Following my find of a dead swift in the flower bed, there have been a lot of blog comments on cats, and how welcome or unwelcome they are in the garden.
Following my find of a dead swift in the flower bed, there have been a lot of blog comments on cats, and how welcome or unwelcome they are in the garden. So I just had to share the following, because I found it so comical. It is taken from a fascinating, but very obscure book called 'The balance of nature, and modern conditions of cultivation: a practical manual of animal foes and friends for the country gentleman, the farmer, the forester, the gardener and the sportsman', written by one George Abbey and published by Routledge in 1909.
Abbey was obviously a practical man, he divides cats into two classes - ornamental and useful. He quickly glosses over the ornamentals, more or less dismissing them as docile, tractable and maybe even good-tempered: 'their winsomeness and good manners representing the measure of their utility'. He has rather more to say about cat usefulness when it comes to mousers and ratters.
He then offers the cat as the perfect protector of the gardeners' strawberries; employing it to chase off birds. He quotes an example from the Reverend H.L. Ewen's Rectory at Offord D'Arcy near Huntingdon, reported in the Journal of Horticulture in July 1883. The cat was tethered, by a short chain from its collar, the last link of the chain ran freely along a metal wire strung out in a line through the middle of the strawberry beds. The feline was then able to patrol up and down chasing thrushes and blackbirds off of the fruit. If the weather was inclement, a short length of drainpipe at each end of the wire was the beast's shelter, and the odd bowl of food kept it going if it could not actually catch its prey. According to Abbey, the strawberry-growing Reverend had a whole team of cats and kittens so employed.
This is all very amusing, but, as the book's subtitle manifestly points out, Abbey's work is not just aimed at the gardener. He is also very quick to suggest that wayward cats, especially those gone half feral in the woods, are best dealt with quickly by the gamekeeper. If they can't be easily shot, he helpfully includes a diagram showing how a pair of gin traps should be placed and baited to best catch them. Nice.
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