It's been a long time between posts and several things have changed.  We are down to just two cats now, Blaze and Blue.  They generally stick close to the house and yard which has a lot to do with their longevity, I think.  I am usually accompanied when I go out to the garden.   There are other cats around, and they get food, but generally hide when we go outside.

The hugle bed which is nearly four years old now, is a little worse for wear.  the wood at the heart of it all has continued to degrade and as it does so, the soil level falls.  It's now about 18 inches lower than than it was at the start.  I think that next year, we will disassemble it and maybe rebuild it into a lower raised bed, but the soil should be fabulous.  Right now with the sides being about four feet tall and the inside so much lower, I used it to winter over some plants but it's accumulating some junk. 

All in all though, it's been a useful experiment and it did work as described in that it needed very little water (and still doesn't) and things grew wonderfully.