Gardening In the Company of Cats

This morning, after ingesting as much headline news as I could stand, I headed out to our Arizona garden to collect vegetables. Gardening in Arizona is very different from gardening in Louisiana or Georgia, the two last states in which we lived. Because the area receives only 10-12 inches of annual precipitation, I was worried about being able to have a productive garden. But the small greenhouse my husband built on the studs of an old chicken house, the drip hoses we've threaded throughout the garden, and the chicken manure from the old hen yard as well as the new hen yard have all worked together to help us create a fantastic garden here at 7200 ft. above sea level.

My two cats usually accompany me outside. I allow them out of the house into our fenced-in backyard only when I can keep an eye on them. Cassie (Cassandra), the three-year-old, follows me into the garden while Persey (Persephone), the fourteen-year-old, heads to the outdoor room I created out of a 10'X10' dog pen, where she hops onto a garden bench or table for a snooze.

Persey snoozing in my Secret Garden outdoor room

Since losing weight, old Persey has become more frisky, and she often climbs a tree or two before settling down on the garden bench.

We didn't know Persey still had it in her.

Sometimes a stump will do.

Both cats like to clamber onto the greenhouse roof though Cassie is the most adventurous and does this more often than Persey.

Cassie on the door of the greenhouse

And onto the roof

Today Cassie thoroughly checked out every inch of the garden. 

Cassie stops a moment by our yellow squash plant....

...and checks out our neighbor's garden and yard beyond the fence, where the dog Gypsy lives....

...and looks for intruders among the tomatoes.

Cassie has completely perambulated the garden.

She has finished her gardening chores, as I have mine. 

After a chat with my neighbor across the fence, I and the cats headed inside as thunder clapped in the distance. We're in the monsoon season in northeastern Arizona, and we have been getting a lot of rain lately after a dry June and early July. Once in the house, I piddled around, just barely registering that Cassie was very occupied in the sun room, where I heard what I thought was the buzzing of a hummingbird through an open window. But later, as I walked by the door to the room, I noticed that Cassie had climbed up on the short wall that separates the landing to the laundry room from the sun room. I looked toward the skylight where Cassie's attention was riveted: a hummingbird had flown into the house through the open patio door and was frantically trying to get through the clear plastic of the skylight. I had to remove Cassie, close all the entrances to the room, and poke a broom--straw-side up--toward the frightened hummingbird. With slow movements, I finally got the bird to perch on the broom, and I carefully moved broom and bird to the door and outside. After a little hesitation, the hummingbird flew away. 

This was the second bird rescue I had attempted today, and the most successful. Earlier, a sparrow had flown into the hen yard, which is surrounded on all sides by chicken wire, walls and ceiling, and it couldn't find its way out. The cats prowled around the edges, scaring the bird more, as I opened the door to the hen-yard, trying to shoo out the bird but not the chickens. Cassie got into the chicken yard and close enough to the bird to catch it; I had to haul her ass out of there. The poor little bird's head was bleeding from its frantic flight from chicken-wire wall to chicken-wire wall to chicken-wire ceiling; it landed on my shoulder for a moment and crapped in its fear, but I couldn't get outside the chicken yard fast enough to set it free. The poor bird was exhausted. Over and over, it would fly to a chicken-wire wall, cling there with its beak wide open, and hang upside down, twirling its head around in order to keep an eye on all the dangers that surrounded it. I finally had to take the cats in the house, close up the chicken yard, and hope the bird could find its way out without my help. When I returned later, it was gone. 

silhouette of a hummingbird on a wall of my Secret Garden