Fortunately, our indoor gardens don’t tend to have all that many pests that we have to worry about. But, we’ve got a big one. A whopping 17 pounds of muscle and fur, named Bridger Widger The Onion Eater!
There isn’t a season in recent memory where Bridger hasn’t gotten to our onions. This year, we left our grow tent unattended and accessible for probably less than 30-45 seconds. And out of nowhere, bam, he was able to get in, get out and somehow mow down the tops of at least a half dozen onions without us even noticing.
You might imagine by this cat’s sheer size that stealth is not his strong suit. But, you see, Bridger is like a well oiled, chunky ninja when it comes to onions. Even during this “photo shoot” for this story, he couldn’t resist shifting between looking cute and looking at the onions every three seconds.
We do count ourselves pretty lucky, overall. Fortunately, our cats really could care less about most of the plants we grow. Celery? Nope, not interested. Brassicas? Eh, no. Good old pepper leaves? There’s much better! Lettuce? Ewww. Of all the plants we grow, our onions (and other allium) are the only target of his affection.
Now, we know all the “tricks” to dissuade this, the best of which is “theoretically” growing cat grass. (Which, BTW, you can grow at any time and it will encourage most cats to leave your “important” plants alone.) But, that trick doesn’t work on this cat, nor does any other. While he does like grass, he loves onions. This is honestly one of the big reasons we use a grow tent, it “generally” keeps this onion eating chonky donkey out of our onion stash. And pretty much every year, we fail at basic plant security somehow.
When we’ve had to move our onions out of the tent, we usually try to bury the onion trays well into the center of our other plants. It’s like the security perimeter at the Pentagon, just with broccoli and tomato seedlings. We’ve found that he’s somewhat reluctant to jump into the center of our plants. But, who are we kidding? This is a cat we’re talking about. Fortunately, the subsequent loud noises, followed by chaotic cartoon cat skedaddles and absolute knowledge that he’s a “bad kitty” usually results in him only trying this daring move once per season.
We don’t really need cat remedies, not one of them will deter this cat from his super weird passion for onions. We’ve been dealing with this for years. We just want to share this funny thing about one of our cats and maybe make you smile.
