Catnip Question

I read the following in the PlantFiles a few weeks ago......

My question is this...

Since these were all young plants, Should I give it time to thicken up on it's own, or should I pinch it back first? I like the look of how it's trailing now, but if I need to pinch it to make it look better in the long run, I will.

BTW, I'm not too mean. I did end up giving Annie a leaf before putting the plant back out of kitty reach. lol

I tried that...putting the plant out of cat's reach. I had a beautifully big plant hanging from a limb near the deck and I would pinch off a bit and be the Queen of the Cats.....

...until one morning I came out and found the neighbour's Siamese, Chester, sprawled flatout on top of the pot totally stoned!!!...I had to LIFT him out and he staggered home.

There is Nothing out of cat's reach when it comes to catnip...unless you put it in a small birdcage!!!

Carol

Wow! My indoor only cats just get the occasional "nip" and they don't bother it otherwise. I guess I thought it would be the same with my outdoor kitties. Maybe it will be an indoor hanging plant. I love the way it smells, I just don't know if it will grow as well indoors.

It grows wild here on our property and our outside kitties eat it and get drunk in the early spring and then hardly bother with it till later fall. I clip it back and send the clippings to my Aunt's Danny cat so the city cat can have some quality fun. When I clip it back it comes in very full and nice and then I ignore it till my cats love it again at which time Danny gets another care package from me.

So I can hand the basket outside during the summer, and clip it back in the fall?

I had a catnip plant once and did very nicely, then one day I went outside and it was gone. Not chewed - gone as if it never existed. The chives next to it looked as if they had been rolled on by some feline body. Somebody had a very good time. Otherwise it is a great plant.
Mobi

Clip it back or just let it go. I have found some out behind where i work
and last year some of the plants were 3 foot tall and like 2 feet around.
nice and bushy ..

I grow catnip all the time and my cat just picks at it , the kitten i had trashed
the plants.

Here is a site i made for my catnip ...
http://www.hybernip.com

Dont forget they you can make a catnip tea for yourself
to help you relax and maybe get sleepy.

jdee,

Two years ago I put in two little tiny Catnip plants from WalMart - weren't more'n 3" tall. By the end of summer I had a monster growing in the middle of my garden ~ 2.5' tall and about 3' around. Catnip is great!! I love the way it smells also, to keep it under control you HAVE to pinch the flowertops off. If it goes to seed you will be pulling it up all over the . . . neighborhood lol. I noticed a small bit the other day, and I think I'll put it in a container like you did. Thanks for the suggestion.

Cats used to be worshipped as gods, and they haven't forgotten it. I give my Sasquatch a leaf or two regularly ~ she acts so silly, sorta brings her down to my 'lesser being' level. heehee

Barb

I planted several catnip plants around my gardens 5 years ago. My cats LOVED them and I lost two plants. Since then I have been planting two new ones every year. The cats can't quite keep up with them so there are always a few that grow huge. Now the cats wait at the door for me every morning to go on their "garden walk". They love the garden so much now, and they are great company when I am gardening. I don't mind losing a couple a year, it's worth it, and I figure (as I'm sure the cats do) that they are for them anyway.

The plants look great. I set out a plant or two on my place 5 years ago and now it comes up all over the place. It gets two and a half to three feet tall and bushy. My six cats love it and I can often find one of them napping under one or right next to one under the rhubarb leaves.

It's the strangest thing. My indoor cats love it, but the outdoor cats don't seem to. I took my pot down to water it. When I water my potted plants, I always put them on the concrete walkway, and allow them to drain a while before returning them to thier saucers. I did this with my catnip today, and while it was draining, I went about my business, not realizing what I'd done. I returned expecting to see it uprooted, and a bunch of wasted cats lying around, but it was right where I left it,,,untouched. If I'd done the same thing indoors, my cats would have had a party with it. lol

you might not have brused the leaves any to release the
smell so the cats didnt even know it was there.

I just got 4 plants and planted them yesterday. Well now there is 3. I love looking out my window and seeing my kitties laid out flat over the plants. For that pleasure, I will just keep replacing them and keep those kitties stoned throughout the summer....LOL

Cindy

Does catmint have the same effect? I have had something lolling in my catmint every year, and the neighbor's cat comes over but will only take the dried leaves.

Last year we had a woodchuck that ate my roses and various other garden snacks. We got a have-a-heart trap and filled it with roses, lettuce, carrots, and a huge amount of catmint. Needless to say, we caught a skunk. My husband got a blanket, threw it over the cage and opened it back up. He said the skunk was not mad, in fact, it looked blissfully happy!

Catmint , Catnip , and there is a few more that i cant think of that cats love
if they have the receptors for it .

check out the link i posted above (my site) for catnip (hybernip, hydroponicly grown)
and my cat .. there is a list of different strains at the bottom of the page.

I went to the hybernip site and lauged really hard at the pricing structure. I guess you sort of have to know a little bit about some other hydroponically-grown "herbs" to get the joke.

