Gardening for cats

...my next book.

Not really. I think it should be a novel about the last days of the United States post office.

But I do garden for the cat. He has his little green carpet, with the creeping Jenny, where he likes to hang out during the day, under the shade of the Heuchera leaves, and he has his space between the pots on the side of the terrace, so that he can jump from the stone table to prowl on the roof. Or sit and stare down at us while we eat dinner.

The other night we heard the familiar and rare click of a katydid. Green cicadas, the cat calls them, and he says they taste like cat candy. His ears pricked up and he shot to the roof and began swiping at the climbing rose. We liked the katydid and did not want it to be eaten. The Frenchman shot off after him,  and performed a dramatic aerial rescue of the katydid, to the disgusted amazement of the cat. It was his birthday and we had just removed his present from the universe.

The katydid was equally unimpressed, rejecting its new housing in the middle tiers of the rose, and flying into an oak tree across the road, where we hear its chirruping clicks every night, while we eat dinner.