Meet Ginkgo

This is Ginkgo, Ginkgo is the Sunshine Gardens' newest, tiniest, and certainly cutest, team member.

I started working there two years ago,

Ginkgo has been here for two months.

I get paid by the hour. Ginkgo gets full medical coverage, free meals, rent-free reign of the sales building, the office, the greenhouse and the whole damn yard, not to mention the undying affection of eight co-workers and any number of cat-loving customers.

To be real, Ginkgo showed up here at our garden center, and basically demanded the position of official garden center cat. Lucky for him (and obviously us), the position was open, and the garden center was hiring.

At first he hid from us, we weren't quite sure what kind of team-player he would be. But as the days went by he started to make himself more and more vocal, and increasingly underfoot, as any good kitten-cat will.

It's almost like he was born for the job.

Though it wasn't always so. When Ginkgo arrived he was an unsure stray, a shy but curious kitten.

He didn't let people get very close to him for about a week after he first showed up. He hid amongst the stacks of black plastic pots we have for sale, mewing at us whenever we walked past him. He used to run away from outstretched hands. But he was happy to take the kitty food we left out for him.

At this point, I was only scheduled to work on the weekends, as the planting season had already wound down for the summer.

So when I showed up on Saturday morning and heard tiny cat cries, I knew exactly what my main task for the day would be.

Especially since, as I said, the season was dying down and I was probably only going to serve maybe a couple dozen customers all day.

At first I thought he might prove quite a challenge, seeing as he was so young and came from who-knows-where.

But I, using my kitten-cat-know-how, charmed him with a slow blink and some tinned kitty chow. He ended up letting me scratch his head for ten minutes straight and even pick him up (though he did not stay in my lap for long), by the end of the very same day.

If you like cats, and are not aware of this trust building technique, it works exceptionally well. It is just as it sounds, you simply blink slowly while looking the cat in the eyes. This communicates that you are relaxed and trustworthy. Cats communicate with each other this way, so it makes sense that they would react to humans doing the same. It works particularly well on young cats such as Ginkgo.

It can serve as a great communication tool for any cat owner, and can help immensely when attempting to rescue a nervous kitty from a dangerous situation.

I was happy to see that up close he was a healthy cat, especially for a stray kitten that just showed up out of the middle of nowhere. I guessed him at around eight weeks old.

Right away I knew he was going to be a better fit than the garden center squirrel we had briefly considered employing before we discovered him nibbling away at the potted dahlias.

Ginky for shortish, (also sometimes called Ginky-ky when overcome by cat-induced excitement), has shown himself to be an exemplary addition to our little garden center team. He is affectionate, playful, and content to sleep much of the workday away underneath the sales building, emerging in the afternoon with his whiskers full of cobwebs. What more could you ask of a cat.

As Ginkgo is a kitten-cat, He seems to like regular kitten-cat things such as scritches, the batting at of all things dangling , and of course tasty cat snacks.

He also, in typical kitten-cat fashion, seems to enjoy some slightly stranger and occasionally mildly irritating things as well. Such as, hiding behind the box fan, sleeping across the keyboard, bringing small rocks into the sales building to smack across the floor (okay, that one's pretty funny), and of course distracting both the employees and customers with kitten-cat cuteness.

Overall, we are thrilled he joined us. Even my coworkers who don't consider themselves "a cat person per-se" (this was me at a much darker point in my life too, no judgement) are positively stoked to have him onboard.

I certainly hope that he decides to remain in the employ of Sunshine Gardens.

And that in the years to come, his mousing skills improve, he learns how NOT to shit in the compost, and becomes a pro at chasing off pesky dahlia nibbling squirrels.