Why the Cat Has a Bald Tail

Okay, so remember my post last month, “Awaiting Germination?” Well, all metaphors aside, those seedlings are never gonna sprout. They met an untimely demise. It had to do with a certain cat, that cat’s tail, and a roll of packing tape...

You wanna know what happens when a cat’s tail gets stuck to a roll of packing tape? Total freak out mode, that’s what. I imagine it must be terrifying for an inanimate object to continue to chase you no matter how fast you run!

In about ten seconds flat, a Fiesta vase was shattered, a four hundred page manuscript was strewn all out of order and covered in mud...mud, you ask? mud from what? Oh, that would be mud from the three big plastic tubs of seedlings I’d been nurturing along for seven weeks. Yep, all up-ended, their delicate white roots exposed, their stems severed, their leaves trampled.

The poor cat ran under a chair on his way out of my office and the packing tape roll finally caught on a chair leg and wrenched itself free of his tail. That stuff is fierce—it left quite an impressive bald spot on his tail.

I let the cleanup wait while I coaxed the cat out from behind the washing machine and gave him lots of loving.

All is well now. Joey’s fur is growing back. Last weekend I bought new vegetable plants from a garden center, and they look hardier than my seedlings did anyway.

Let’s hope the new plot “germination” does not meet with an equally disastrous outcome!