Anyway, I can't keep catnip at my house. Inside, FattyMcFatass just schleps around on top of it until it's dead. Outside, the Yellow-Cat-Who-Came-With-The-House destroys the plants before I can get 'em in the ground. Even my dogs love it, but probably only because the cat wants it and they must taste everything the cat likes. I may have to give up and just buy it from people.

DOgZilla .,. LOL .. yeah you have to keep up on the news to really get the whole of it.
its based off a cannabis bust where the cops didnt have a clue of anything when they
found a hydroponic setup .. they even made up a new word for cannabis "hyberweed"
and the grow lights they called specal heat lamps .. LOL ..

But i do get alot of laughing from those that read it. they mostly like the caption of
the last pic of the cat.
"HyberNip is fully guaranteed to quickly reduce your cat to a mass of drooling fur and leave your cat whacked out."

Dogzilla, are those really your cats' names? I laughed so hard I cried when I read that post.

Actually, no. I tend to give people and animals nicknames that are more descriptive of their actual names.

I have one tuxedo cat who is very large. His face is black and he has a white milk mustache, so his name is got milk? (With the question mark.)

There really is a yellow cat who lives under my house. He came with the house and I do not feed him. He's a squatter and does not catch mice or pay rent or anything. He's a lazy, shiftless bum. Since I don't feed him, I don't consider him to be "mine," and therefore, I haven't given him a name... besides, "yellow cat."

The dogs are Tipzy and Hurshell and they came pre-named. Unfortunately. Thinking up silly names is the fun part.

I know what you mean. I have a houseful of cats with interesting names, and then there are Snowball and Tiger. I got them from the battered women's shelter, which inexplicably doesn't let the already traumatized women and children keep their pets. I have taken several of them on in the past. The women always say they'll come back for them, but they rarely do. I don't know whether they choose to disappear or maybe they go back to their husbands and are embarrassed to admit it. In any case, I have inherited a lot of cats this way, and Snowball and Tiger were the oldest and most traumatized, so I let them keep their names, although I do improvise on them a lot: Snowballchik, Balchik, Tigrette, Tigrida, etc.

Oh yes, Tip and Hursh do have many nicknames each. I call 'em both Bubba, although Hurshell is a true Bubba with the scratching, and farting and belching... He's a shade tree car mechanic in a dog's body! LOL.

My favorite ridiculous pet nickname: I had a cat named Smudge (she had a spot on her face) who came to me when I called out, "Smudger-Budger-Baby-Girl!" even though that did not exactly roll off the tongue.

I had another cat who re-named herself. She was the mascot at the animal shelter until the director of the shelter gave her to me as a housewarming gift. They'd been calling her Taboo because she was a spooky black kitty. She seemed to respond to the "boo" part, and would come if I called her BooKitty. She was also a "nip-head". (Like pot head only for catnip addicts.)

That's so funny. My cat Kiva is also known as Nipfreak. Tiger actually responds to the name "Look at You." When I got him, he was such a precious little bundle of apricot-colored fluff that I kept saying "Look at you!" I remember an old movie I used to see on TV--"Merrily We Live." The family in it had two dogs and they were named something like "Get Off the Rug" and "You Too."

LOL.

Loved this thread! I always grow catnip for my fat cat. This year she discovered it just as it was up about 4" and obliterated it. I think I will do the hanging basket trick, LOL.

Here's what you can do with the catnip when you want to grow it outside:

1) Go to your garage (or neighbors) make sure you have permission, garage sale, lawn sale, thrift/second hand store, or local recycling place, etc... and get a bird cage, if it has no bottom that's ok. ** Make sure it is a wired type, with all 4 sides and top.** Make sure it can stand upright.

2) Remove bottom if it's there; use that for a water tray under some plants if it's plastic.

3) Buy or find some (8) metal garden 'cloth' U-hooks/Pins.

4) Go buy more catnip plants. Plant catnip where you want. Place bird cage ontop and secure down tightly with at least *8* metal garden 'cloth' U-hooks/Pins.

Now you can have catnip in the ground without the cats crushing it to death.... They can smell it.... They can reach in and touch it... They can even get a few nips off the top, when it gets taller, and pokes out of the top of the cage..... but they can't squish and roll all up into it.....

Besides; it's so much fun watching them try!

HTH

~& Robin

Oh, that's so ingenious. I have to try it.

I use catnip in my whiskey barrel planting. It does great as the "trailing" part

There must be different cultivars of catnip. Mine never gets anything like a trailing habit, just grows upright into a large rounded mound....

BTW, I have volunteer clumps coming up all over my yard, so LMK if anyone needs some.... I recently successfully sent some in a bubble envelope, reportedly it arrived a little wilted but unmangled. I'm packing up various things this week and making a run to the USPS substation (so plants spend a day or two less in transit), so I could do a few catnip packs too.... or mint.... :-)

What kind of Mint are you giving away; I'd like a clump of catnip too.

~* Robin

This message was edited May 7, 2005 11:49 PM

From browsing the internet i have read there is over 250 different
strains of catnip, I've only found like 7 or 8 so far of them.
Valarian

Aphrodisiac for kitties, sedative for humans.

Makes great tea.