Sleeping With The Enemy

I have a saboteur in my house. She is a black, 10 month old cat, and her name is Phantom. It is her mission to destroy every seedling I have. I'm certain it was a black ops, because she did it without sound, in the middle of the night.

I awoke Tuesday morning to find that she had knocked over and mauled my pepper seedlings. I managed to save three, but you can imagine my upset over the incident. There were several rounds of "Bad Kitty!", but since I had gotten up extremely late, I just picked up the survivors and left the mess to be cleaned when I got home. Well I guess she showed me. I returned home that evening and she had again knock over the container with the peppers, along with the tomato seedlings. Now I have two pepper and three tomato seedlings left. I was sick. She had left them alone for several weeks, so I guess I lulled myself into thinking she wasn't interested in my little project. I have since moved my wounded greenery to another room that she can't get into. She knows they are in there and it's driving her crazy not to be able to get to them. She rolls around in front of the shut door and mews. A couple times she has body slammed the door. "Bad, Bad, Bad, Kitty!"

I know this is just par for cat behavior, but I'm a new cat caretaker and I forget that plants are one of kitty's mortal enemies. Did I learn nothing from all those comics, where Garfield ate the fern? Apparently not. The incident will be hence known as the April Massacre. I'm hoping that my surviving little soldiers will thrive inspite of their two horrible days of destruction. As for Phantom, I got back at her by giving her a bath to wash off the soil she had rolled around in. That will teach her!