Spring is the season of hope and renewal, they say. Those sentiments apply to every living creature, I suppose, with the exception of cats!

Don’t get me wrong, I love my kitties, truly, I do, but let’s just say that I think the phrase “to skin a cat” was invented by a gardener thwarted by felines who mistook the garden bed for an oversized litter box.

Even the most extraordinary cat can test the mental fortitude of the gardener. Take, for example, our own dear Harry. He’s a charming and extraordinarily agreeable fellow who regularly consents to being dressed in doll clothes and ambled around in a stroller by my daughters. He loves these sessions of indulgence. They periodically encourage him to leap from the stroller, but he refuses. We oooh. We ahhh. We coo over his cuteness. Harry is so sweet, so willing to be a focal point of our pleasure, he could do no wrong.

(Insert dramatic music here.) Or could he? Yes, decidedly, he can do wrong.

He’s been spotted, time and again, relieving himself in the fluffiest, most diligently cultivated garden beds. Is he cute? No! Do we oooh? No! Do we ahhh? Most certainly not!

Our mercy wanes. Our resolve deepens. Our grip on the trowel tightens as we sprint across the lawn, guttural, unearthly sounds rolling forth from our constricted throat. This is a battle not of one woman against one cat, but of all gardeners against the collectively infuriating and dreadfully criminal contamination of perfectly good garden soil by those formerly delightful critters we once affectionately called “pets.”

“Haaaaaarrrrrrryyyyyyy!” I holler in an unnecessarily loud voice. His furry black head turns to look at me. “Who, me?” he asks with his emerald eyes, “Please have the decency to let me finish,” his look conveys. “Arrrggghhhh!” I run at him directly, my trowel poised in a most menacing way. His obliviousness only serves to deepen my anger. Yet in the end, somehow, his furry cuteness, his innocent, primal ways stop me in my tracks just outside the confines of the fluffed soil. (I wouldn’t dare tread on a bed so carefully cultivated.)

“Harry,” I plead, “Don’t you know any better that that?” The stupid, immaterial question rolls off my tongue before I can help myself. Harry hastens to finish his business. “Oh dear, she’s after me again,” his little glances say as he quickly scratches at the loamy earth. “Better hurry!” I turn back to my work across the yard. Another battle is lost in The War Against Unsuspecting Furry Critters.

I’m not alone in my campaign to eradicate rascally felines from my flower beds. One reader, J.F. of Old Town, recently wrote: “Is there anything that will prevent cats from using my mulched flower gardens as a giant litter box? I would not use anything that would harm children, birds or even the cats.”

My answer, quite simply, is that I just don’t know what to do about cats. If you have any encouraging ways of beating cats in this particular war, drop me a line at the address below. If readers will kindly offer their advice, I’ll be happy to share it in a column. Right now I have to run. Where’s that menacing trowel? I must shoo Harry away from my hollyhocks!

Diana George Chapin is the NEWS garden columnist. Send horticulture questions to Gardening Questions, RR1, Box 2120, Montville 04941, or e-mail them to dianagc@midcoast.com. Selected questions will be answered in future columns.