Fences Should Not Be Visible in Urban Gardens – To what extent do you agree?

I have a fence around my very small back garden so that I can allow my indoor cats out for a stroll (they don't run!) without them escaping. One has learnt (it took him about a year) that he can jump on top of the fence and down the other side, but then I open the gate and he is usually trotting along towards it. The other has no interest at all in the big world outside.
They are very laid back cats.

 

I never realised, when creating this thread, how close it hung to the line of a favourite memory, the source of which, for decades, to my intense frustration, I have not been able entirely to recall; herewith an appeal to the Forum: would anybody remember the name of the author responsible for this beautiful cautionary tale which we read in class in the latter years of primary school? I thought it was by Maupassant, but apparently not.

An ambitious farmer, contemplating at dawn the extent of his land, was consumed with a craving for more. The devil appeared to him at sunrise and said: “In exchange for your soul, I’ll give you all the land you can encompass between now and sunset”. Walking as fast as he could, the farmer set off, encircling as much as he could, field after field, dale after vale, always covering more and more of a vast coveted territory. Nothing was enough. Close to his starting point, now rich in land beyond imagination, seeing the sun nearly completing its journey, he espied another wood, another valley, another mountain and, just as the merciless brazen disc touched the horizon, he reached his goal and, exhausted, dropped dead before Satan who, having patiently waited, said “You are getting the land you’ve deserved, six feet is all you’ll need now.” And the devil thought: Six feet of dirt: a good price for a soul.

 

@LawnAndOrder
Tolstoy " how much land does a man need"

 

THANK YOU for that!! Oddly, it sort of makes sense, our French teacher was Polish (or Ukrainian) and perhaps told us the story, as it were, ex-curriculum. Clearly, somewhat adapted from the original: How Much Land Does a Man Need? - Wikipedia

He had a strong accent but, to our great chagrin and cost, his grammar was incontestable.