Gwenith!!!!

This was once a heart-leaf philodren- dron.

A very valuable and historic heart-leaf philoden- dron, I might add.

It was cultured in the greenhouses of the Kansas City, Missouri, Department of Parks & Recreation, greenhouses that now have not only been closed down but have also been pulled down in the past year† because the stupid current City administration were unwilling to envision a time when there might be enough money to run them again.

It was an Adminstrative Professionals Day gift from my former boss several years ago, when I was serving the public good as a low-paid but hardworking tech in the Parks & Rec Archives. It was a souvenir.

And now, look at it. Or what's left of it.

Gwenith, you see, decided several months ago that she liked nothing better than philodrendron leaves. I was afraid for her because I've heard they're poisonous to cats. But the local Poison Control advisor said don't worry, philodendrons these days are cultivated to have almost none of the harmful compounds they used to. If she was showing no signs of trouble by then, there was no danger to her.

So then I was afraid for my plant.

I tried the old cayenne-pepper-as-repellant trick. But I applied so much I burned the leaves the kitten had left. I didn't give up on it, though. I moved it to a plant pedestal and nursed it back to health. It was putting out tender new growth, when my pink floofy kitteh figured out how to jump up there and nom them off anyway.

That's when I moved it to a shelf in the bedroom. But Gwen still found a way to get at it. By now there were no leaves left, but maybe, maybe, the roots where still good and it would rise again?

So I put an old calendar under the pot where I'd seen her jump up. It's floppy, and when she landed on it, it'd give way under her, she'd tumble off, and she'd learn to let the philodrendron alone, right?

And for a few weeks she did. It didn't grow any new leaves, but she let it alone.

Until this evening. I don't know what possessed her to try again, but she got up there from another angle, ate the smaller of the two remaining shoots, and ejected a quarter of the potting soil onto the shelf and the floor.

Gwenith, you pest! And then you have the cheek to come up on my lap and want to be petted, like nothing was wrong!

I cleaned up the mess and did some rearranging. The philodrendron is now on the third and highest shelf, where I hope it will make a new start.

But if some morning I wake to find my larcenous kitteh all the way up there making her breakfast out of the last, lone, lorn philodendron stem, I won't be at all surprised.

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†I am reliably informed that the KCPR greenhouses have not been razed. Not for lack of intention, but for lack of funds to do the job. Same difference.