Jackie French's guide to a cat friendly garden

The trap is just outside so we can see as soon as anything is caught in it, from cats to, once, a confused wombat and, another time, an extremely annoyed currawong. It is extremely easy to tell which cats are feral and which are strays or dumped. The ferals are hoping for a chance to gnaw my jugular. The strays look affronted, with a "What am I doing here and where is dinner?" royal annoyance, and have all been found a home that they will deign to accept.

A cat is not just a member of the household. It is THE member of the household, according to cats. If you share your life with cats, you must accept Rule 1. The house's – and garden's – reason for existence is to pamper the cat.

A few tokens won't do it. Catnip is overrated. A few cats may enjoy a few sniffs or even nibbles of the bush, or even play with a catnip-stuffed toy, but most ignore it. Cat thyme (Teucrium marum) is a better bet. It is not a true thyme, but a small, thyme-like, inconspicuous plant with white, pinkish-white or magenta flowers. Give it plenty of sun but, mostly, sniff it before you buy. Some cultivars are far more pungent than others and it's the scent that attracts cats.

But mostly, make a garden your cat will enjoy. A tall, sunny wall or high windowsill from where they can survey the garden is efficacious. You may need to build a special cat wall, but that would be only reasonable, according to cat. You'll also need a high, shady spot, for hotter days.

In fact, you can use the handy "cat guide" to work out where to plant bulbs or sun lovers like curry plant. If the cat heads there on the hottest days, it may be the purr-fect spot for daffodils and jonquils that need not just winter chilling but as little summer heat as possible. That sunny wall will be the spot for thymes, pelargoniums and, of course, catnip and cat thyme.

As for the other occupants of the garden – birds, frogs, lizards – you can cat-proof tree trunks, bird baths on poles or pergola poles with hard plastic "collars", made from anything from an old ice cream container to a dustbin lid, depending on the diameter of the upright that needs to be made cat-proof. Provide thorny bursaria or grevillea thickets for birds to shelter in and non-concreted crevices in which lizards can hide. Place a cat-proof fence around lily ponds to keep frogs safe and cat-proof your own fence, too. It isn't hard – top it with 30 centimetres of fence sloping inwards, towards your garden. The cat can look, but not get out.

Don't rely on bells, or even two bells. Firstly, a bell is an affront to a cat's dignity but, secondly, a dedicated hunting cat soon leans how to stop them jingling when necessary. The terms "cat burglar" and "cat-like stealth" are clues to the bell tinkling suppression ability of cats.

Truly dedicated cat devotees can build an entire garden just for their cats. My Mum had a "cat verandah" for a while, where she could sit and the cats could climb up the walls and look disparagingly down at the birds. More complex cat gardens have low and narrow walkways through the garden for the cats to roam and inspect their territory without being able to wander or hunt, unless a lizard is truly dumb enough to climb in.

At least one Sydney courtyard was re-landscaped when the owner inherited her mother's four and most beloved cats. Cat-proof fences all around so they could not get out; a cat-proof fence about a metre from much of the garden, so the birds could safely inhabit the top half with the cats below but with sufficient enclosed places of interest for felines, for catnip and cat thyme; access to tree and shrub trunks for scratching, but other logs padded with carpet for them to have scratching variety; shady and sunny walls for lying on and surveying their kingdom, as well as being able to check exactly when their new acolyte was approaching after work, and dinner might be served.

The purr-fect dinner to please a catty palate, of course. But that is another story.

This week I'm:

* hoping for enough sunlight to ripen the pumpkins and mature some of the all-too-tiny melons;

* wondering when the annual surplus of tomatoes is going to begin … soon? please?;

* admiring the flesh-pink belladonnas, but slightly puzzled by the white ones, that I am sure I didn't plant, or at least didn't order and, if planted accidentally, why haven't they flowered in the six years since I last planted belladonnas?;

* keeping a cautious eye on the blue salvia hedge that should be two metres from the house but that has exploded with tropical lushness – another 30 cm and it will invade my study window;

* lawn mowing – which we don't expect to have to do in February when weather, wallabies and wombats usually keep the grass under control;

* sympathising with a friend who spends 10 times the amount of time tending her courtyard garden as I do four hectares of mine. The smaller the garden the neater it needs to be to be satisfyingly presentable. On our garden a lush growth of salvia blooms or rambling roses (hopefully) lure the eye from the mess.