Cats can’t garden, rotten at roundups 

The kittens are so helpful. The entire pride follows me about outside. It’s a wonder I don’t step on a little foot or tail.

We start with watering the gardens while the kiddos chase bugs. Nothing like a juicy cicada after a meal. Python, my favorite, checks to see what’s got me focused on the raised bed.

Kittens are not encouraged to hop into the beds, so I shoot him with a jet of water. Shocked, he falls off the edge and tumbles to the ground.

Cobra and Mamba gallop over to see why their sibling fell. The snake-y sisters pounce him for good measure. Corpulent Tiger and Fraidy-cat join in, chewing and clawing in mock ferocity. Someone cries after being bitten on the tail and the kitten pile explodes off into different directions; not Corpulent (why did Hubby name him that?).

His next stop is a bed of cucumbers. He hops up and out again as I spray him with the hose. He crashes into Fraidy, who is upside down balancing on the side of the water tub batting at a mosquito dunk. Scrambling down, the two battle under my feet. Tempted to use the hose, I rethink the plan in favor of maintaining dry shoes and swat with my crutch.

Temporarily kittenfree I trudge on to finish the last five beds. Fraidy hauls himself into the mini bell peppers. I squirt him and he flees to his momma, who whacks him a good one.

She has no more patience with weaned teen cats. At least she’s learned to stay out of the beds. With all this cat drama I wonder if I’ll ever finish.

Dragging the hose to the last bed, I slosh water onto the cherry tomatoes, and fix the hose in place to finish watering while I tromp off to the spigot to turn it off. Now “we’ll” feed the rabbits.

The conglomeration of kittens spy me moving off and stampede in my wake. Bunny feeding means I’ll take a breather. So we go and sit. Corpulent perches on my right shoulder, Fraidy and Mamba climb onto my lap and Python work his way into my arms.

I upend him and rub his spotty tummy. He looks into my eyes with adoration … and bites me on the tip of my nose. Cobra’s busy chewing my shoelaces. I remove my little darlings go and back to work.

A white flash careens past me. It’s the junior doe that escaped a few days ago. I’ve almost caught her twice. The kittens love to chase her even though she’s bigger than they are. That’s no help.

If Art gets near her during his evening rounds, the kittens show up angling for attention, and she zooms off into the darkness.

Then they follow her and ignore him. The whole rabbit rodeo’s been going on a week and we can’t catch her. She’s getting wilder by the day. We’ll have to set a live trap baited with rabbit chow and water. Our luck we’ll catch one of the kittens instead.

I hope these kittens grow up into marvelous mousers. They sure can’t garden and they’re messing up our rabbit retrieval rodeo.

The Marlin Democrat

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Marlin, TX 76661
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