Blanche

They call me Blanche. Blanche du Cat is my full name. I was named after a character in a famous book that I've never read. I am, after all, a cat. Cats don't read although some people think we read their minds....and then try to read ours. Blanche is French for white. I'm a black cat. My owner, who named me, is a little different that way. That would be Mary. She's not actually my owner; she's my boss. Mary is a farmer and I am a farm cat.

Unlike most farms that are out in the country, our farm is in the city. I prefer it this way because I was born in the city and I am a city cat. Not that I've ever been to the country but a cat gets a feeling about these things. I like living in the city. I like the size. I like the people. I like the noise and the cars and the smells.

I have a very important job here at the farm. I'm the guard cat. A couple of years ago birds from all over flew in and ate all the seedlings, which is what you call little plants when they are babies, like you call little cats kitties. Mary was upset about the birds eating all her plants. You can tell when Mary gets upset because her face gets very red, she tugs on her hat and she stomps her feet. Maybe she thought the foot stomping would make the birds fly away but they didn't have any plans to leave. I think they thought Mary was putting on a show for them and they liked it.

The birds liked our farm because we grow lots of lettuce and the trays of lettuce seedlings were like a big salad bar for them. The birds liked to eat those young plants one nip at a time and drink from the water that ran underneath the plants. We grow lettuce in a special way known as hydroponics. That's Greek for "plants that grow in water." Hydroponics is very clean because there is no dirt. No dirt, you say? How can you have plants with no dirt? Everyone knows that plants only grow in dirt. Well, I may just be a cat that can't read or speak Greek but I know that plants do not need dirt to grow. At our farm lots of the plants grow in water. Mary adds the nutrients, which is like food, to the water and the plants get what they need to grow from the water. It makes the plants grow faster because all the food is made just for them and the water keeps the plants cool and happy. People love Mary's lettuce. They come from all around to buy it at our food stand, which we named "Food For People Farm Stand." We pick it and put it in the cooler and then sell it the next day. People ooh and aahh and say "Oh it tastes so fresh. I can taste every little leaf." This makes Mary happy and, if Mary is happy, I am happy.

Bees like visiting our farm too. They live across the street in hive houses called SUPERS that Mary and Kacie, our co-worker, built for them. Bee work gets hot in the summer and they look for water to cool off after a long day of flying from plant to plant collecting pollen to make honey. They heard about Mary's water lettuce farm - perhaps from the birds - and now they plop themselves at the end of the rails, bothering no one, just having a cool sip of water before heading back to their hive houses. Mary's face doesn't get all red about the bees because, like me, they have a job to do what with making honey and pollinating the plants.  Plus, I don't think bees eat lettuce. It's those darn birds that get her going. But I have that under control.

When I arrived one day Mary was trying out a gizmo called a Bird-Be-Gone. You plugged it in and it made loud horrible squawking noises. It was designed to scare the birds away. All it did was drive everyone, including Mary, crazy. It was replaced by another machine that made a noise that humans couldn't hear but animals could and all the dogs and cats and parakeets in the neighborhood started crying.  That got put in the basement too. Then Mary spent weeks building a giant netting over all the tables and trays and pumps and herself. Satisfied that this was the answer, she went back to work cutting lettuce and looked up just in time to see to see a starling collapse its little body and slip through the holes in the netting. That starling set up right across from Mary and started nipping. A taste of red romaine, a nibble of green butter crisp, mmmm delicious, a bite of slightly bitter endive. After eating the starling dipped itself into the water and then jumped under the table where it rolled around on the gravel for a bit to dry off. Then it was back to a high wire to watch Mary work.

Mary's shoulders slumped. She pulled her big hat down over her face.  She didn't even bother stomping. What was she to do? She had tried the rolling brown owl, the blowup hawks, the strings of pie plates and shiny slips of paper called Mylar. She tried fire crackers and loud music, squawk boxes and radio waves. Now her hair beret and the bracelet her sister gave her were getting caught in the giant tent of mesh she had been told would bird-proof her plants. She was losing hope. The birds were eating more lettuce than Mary was picking and what she was picking had leaves with little bird bites in it and, as it turns out, humans don't like lettuce that has little beak bites in it.  

I understood the problem right away and took action. A quick leap onto the tables to surprise the unsuspecting diners, an arched back and a few hisses through clenched teeth and my work was done. Once I made it clear that I was there to guard the plants, the birds started going elsewhere. Mary beamed. The lettuce was now free to grow. When people asked Mary who I was she would said, "Oh, that's Blanche. She works here." Now it's my job to continue to monitor the situation and remind the birds that I am here and I mean business. I don't mind if a few birds stop by and check out the place. Heck, that's what they do. You can't blame a bird for being a bird, as long as they leave the lettuce alone.

Mary is a good person who had what some people thought was a new idea. She knew that food travels a long way from the farmer to your house. All the time that food is traveling it is losing its flavor and freshness, and locked within that freshness are the vitamins and minerals that make vegetables important for human bodies.  Sure, food tastes good, but it's also good for you. But by the time your mom or dad buys it and brings it home for you, some of it has traveled 1500 miles, which is half as long as the United States is wide, and a very long way for broccoli or even turnips to go. Mary's idea was to grow the broccoli right there where the people live and that way they could have it right after it finished growing. It would be better for them and better for our environment because no one would have to drive it 1500 miles using up all that gas. Using too much gas is not good for the environment, which is the earth plus the air and the water everywhere.  Not just where you live, but everywhere in the whole wide world.

