An Unwelcome Fertilizer

When we were searching for a house, my top priority was location. I wanted an alley, Vietnamese neighbors and a local market. For Steven, his top priority was a roof top deck or balcony where we could enjoy the outdoors and cultivate our own herb and vegetable garden. Luckily for us, our new house meets both of our needs. And our balcony even came equipped with its own built-on flower box.

The first week we were here, Steven planted some seeds and began checking on them regularly to assess their progress. After about a week, he came to me disgusted, informing me that the neighborhood cat apparently liked to use our flower box in lieu of a litter box. After a few days of grumbling and cleaning out the unwelcome mess, I began thinking of ways to reclaim our soil.

Last weekend, we went one of the city's many plant stores and bought a bunch of pots and a huge bag of potting soil. Afterward, we stopped into the supermarket across the street where I began scouring the isles for something to use to keep the cat out. Finally, after some inspired searching, we checked out armed with two garment bags and a bag of party straws.

Once at home, we began, by scooping as much of the dirt and other unmentionables (along with two batteries!) out of the flower box as I could, leaving us about six inches of space for our new seed bed - the idea being that the seedlings would be re-potted in fresh soil long before their roots could travel down to the remaining soil, although now free of batteries, surely containing all manner of other nasty stuff. After the new soil was laid and new seeds were planted, we set about constructing our "cat shield." In what turned out to be a more labor intensive process than I'd imagined, we spent the next two hours cutting the laundry bags into pieces, sewing the netting to the straws which were placed about four inches apart at the front end of the flower box, deep in the soil, and tying the other part to the short metal railing separating the balcony wall from the flower box which juts out over the alley, creating a makeshift net tent enclosing the entire box.

As we worked, we drew the inquisitive stares of children playing in the alley as well as those of the men working on the house two houses up from ours. When our neighbor across the alley came out on her second floor balcony to watch us, I managed to say, "Cat" with a disgusted face in Vietnamese and she nodded with understanding.

Now almost a week after the construction and a few torrential downpours, our cat shield is still standing and, from the looks of it, serving its intended purpose. The only potiential clue we have had as to the reaction of the cat toward our disruption of its bathroom habits is a dead rat on our balcony last night, which could easily be unrelated, or it could be the cat's way of saying, "Take down the sheild, or you'll be next....".