Cat-proof gar­den with­out plants?

When I first searched the inter­net for infor­ma­tion on plants that are tox­ic to cats, I was over­come with a slight pan­ic. Almost all indoor and out­door plants are tox­ic to cats, or at the very least cause gas­troin­testi­nal prob­lems. So what can you do? Not have any live plants in your home and only grow ordi­nary grass (lawn) in your gar­den? It took me a while to find the right approach and cre­ate a short guide for cat own­ers.

Please, take this very seri­ous­ly!

Some cat own­ers believe that cats are smart enough to avoid tox­ic plants and that cas­es of poi­son­ing in cats are very rare. How­ev­er, offi­cial reports and research pro­vide much less opti­mistic sta­tis­tics.

To be fatal­ly poi­soned, a cat does­n’t even need to eat a plant inten­tion­al­ly.

Take lilies, for exam­ple, one of the most tox­ic plants for cats. This plant has flow­ers. The flow­ers have pollen. When the flow­ers wilt, they fall to the ground with the pollen. A cat walks on the pollen and then licks its paws. The pollen will cause seri­ous dam­age to the cat’s kid­neys. This can hap­pen imme­di­ate­ly or over a longer peri­od of time if the cat ingests small amounts of pollen over sev­er­al days or weeks.

It is impor­tant to learn the names and appear­ance of the most tox­ic plants that can kill or seri­ous­ly harm your cat’s health, even if con­sumed in very small amounts.

Observe your cat’s reac­tion to cer­tain plants

Mint and toma­to plants are tox­ic to cats. For­tu­nate­ly, cats dis­like the smell of these plants. It is there­fore impor­tant to know whether or not your cat likes a par­tic­u­lar plant. After cre­at­ing a cat-proof gar­den, nev­er leave your cat unsu­per­vised for the first two weeks. Observe your cat’s reac­tion to plants and if you notice that they are tak­ing too much inter­est in a poten­tial­ly dan­ger­ous plant, remove it (tem­porar­i­ly) or pro­tect it with net­ting.

Research, com­pare, and use com­mon sense

Unfor­tu­nate­ly, there is sim­ply no com­pre­hen­sive and reli­able list of plants that are tox­ic or non-tox­ic to cats. You will need to gath­er infor­ma­tion (which can be high­ly con­tro­ver­sial!) from var­i­ous sources. Some­times it is pos­si­ble to tell whether a plant is tox­ic or not sim­ply by look­ing at it. Poi­so­nous plants often have very bright­ly col­ored leaves and/or flow­ers. Poi­so­nous insects, for that mat­ter, are also very col­or­ful. This is a nat­ur­al mech­a­nism to warn oth­er liv­ing crea­tures of dan­ger. In addi­tion, poi­so­nous plants usu­al­ly have a strong smell of essen­tial oils, and their stems may con­tain a fra­grant juice.