Crazy for Cucumbers

Mitten has always enjoyed eating greens, such as lettuce and wheatgrass.  When I planted the Bibb lettuce, she would snack on it early in the morning.  But everything changed when I planted cucumber seeds. 

I ordered two kinds of cucumber seeds from the Burpee catalogue: traditional style cucumbers (in a smaller version suitable for container growing) and lemon cucumbers, that supposedly look like tennis balls, but taste like cucumber.  For whatever reason, the lemon cucumber seeds never sprouted, so I have no idea what they look like. But the traditional cucumbers grew like crazy.  And Mitten, in turn, went crazy for them. 

Mitten Waiting At The Door, Desperate To Get Out To Her Farm 

When I started the garden, she waited patiently until the alarm clock buzzed in the morning and then would accompany me outside.  Once the cucumbers sprouted, that ended.  Suddenly, Mitten demanded to go outside before the sun was up.  She started pawing my hair or tapping me on the shoulder; crying in my face; jumping around the bed. She was desperate to get outside to her cucumber plants. 

The ASPCA website indicated that cucumbers are non-toxic for cats, so although I didn't encourage this behavior, I couldn't figure out a way to stop it short of uprooting and throwing away the cucumbers altogether.  So instead, we let her indulge in her favorite snack.  She's started to let us sleep in a little bit in return. 

Mitten Enjoying A Morning Snack 

The cucumbers themselves are really interesting.  They start out very hard with sharp prickers on them.  As they grow, the skin starts to smooth out.  The tendrils from the vine also wrap around anything they can find, so we had to get a cage for the plant. They are hanging from the vine and certainly have one of the best views in all of South Beach.  Who ever heard of a cucumber with an ocean view?