Pages

Sunday, July 29, 2012

A cat called trouble

Wilsonara Pacific Perspective (left) and oncidium noid (right)

     Last night I awoke to a loud crash sometime around 5am.  The cat, in the midst of his usual daybreak energy rush, had jumped up on the bathroom windowsill and knocked both flower pots onto the floor.  My beautiful ceramic orchid pot was shattered, but the orchids themselves suffered no harm.

     The accidental uprooting gave me an opportunity to see the root progress on these two recovering plants.  My Wilsonara Pacific Perspective had a nice cluster of new roots, as well as a few longer older roots that were still healthy.  

     The noid oncidium, on the other hand, it still rootless.  How does an orchid that has been rootless for almost a year still manage to be alive and so leafy?

     I potted the two orchids back in their original plastic pots, and put them back on the same windowsill.  I know I am pretty much asking to get them knocked off again by not changing their location... but I don't really have any other place to put them at the moment.  The cat tipped the noid oncidium out of 

Edit (7/31): It took less than a day.  The cat tipped the noid out of it's pot again.  I've moved that pot to a less sunny, but hopefully more cat-safe window.  The wilsonara seems to be more secure in its original location, since it's in a heavier clay pot. I've moved it to the corner of the bathroom window, so that the cat can have room to jump on the windowsill without disturbing the orchid.

3 comments:

  1. Ah cats, they love to mess up my orchids too, chew marks on everything they can reach. Maybe try the rootless one in straight moss and some rooting hormone? That was the only way I could get one stubborn rootless Oncidium to do more than just sit there for months doing nothing! Conclusion: Oncidiums and cats don't care.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I can't say this for sure, but have you investigated the properties of neem oil for repelling animals? It's 'supposedly' not harmful to them. I am currently using neem oil on a few of my orchids and plants for a scale infection (it causes the scale to cease feeding and subsequently die) but I do remember also reading that Neem oil is useful for those with housepets who like to bother houseplants.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks for the suggestion! For now, keeping the flowering orchids in my new terrarium is working quite well to protect the plants from kitty. I'll look into the neem oil if I ever want to display the plants elsewhere in the apartment, though.

      Delete