear the familiar sounds. She is buried for real now in the backyard.
Angela Fichter