There is a lot going on in this picture.
Us, for one thing. There's me, looking gloriously orange, but there's also Scooter, practising his ninja skills, hiding in the shadows on top of the wall.
We are in Our Garden. It's a place that seethes with feelings and feuds; we are conducting a battle of wills with the humans about what a garden is for. I think we are winning.
We guard the garden, and the one next door. Our neighbours told Rachel that sometimes they get a spooky feeling that they are being watched when they are in their garden, and then they spot Scooter looking at them from the greenery. Sometimes Scooter and I climb onto their flat roof and look in their window when they are in bed. They have cats too, silly fluffy creatures who never come out to play, and don't know how to be garden guards.
What else do you see? Well yes, the washing lines - that woman is forever doing washing! Perhaps she was a cat in a former life. But I mean the fuchsia. She says she hates it, and it needs to come out, but she can't quite do it. And that's because it is OUR fuchsia; we sharpen our claws on it.
And that shrub behind it is where I like to hide when it rains. Rachel peers into it and says "Hello, Hamish!" but I don't move - she must be bluffing, because I'm hidden, right? so she can't possibly see me. She hates that bush too, and says I must find somewhere else to lurk. She has a lovely honeysuckle waiting to go in its place, she says - I can't hide under a spindly old honeysuckle!
The patch of bare soil is something else I am having a little fight with Rachel about. She has put lots of Spring bulbs in there, but it's where I like to - ahem...you know.... She says there's a giant cat tray in the utility, but I'm a
wild animal - cat litter is for sissies!
On the other side is the log pile, waiting for a wood store to be made by Rachel's big scary kitten, the one she calls The Lovely Son. We like this log pile; if we jump off the wall onto it, some logs roll off. Spiders live in it, and sometimes we can hear frogs in there too.
At the back of the garden is a heap of bags that are full of Mulch. Rachel says she dreads spreading it, because she knows how much I like to dig. I think it sounds exciting!
Lottie and Millie aren't in this picture because Lottie just sleeps all day and Millie goes out adventuring. The new cat, Catkin the Horrible, isn't in it either, because she just sits at the top of the stairs and growls at us if we try to go up. She only comes downstairs to eat our dinner.
So we spend our days in the garden.
Our Garden.
