I share my garden with a huge variety of wildlife and also several ‘pets’ including two elderly cats, a dog and my ex battery hens. For me it’s a huge part of enjoying the garden, I just love to see the hens parading around the garden foraging for bugs and scraps under the leaves and in and around the plants.
They share my plot with a wonderful array of wild birds and between them devour a massive amount of the garden pests that would otherwise wreak havoc on the garden. Even the greenhouse has from time to time been home to more than the usual greenhouse bugs.
In the spring and summer I leave the side windows open most of the time and this has allowed one of my cats to take advantage of the warmer climes inside. She uses the windows of the glasshouse as a large cat flap and settles down for a snooze on a beanbag that resides in one corner of the greenhouse. Despite her presence a little mouse set up home for a few weeks and did a fair amount of plant munching and also some considerable damage to a few things stored inside.
The cat appeared oblivious to its presence and it had to go, but I couldn’t bring myself to kill it, so I employed a humane mousetrap and after a few weeks managed to catch the culprit and release it in some nearby woods.
