Cat in a Cone

I returned home from a weeklong road trip to find the right side of my cat’s face was about double the size of the left side. Jinxie is 14 or 15 years old and had been acting listless for a couple of weeks, but I assumed it’d been the hotter summer temperatures slowing her down.

I rushed her to the vet and was informed she had an abscess and the culprit was most likely cheatgrass that had worked its way into her neck and become inflamed.

Well, I felt like an idiot. Yes, those long, weedy grass patches near my fence that I’d left alone because the neighborhood cats love to play and pounce in them are actually harmful to their health – and my budget. The surgery and medications set me back $800.

And keeping the cone on the cat’s head? A whole different story…

Since then, I’ve spent a couple of mornings ripping out my bumper crop of Bromus tectorum – the invasive graminoid (a grass or grass-like plant) that, as one news headline put it, “Won the West.” It’s a major fire hazard and threatens native plant and wildlife species on an estimated 25 million acres across the Great Basin.

But there is some good news. Researchers – taking a more scientific approach than my garden-gloves-and-garbage-bags attack – think they have found a type of bacteria that, together with herbicide application, wipes out cheatgrass seedlings. Known as ACK55, it’s making its way through the EPA registration process and may someday be commercially available.

While it sounds perfect for the wide open spaces, poisoning the neighborhood cats is not an option. So., I’ll stick with ripping out the cheatgrass and replanting native ground cover as fast as I can.

In the meantime, Jinx is fully recovered, as spry as ever – and probably rolling around in another neighbor’s cheatgrass as I write this.