Tuesday, September 02, 2008

Cats and Lawns and Things


Next doors cat creeps through the long grass of our back garden and makes its way to one of the large bushes. There it settles down to stare at me. I stare back it. Its a strange cat, a throw back to the days when wildcats roamed freely through the ancient woodland that used to cover the hillsides. It has the markings of a wildcat and the facial features to go with them. Not ugly, but not very cuddly either. So it sits beneath our foliage, a sleek muscular moggy, menacing the innocent. The innocent being of course our two cats. Since next doors sabre tooth tiger has taken to coming in to occupy part of our garden our two have taken to spending more time in doors. It doesn't attack them, it doesn't have to, its mere presence is enough.
It seems to like our garden. Now next doors garden is no good for cats. The grass is too short and the bushes are too neat and tidy and offer little in the way of foliage to lie up in and ambush unsuspecting pets. In fact their lawn resembles a bowling green. To keep it so it requires three cuts a week, regardless of the weather and whether it needs it or not.
So our garden is more attractive to cats. Both Mrs BW and I are firmly in the “Gardens should look natural” school, though I lean more to the wild and unkempt look than she does. Of course as she does most of the gardening she gets to make the structural decisions and I am left to agree with her. The neighbours may not be happy, but at least their cats are. Perhaps they won't shit on our lawn! I mean the cats of course.

4 comments:

fiwa said...

Our next door's cat likes to sit on our front lawn, preening, in order to drive our dog nuts. It's a sneaky little bastard too... as soon as I open the door it tears off and hides in the bramble.

KAZ said...

I love cats.
But I sometimes forget that some are more loveable than others.

Daphne said...

A three-legged cat lives next door to us. We call it Tripod, which is probably not its real name. It is not at all good-looking but thinks it is and spends its time doing Cute and Kittenish at anyone who will look. We reckon it gnawed its own leg off in a bid for sympathy.

Gadjo Dilo said...

I used to love the cats but avoid dogs, but here in Transylvania we have lots of feral examples of both and my position has totally reversed as the cats are rubbish whilst the dogs are lovable scamps that you want to take home and nurture.