So Mary built a farm in the city. It's not a big farm with cows and chickens, like the ones you have seen or read about in other books. Our farm is small with flowers and herbs and vegetables growing. Mary wanted everyone who walks by to learn how long it takes to grow a tomato or why some things only grow in the early spring or what cauliflower looks like when it's not quite cauliflower yet. She grows  little vegetable  plants  you can take home to grow your own eggplant in your garden out back or on a deck or in a community garden, which is where people gather to garden together, because city people sometimes don't have backyards. She grow lots of different flowers that you can hang in a basket or put in a pot out on your stoop to let people know that you care about beautiful things and want to be a good neighbor.

Before Mary came and started growing things on the land, there was a factory that the city tore down.  No one could remember there ever having been a farm on our property before ours arrived. And even if there had been one there once - long, long ago - Mary thought there needed to be one now. She just knew that it was important for people who lived in the city to know about fruits and vegetables and to be able to buy and sometimes just look at beautiful flower plants. People in the city are the same as people in the country or the suburbs; they just walk faster and talk louder. It takes a lot of energy to walk faster and talk louder, which is another reason they need good food.

Mary started by just growing lettuce in her water farm and then added big raised beds of soil so she could grow broccoli and tomatoes and eggplant and peppers. Farmers from the country come to see her and sometimes she goes to see them and when she does she brings back piles of stuff. Some days our farm truck rides low with crates of melons or bags and bags of corn or maybe jugs of cider made from apples just run through a mill.

The farmers send her eggs and cheese and butter they make. One farmer brings in chickens that he says run around at his farm, which is something I would like to see for myself. Another farmer brings meat from cows that roam free and eat grass at his place.  Mary sends our other co-workers, Tom, Larry or Beth to go get strawberries that have just been picked in the field and are still warm. I watch the people bite into them and juice squirts out and you should see the look on their faces. They're always so surprised!  I find people funny to watch. At work you can pass by boxes of lots of colors of apples, peaches, pears, tomatoes or melons and just grab one and eat it or you can open the big refrigerator and cut off a piece of cheese and hold a loaf of bread under your arm and tear it into pieces and eat it. That's how my co-workers eat, especially on days when the Food For People Farm Stand is open and everyone runs around all day. They eat tomatoes without even slicing them and handfuls of blueberries right out of the boxes. Personally I don't share their interest in all those vegetables and fruit; my tastes in food lie elsewhere (usually in the sky).

My friends at work love food. They can't wait to see what is in the truck or trailer, of what our friend Aaron has brought from the country or Paul and Ember have in their coolers. They stick their heads in and breathe in the smell of cheese from Pete or they hug the brown bags that hold warm loaves of bread from the baker. The teapot or the grill or the smoker seems to always be going over at the office because Mary says they have to know what they're telling other people to eat. Tom bakes pecan pies or sweet fruit breads and at the end of each market day, Mary cuts up all the leftover loot like peaches, raspberries, plums and strawberries. She freezes them and then they take two days each month and cook jam all day and put it in jars with our name on it. They peel tomatoes and cut basil and chop hot peppers and then boil and grind and strain and bottle and boil some more. That makes sauce for spaghetti, which is another food humans sure do seem to like. Mary says that people used to do this work at home themselves but now they're too busy and many of them have forgotten how to do it so we do it for them.

Kacie makes honey from the hives. She wears a funny hat with a grill over her face. It's a sticky, messy job with bees in your hair and your shoes making funny noises and getting stuck on the floor.  The honey goes into jars too so that people can take it home and use for tea or making cookies.

When things are not so busy at work everyone sits around the table and eats together. In the nice weather we sit outside. I like to wander over during these meals. Some people like Sara are vegans, which means she doesn't eat meat or eggs or cheese, and some are not. Sara writes her name on her food and Tom eats it just to be bad. Tom is like a big brother -- bad but really very good.  Erin hides her food, especially sweets. Mary says they all have food issues. She's from a big family where the only issue was getting to the table first.

In the winter I live at the office across the street. Everyone has a desk where they work. I sit at whichever desk I like. I have many other spots there too. I like to squirm my way in between the folded work tee-shirts and think about things, with my eyes closed. People think I'm sleeping but I'm really just thinking. I like to spread myself out a little more on the couch and do some stretching. When people do what I do, they call it yoga, but really it's just plain old cat stretching and yawning.  Humans like to name things and they've named stretching like cat yoga. It's important that I stay in shape. My job depends on it and the farm depends on me.

At night I go outside. If it's going to be too cold Mary makes me stay in but generally she lets me do my own thing, play my own ticket, dance to my own tune. By the way, cats don't really dance. That's just something they do on a TV commercial. I don't watch TV. Once in a great while I'll watch the computer monitor. Boring. I prefer nature.  Specifically, I am a bird watcher!

Most of the year I live outside at the farm. There are so many places for me to hang out -- huge mounds of crumbly soil surrounded by ferny plants, scratchy rolls of shade fabric, the rough wood of tables and, my personal favorite, warm gravel heated by the sun. I like all the different feels and places. Many times it looks as if I'm only lounging or even hiding. Not true. However it is true that I sometimes hide when I hear my co-workers calling me, "Blanche, Blanche, some one is here to see you." Usually that someone is a little girl or boy that wants to squeeze me. Just so you know, cats don't like to be squeezed, so I am forced into hiding. In the meantime, I practice my pouncing moves to keep limber and search the skies above the farm for you know whats.  And when I see them thinking about staying, it's back to work for this farm cat. 

I was once an alley cat, mad at the world, living under a board before I came to work at the farm. It hasn't always been easy getting used to live on the farm and working full-time, but I've worked hard to prove myself.  That's how I got to be Employee of the Year. I was Employee of the Year for two years in a row. This year the Ford van is going to win. It's old and is retiring. When Mary talks about Employee of the Year though, she always winks at me. I know she's trying to spread the wealth around and be inclusive. I understand.  But really, what's a Ford van going to do with the prize - a can of tuna?