Care Guides

I spent two hundred pounds on cat-proof plants before I learned the answer cost ten pence. Our tabby, Biscuit, ate everything green in the flat. Peace lilies, a fern, the trailing thing I can never name. Every leaf was a chew toy she claimed by lunchtime.

The vet said some of those plants were mild poisons. Mild. I didn't like that word anywhere near my cat. So I threw them all out and bought the safe list online instead. The safe list was expensive and, frankly, ugly. Biscuit ignored the safe ones and went for the Christmas cactus at my mother's house instead.

A friend at work mentioned cat grass. I had seen it in pet shops, those small pots of wheatgrass by the till, and assumed it was a gimmick for gullible owners. It is not a gimmick. It is the cheapest behavioural fix I have ever tried, and I have tried a few by now.

You can buy a tray already growing for a few pounds. Or you can do what I do now: a packet of seeds for ten pence, a shallow tub, some compost, and water. That's it. The grass sprouts in about a week if you keep it on a sunny windowsill and don't forget it exists.

What the grass actually did

Here is what I did not expect at all. Biscuit chews the grass and then, often, brings it back up. This horrified me at first, the little pile on the floor. The vet laughed when I described it. Cats do this. The grass helps them shift fur and bits they shouldn't have swallowed. It's a self-cleaning system, messy but harmless in a healthy cat.

We keep two trays going now, one in the kitchen and one in the bedroom. When one gets chewed flat, the other is ready to take over. The rotation took me a single morning to set up and costs pennies to maintain through the month of growth.

The change in behaviour was the real surprise I wasn't looking for. Before the grass, Biscuit hunted my houseplants like a criminal on a schedule. Now she walks past them without a second glance most days. Not always, I won't lie about that. But the daily destruction stopped. She has her own salad bar and she clearly knows it.

One thing I got wrong early: I put the first tray on a high shelf, thinking she'd reach it when needed. She didn't. Cats like their grass at ground level, near where they already lounge and sleep. Move it low and they use it without being told. Height defeated the whole point for a week.

I also tried the plastic cat grass toy with no real plant inside it. Waste of money, honestly. She batted it once across the floor and lost interest completely. The live thing matters to her. There is something about the taste and the texture she wants, and a fake blade doesn't deliver any of it to a bored cat.

If you grow from seed, don't overwater the way I did. I drowned the first batch and got a tub of grey sludge that smelled wrong. A light misting daily is enough to keep it alive and green. The second batch thrived and has outlasted three of my actual houseplants without a single complaint.

Biscuit still occasionally nibbles a leaf she shouldn't when she's bored. She's a cat, not a saint. But the constant, anxious plant-eating stopped the week the grass arrived on the sill. Ten pence of seed beat two hundred pounds of shopping, and I wish I'd known that a year sooner than I did.

Now when friends complain about chewed leaves, I hand them a seed packet from my drawer. Cheaper than a vase of dead ferns, and it keeps the cat busy. Biscuit, for her part, looks smug about the whole arrangement, which is somehow the point of the thing.

There's a second benefit nobody mentions. Watching the grass grow gave me a small routine, a thing to tend on dark mornings. Silly, perhaps, but the flat felt less like a battlefield with a plant of her own in it. Biscuit noticed the difference in me too, I think, and settled down with it beside her.

Start with one tray. See if your cat uses it before you buy the fancy kits and gadgets. Most will, given a week and a low shelf they can reach. If not, the seeds cost you nothing to lose, and the compost can go on the balcony for the herbs instead.

A word on cost, because people assume the pet shop version is the only way. The shop tray cost me six pounds and died in a fortnight. The seed method costs pennies and regrows if you keep a second tub starting. I keep three tubs on the go now through spring, and Biscuit rotates through them like a regular at a quiet buffet.