Cats and Gardens
Splinter and I Have Relocated Together Many Times. There Is Always A Garden and A Secure Cat Space.
Moving from 7 and a half acres in Stoneville to the city necessitated careful planning and a lot of work, so he would enjoy his new life. A garden was essential!
Our highway to and from the sky, for possums and birds.
For years, brush tail possums scrambled down the old red gum trunk, to eat the oats the highly coloured parrots disregard. Generations of pink and grey galahs slid down it and on to the feeding tray, while magpie babies have precariously perched there before flopping across to bathe in the water bowls.
With its top firmly wedged into the Banksia next to Burt’s cage, the timber surface is shiny and bare, and Splinter loved nothing more than to dash across the patio and scamper half way up the pole. The resultant screeching of disturbed parrots rising in a flurry of feathers to settle above him in the tree was a sure sign that he had positioned himself on the feeding tray, defying one-and-all.
Splinter was absolutely fearless from day one, when it came to confronting the big black cockatoos.
Moving from the hills to East Victoria Park meant a momentous change for Splinter. No longer able to belt his way up a red gum trunk and out onto a branch, to “eyeball” a baby black cockatoo twice his size as it precariously clung to a cluster of waving twigs and leaves.
Nor could he lurk amongst the bottlebrush to threaten the magpies who stalk through the garden. He cannot loll on a Banksia branch, waiting (as Lisa put it) to pounce upon a passing antelope, as one does, in Stoneville.
He has never caught a bird in his 18 years. A couple of mouse families have been dispatched, but never eaten. His birthday is on New Year’s Day, and he is now officially older than me! He is 18, and I am 80.
Confined to quarters for a month
For the first month after our move from Stoneville to East Victoria Park, we confined Splinter to Warren and Lisa’s exceptionally large shed while he learned to live with a restricted range of territory. He could walk out the cat door into a milk crate and then a large birdcage, through which he could see and hear the great outdoors — including many galahs who knew him well.
I often wondered what they were saying amongst themselves, while they fluttered about their feed tray giving him a side-eye. There’s a story still to be written about these two birds. Meanwhile, we were building his garden, 40kms away outside my new bedroom.
Making space for Splinter’s garden.
To start, we re-sited the outside garden shed by turning it sideways to become part of the fence line, giving my Dad his own garden workshop. Trellis partly replaced with fence panels. The gate was moved. Chicken wire enclosed the space between the fence and the roof, and shade cloth fixed over the open roof rafters kept our arboreal cat secure.
Along the rear of the unit, we extended out an extra three feet to run outside the path and down to the back wall, and chicken wire secured to Koppers logs enclosed Splinter’s garden from floor to roofline. A lockable garden gate made it easy for us to come and go.
Between the fence and brick wall, outside my window, is “Splinter’s Garden” — a desert of dry, black sand, six foot wide and ten feet long, which swirled grey dust and filled my room with grit. But, not for long!
First, the old red gum trunk — a perfect fit when we positioned it at an angle from the floor to the top of the enclosure, thirteen feet high at the back. He instantly recognised the red gum trunk and scampered to its highest point. In the centre, a big mallee root from the block, fronting a huge tree fern in a pot.
The bathroom mirror, through my bedroom window, reflects a beautiful cream and white ficus which got too tall for the shade house and in the opposite back corner, a new red flowing gum tree in a large pot promises spectacular blossoms.
Alongside, on her plinth, is the elegant Grecian statue Robbie bought me at the Garden Show. She gazes down on pots of orchids, ferns and colourful coleus, freckle face and native flowering creepers. A bonsai cypress cascades from its pot at her feet and long tubs of flowering begonia mark out the windowsill.
Hanging baskets of fern and pitcher plants soften the bricks and pots of annual flowers brighten dark corners. In a token of compensation, we have mulched the floor with gum leaves and shredded gum trees, so that water brings the familiar smell of eucalypt. We made many trips back to Stoneville to keep up the supply of gum leaves.
Otherwise confined to the house, Splinter comes and goes through the cat door cut into the window of my Dad’s bedroom. He spends hours on the viewing shelf built full length above the fence line, watching the world go by.
He lies supinely amongst his own garden — his exquisite white tummy clearly displayed as he rolls over to stretch to his full length, contemplating the unreachable two doves that sit on the fence. It’s a great garden for an idle cat.
For the time being, there was just the four of us: Dad, Splinter, Ulla Bird the canary, and me. Splinter was totally bonded to my Dad and was never so happy as when he was on Dad’s lap or sitting in the flow of the air conditioner — summer or winter. Just a little spoiled, I think. He still is!
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