There's been a war waging in my garden for some years: Me versus The Cats. The Cats, I'm sorry to say, are gaining ground. I just don't have the troops. My canine army has been reduced to one brave, but not bright, member and there's nobody to patrol at night.
It's mainly under cover of darkness that they invade: the toms proprietorially spraying the territory with urine and all of them gingerly pawing their "business" - like noxious land-mines - into my freshly dug borders and vegetable beds. You can understand why I feel like screaming when I hear the anthem so often purred by cat-lovers: "Cats are sooooo clean!"
Cats are not clean. Not only are they rather dirty in cat-haters' gardens, but their faeces may carry a single-cell parasite called Toxoplasma gondii. It is dangerous to people with compromised immune systems and to pregnant women whose babies may suffer various birth defects.
In the majority of people, exposure to toxoplasma carries no ill-effects: in Europe and the US almost a third of adults have antibodies to it, meaning they have met it and successfully fended it off, probably without knowing. All the same, gardeners - and other soil-handlers - would welcome all cat-owners becoming cat-litter-tray-owners also, and keeping their animal's potentially hazardous waste out of circulation.
Dogs, of course, aren't exactly gleaming models of hygiene, playing host to the roundworm, Toxocara canis (cats have their own version, T. cati). Toxocariasis, as every nervous parent knows, is the disease which can lead to serious eye problems in children, including blindness. Regularly worming pets and immediately cleaning up after them lessens the risk. Again, it's worth noting that around 31 per cent of healthy school children have toxocara antibodies: they've already been exposed, so there's no point in locking them out of the garden.
There is a point, however, in teaching them not to eat soil - a baffling habit (baffling to this child-free writer, anyway) that some children adopt. As for gardeners, both big and small, it really is wise to wear gloves while working with the soil, particularly if you live in a town with a roving animal population. Come to think of it, if you live near a farm where there could be rats carrying Weil's disease (leptospirosis), you might want to wear gloves also, and boots - and maybe carry a big gun.
Something far more prophylactic is needed to ward off tetanus, which has a 30 per cent mortality rate if you get it. All gardeners should have a primary course of three shots followed by a booster every five to 10 years. Mind you, only three cases of tetanus, a notifiable disease, have been recorded since 1982 by the National Disease Surveillance Centre but, with odds like that, who wants to become number four?
IF you're feeling particularly put upon by Mother Nature, it's quite understandable: with such an armoury it's almost as if she doesn't want us to interfere with her territory. Not to mention how she hoodwinks us with some rather lovely, but possibly perilous plants: monkshood, laburnum, euphorbia, foxglove, lily-of-the-valley, yew, datura, rhubarb, various mushrooms and giant hog weed - to name a select few. Obviously, if someone - or some pet - needs medical attention after coming in contact with a harmful plant, bring the plant, along with the sufferer, to the doctor or vet.
Not to be outdone by nature, we fight back with our own battery of lethal weapons. Vine weevils are combated with Suscon Green, an organophosphate nerve poison that almost every nursery now uses and which is identifiable by the tiny bluegreen flecks running through the compost. Weeds are attacked with herbicides and timber decking may be preserved with heavy metals and arsenic. The latter chemical can leach into the soil (another reason for not eating interesting dirt) and, if arsenic-treated wood is burned, it releases toxic fumes: an Australian family who stoked their barbecue with tanalised timber all became seriously ill - and the family dog died after eating the meat.
Scary? Not as scary, perhaps, as sheer carelessness. Carelessness with garden tools: rakes left lying around as head-thwacking booby-traps and bright-red-handled secateurs asking to be investigated by toddlers. Or electric strimmers and lawn-mowers being operated without a residual current device (RCD) that cuts the power if you cut the cable. And what about those nice recycled bricks, laid as an ingenious patio a year or two ago, and now covered in hip-breaking moss and algae?
Yes, it's a jungle out there and maybe we're mad to enter it. Perhaps we'd be wiser taking up something nice and safe such as boxing or stock-car racing. Or just staying in bed with the cat. But that's probably where many gardeners are reading this right now - felled by the sneakiest foe of all, gardener's back.
Jane Powers can be contacted at jpowers@irish-times.ie
Useful websites: US Department of Health Centers for Disease Control and Prevention - www.cdc.gov; Canadian Department of Agriculture and AgriFood Poisonous Plants Database - http://res.agr.ca/brd/poisonpl/