What do cats have to do with starting seeds indoors?

We have cats. We have a lot of cats. Indoor and outdoor cats. We have cute cats, ugly cats, soft and cuddly cats, purring cats, hissing cats, and we have good and bad cats. One characteristic all our cats have in common besides having fur and claws is that each and every one of them is nosey, which means they are curious about anything we do.

When it comes to starting seeds this can be a problem unless the cats are graduates of a good cat training center the whereabouts I know not of. If I knew of such a center I would get my cats trained to scratch around my flowers so I didn't have to weed. If more were known about this mysterious species there's no end to the chores we could get done. But as everyone knows, cats are served, not servants.

The most cruel tactic for keeping cats out of my seed starting area is to keep all that activity in a separate room where I can close the door and not worry that my feline babies will assault my botanical babies. The problem with this is some of the cats will sit outside the door and meow endlessly. That's why we have so many cats. A female feline annoyingly meows endlessly while in heat and gets thrown outdoors and comes back purring with kittens. We feed and take care of them and multiply our pleasure and grief. We never made the claim that we were sane only that we know how to start seeds and also multiply cats.

Another tactic is to spray Kitty No. Works like a charm. Not. I don't know who makes Kitty No but I am here to tell you Kitty No doesn't work. I actually think the people who make Kitty No could go from being involved in a struggling business to the prestige of blue chip stocks if they would simply rename the product to Kitty Yes.

What works is putting the spouts in jail. I haven't figured out how to do this indoors yet, but I have cages outdoors when I move the plants out to harden to the weather where the cats can't get them. Now the cats will still nose up to the cages and stick their paws through the holes but they get bored and stop since nothing in the cage smells like fish or chicken.

Starting seeds indoors is not without obstacles. But not as many obstacles as starting seeds outdoors. It is a hobby that I cannot do without the same way, grief or not, I cannot do without my cats.