how to grow catnip, by jack

MY MOTHER KEEPS SPOUTING some crap about how my catnip is really called Nepeta cataria. See the words “pet” and “cat” in there?—I’m telling you, she talks in word puzzles, though she’s no Will Shortz. She blathers on that it’s “a perennial that self-sows” (what?). She says you can “start it from seed yourself pretty easily indoors.” Nonsense! Catnip is best grown this way: Make like a chicken, and sit on it. Catnip requires daily periods of incubation, as I’m demonstrating above, and when treated this way will not require any other pinching, and will not spread around. I am a cat, so I should know. My other Master Catnip Gardener tips:

• Since he or she will be really pissed off if you sit on plants growing in the garden beds proper, request that your parent provide your own cat-ass-sized potful of the stuff to have your way with.
• Better yet: ask for several pots, so that they can be rotated in and out of service. Admittedly, if incubated too vigorously or often, particularly by a “big-boned” master grower such as myself, the plants may need a rest. (Those are the vet’s words—he always says I am “big-boned.”)
• A 12-to-14-inch pots works well for 16-pound me, but your ass may be smaller. Much smaller.
• This technique is best performed when intoxicated. (Be sure to eat first, too; this is hard work.)
• If before climbing onto the pot, you rip off the heads of the plants with your teeth, intoxication is easily achieved.
• Ask that your parent place your pot near a piece of furniture, so you can claw it between incubation sessions, when you are good and high. (I use the bench in the top of the driveway, below; my pot’s just behind the bench.)
• Plants grown by my method will never flower. This eliminates the bother my mother talks about when she says things like, “prodigious self-sower” and “can be invasive.” (She never stops muttering this plantspeak, poor woman, except to talk in cat to me; I wish she had more human contact because frankly, she is increasingly odd. )