• Zephorah@discuss.online
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    41
    ·
    5 hours ago

    I had a 3ft tall money tree. Cat safe plant. My miserable feline ate the entire thing down to the barked stem. She did the same with a Christmas cactus.

    Never again, I said. 5 years later I tried again with an olive tree. The miserable cat ignored it. The new cat delicately grabbed each leaf, plucked it from the branch, and dropped it on the floor. No eating. Just persistent plucking.

    We’re back to never again.

    • criticon@lemmy.ca
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      4
      ·
      1 hour ago

      My cat is very good at keeping the money tree clean, he only plucks the brown leaves and plays with them. He ignores every other plant, including a cat grass that we had for a while

      • AnAverageSnoot@lemmy.ca
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        16
        ·
        3 hours ago

        So this actually backfired on us. Once the cat grass was finished, my dumbass cat decided to test every plan to check if they taste like cat grass.

      • Skua@kbin.earth
        cake
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        13
        ·
        5 hours ago

        My mother planted some of that in our garden when I was young. Literally the next day the entire plant was gone and the cat was sprawled out on the grass baked out of his tiny mind

          • Skua@kbin.earth
            cake
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            1
            ·
            19 minutes ago

            It was! I now know that catgrass is a separate thing, I thought it was just another name for catnip

        • MouldyCat@feddit.uk
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          15
          ·
          4 hours ago

          Cat grass (despite the name lol) is a different thing to catnip (which is the one that gets them spaced out). Cat grass is just a type of regular grass that you can grow indoors for your cat to eat.

          Outdoor cats will eat grass to help their digestion, so it’s important to have something safe for indoor cats to eat otherwise they will just eat anything green and that could be bad for them.

          It’s easy enough to grow from seed or you can get it already growing in a pot.

    • Duranie@leminal.space
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      3
      ·
      4 hours ago

      I have a cat that ignored my spider plants for a year, then recently decided the stems with babies sprouting make the perfect toys to hunt. He eventually removed them all, leaving little sprout corpses around the living room.

  • ickplant@lemmy.worldOP
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    72
    ·
    6 hours ago

    PSA: Aloe vera can make cats sick, so can other plants. Please do the research and put your plants away or get the ones non-toxic to cats. But you all already know that.

    • BarrelAgedBoredom@lemmy.zip
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      6
      ·
      3 hours ago

      As a rule of thumb, succulents are at the very least going to make your cat yarf and a good handful can cause pretty serious organ damage

      • kindnesskills@literature.cafe
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        7
        ·
        3 hours ago

        They don’t.

        Not every cat chews on any plant, but if you’re unlucky your outdoor cat is munching on bad flora and slowly wearing down their organs.

        • SkyeStarfall@lemmy.blahaj.zone
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          5
          ·
          2 hours ago

          You’d think one of the most successful predators of the animal kingdom would know not to eat random plants

          But what so I know, I’m not a cat

          • kindnesskills@literature.cafe
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            3
            ·
            1 hour ago

            Yeah, you’d think it’s kill or be killed… but it’s more like kill and be killed.

            Evolution doesn’t require each individual to live to a ripe old age when they can successfully spread their genes by producing litters of 4-6 babies up to three times per year, starting before they’re even one year old.

            Even if they slowly poison themselves and die at five years old they’ll have plenty of genetic descendants that might also think poison tastes good.

            Or they’ll run into plants that arent native to their ancestors environments.

            Or they have a deficiency for something so they’re compelled to eat plants they might not had they not lacked a nutrient.

            Or they’re just menaces, munching up the neighbours flower bed for kicks.

        • FundMECFS@piefed.zip
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          2
          ·
          edit-2
          2 hours ago

          One of the many reasons why life expectancy for indoor cats is ~15 years while outdoor cats is generally about half of that.