by Beverley Williams

Created on: February 19, 2007   Last Updated: January 22, 2010

Our two cats don't so much chew my houseplants as splat and disembowel them.

When they first arrived and had settled in enough to be getting adventurous about the house, they took great pleasure in playing hide and seek behind the plants, and when the hider was found, having mock battles through the foliage that generally ended up with one or both climbing on top or through the plant. I did not care how cute they were, this was amusing for about ten seconds - especially when it was my 14-year old Christmas cactus. After much squirting of water, distracting with clapping and moving cat toys, and spraying the plants with cat repellent, this type of destruction has reduced significantly, though they are still known to have the odd bout. Just make sure you use plant-friendly cat repellent, or all the leaves will drop off anyway (I only made that mistake once!).

They occasionally attempt to use upright plants with a tough stem as a scratching post, but as none of my indoor plants are particularly sturdy, this has not been much of a problem - the same approach as above sufficed.

Possibly the most creative use of my houseplants is generally down to our female feline. She likes to dig all the soil out of the pot. In fact, if the plant is small enough, she grabs it, pulls the plant and plastic pot out of the ceramic pot, pulls the plant out of the plastic pot, and then smears soil up the wall paper in artistic swirly patterns. All while I'm not looking of course, but she's the only one who has ever shown the slightest interest in the soil... For larger plants, I have now solved this little problem by putting stone pebbles all around the base of the plant - she now tends to get distracted by choosing just the right pebble, manoeuvring it over the gap between the plastic and ceramic pots, and then chasing it round the room.

Funnily enough, apart from one small tree used as a scratching post, the plants in the garden have been safe from mangling so far, but buy a new house plant and all bets are off - the more or less co-operative agreement we have with the resident house plants obviously doesn't automatically apply.....

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