Gardening Is More Than Just Growing Plants!

It's true--gardening involves more than just growing plants!

Gardens need animals, for various reasons. In our garden, we have a dog for chasing off critters that eat the plants, chickens for eating insects that eat our plants, and cats for keeping away mice (which also will eat plants.) Every garden needs a cat, but not too many.

We do have too many cats. Much too often, someone else decides we don't have enough cats and another kitten is dropped off at our front gate. Most recently my husband found a cute little critter asleep right beside the road at our mailbox. Instead of doing the responsible thing and have their cats spayed or neutered, some irresponsible @$$#*!~ just allow their little cats to keep having litter after litter and they deposit the little babies on the side of the road when they no longer want them. This activity is one of the worst things a person can do, and it angers my family much more than I can say.

We are animal lovers here, and it's difficult for us to get attached to a cute little baby and then give it away. That's what we have to do every few months, because we can not possibly provide a home for every little baby animal we find up at the road. Leaving a baby kitten at someone's mailbox should be a crime. It is, in my opinion. Each time this happens, we do the best we can to find a good home for the little thing. If unable to find the kitten a good home, we keep it.

We now have 5 cats--3 toms and 2 females. We love them all. Yesterday we gave away the most recent little baby to a wonderful girl who responded to our advertisement on the local Christian radio station. (We list the babies on that station only, praying that only good people would be listening.)

It ripped out my little girl's heart to give away the kitten in the photo above. Children grow attached to cute little baby animals so fast. If I could catch the person who keeps doing this to us, I'd sock them in the nose. It might make no sense to you that I write an animal lover post on a garden blog, but as I said, cats do belong in a garden. And since gardeners are usually concerned about the environment to a great degree, I figured you all would not mind if I vent a little. We all should do what we can to prevent the cruel neglect and abuse of allowing cats to have litter after litter of kittens to just deposit on highways all over town. We plan to install a video camera at our gate so we can get a tag number!