The Triumph of the Cat At this time of the
year, when young plants of all sorts are betng set out, rabbits are perhaps the country gardener's greatest nuisance. There are few rabbit-proof plants, many protective measures. But so far I have discovered nothing so successful as a good lean cat. In March young rabbits begin to squirm their way into my garden for the usual meals of phlox-shoots, cabbages and wallflowers. Silently and systematically the cat caught them and laid them, unscarred, on the kitchen door-mat. No more rabbits have since been seen on the inside of the fence. But outside the cat goes on silently and system- atically tracking them down and laying them, sometimes small, some- times as large as herself, on the kitchen door-mat. What are we doing, drowning kittens? In the intervals of supplementing the house- hold meat-ration the cat occasionally has another job. She acts as sheep-dog to the ducks. As they come home from the pond she rounds up the stragglers, until they make a brown orderly line, neck- deep in buttercups. There never was such a self-supporting person in the family. And, fmally, why do cats sleep in .cat-mint? For there, after the labours of rabbit-catching and duck-shepherding, she is always lying, in blissful siesta, her white nose buried in violet flowers.
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