I have a catnip plant!! YAY!!

I've finally tracked catnip down in my local nursey after months of perseverence. So with my pot of cat mint, cat grass, my kitties have bits of greenery to call their own.

And just from my experience, my cats love fresh catnip more than the dried leaves. Though I'll still have the dry leaves handy.

I am soooooooooooooo happy.

i managed to get some cat nip , mint and grass at my local Bunnings warehouse, but after i got it my cat Charli decided she didn't like it! i think its the strong smell - it was too strong for her, so that was a waste of money!

she still loves the cat nip out of the spray bottle though..LOL

my other cat mickey doesn't even react to it. i think it takes a certain gene to like cat nip!

I have a huge patch of cat nip growing in the garden. The Botanical name is "Nepeta", for those of you who might be looking for it. Sam mostly ignores it, except when its in bloom, he eats the flowers. But he did roll around in the little patch of seddlings that ended up in the lawn. If I harvest a bit of the fresh plant, and let it dry for a day or so, he goes crazy for it.

However, I was handling the garden plant, and my hands still smell very strongly of the plant, and he won't leave my hands alone - sniffing, licking, rubbing against them. Sam is in love with my hands.

We had two big catnip plants out in our backyard until quite recently. They had to go, because a potent male cat moved into the neighborhood, and was marking all over our yard and the adjoining yards. That caused our neutered male to start marking all over the yard. The neighbors were complaining, so we had to take the plants out. The potent male has now lost interest in our yard. Now I'll probably get a potted one for the living room. Another tip for "cat plants": "Cyprus grass" (sorry, I don't know the Latin name), which seems to last longer and taste better than the standard "oat grass" sold for cats. A lot of cat owners swear by bamboo plants, but I haven't tried them on our cat.

Zoey is a freak... she couldnt care less about the fresh catnip plant. Eventually I gave it to the girl upstairs who has 4 cats.

However, she goes insane over her little catnip bag that is filled with dry catnip. Go figure!

Well after showing the catnip off to both cats I got rather mixed results.

Russell was highly enthusiastic, to the point I had to rescue the plant from him.

Esper looked at me and meowed to say "What the? Cat grass is nicer and munched on that.

But they both love dry catnip. Which brings me to a question. How do I grow my catnip successfully so I can harvest it?

Just pick the leaves at the end of summer, spread them out on a big tray lined with paper towels, and put the tray in a dry room with a moderate temperature until they dry.

I need to get one for Rocky and Fluffy...They would absolutely love it!

This plant is so easy to grow.. lol. I ripped out one stem and gave it to my mom to plant, and you should see that thing now!! Its multplied times 10 and even has flowers growing on it!