Another One Bites the Dust (or, My Life Without Plants)

It is common knowledge that I have never been good with plants. Mark used to tease me that every time I went into the plant section at a store, the plants would all scream out “Don’t buy us!”. He was known to have asked the checker at Orchard Supply (with a totally serious tone and straight face) if they had any little coffins we could have for the plants we were buying because they were going to die under my care! Well, I had begun to pride myself recently on the fact that I had been able to keep some really nice plants alive for a really long time…but that was BC (Before Cat)…

We might begin our review session here: On Foster’s first day in his new home, he said hello to all the plants with gusto. And ever since then, I have been on a mission to keep my plants (and my cat) alive.

One of the first things I did was look up which houseplants are poisonous to cats. To my dismay, I found that most of mine were. Except the African Violet. So that was encouraging.

This will be easy, I thought…I’ll do what I’ve done with all my previous cats: squirt him with water whenever he goes near the plants. Foster apparently had read the scripture in Matthew 5:25 that says “Agree with thine adversary quickly,” because he immediately made friends with the spray bottle, and since he enjoys playing with water anyway, after awhile that was no deterrent.

Then I read that cats were repelled by the smell of citrus, and that you should spray it around your plants. So I got some citrus spray (that’s it on the shelf at the left). I have one thing to say: “A picture is worth a thousand words”.

We might also take this opportunity to point out the catnip mouse in the middle of everything. Yup, catnip should be outlawed! At least when there are no adults in the room.

The aftermath.

You can see that this plant has had several locations. It’s now in the kitchen, along with the rest of them, where so far no one has climbed up on the counters…