Adopted a two year old cat three weeks ago and she has worked through a golden pothos, one monstera leaf and most of the spider plant, in that order. I have about fifteen plants including a peace lily, a ZZ, two philodendrons and a dracaena. I do not want to rehome the whole collection if the realistic outcome is drool and a sulk. Which of these are actually dangerous and which are just unpleasant?
Half of this is a behaviour problem rather than a plant problem. Cats chew because they want something to chew, so give her a pot of cat grass and something like silvervine or a chew toy she actually likes, in a spot that is easier to reach than your shelves. Mine stopped stripping the spider plant within a fortnight of having her own tray of oat grass. Redirect first, then remove the genuinely dangerous ones, then worry about the rest.
Agreed, and cat grass is also the cheapest experiment in this thread. It costs almost nothing and tells you within two weeks whether you have a chewer or a bored cat.
Slightly against the curated safe list approach. The published toxicity lists are enormous and mostly cover mild irritants, so trying to build a collection from them leaves you with six boring plants and a cat who still chews them. What worked here was one room with a door that stays shut for anything interesting, and a genuinely short banned list for the rest of the flat. Physical separation scales, plant selection does not.
I lost two plants and nearly a cat to the assumption that hanging things up counts as out of reach. She got on the bookcase, then onto the curtain rail, and the trailing pothos was effectively a rope with snacks on it. Vertical does not work with a determined cat - a door does.
Check the vase water rule as well - a cat drinking from a vase that held lilies is the version people do not see coming.
@leaf_litter_lou · 5d ago · 2 replies
Rough grouping that has served me for years with three cats. The big irritant family - pothos, philodendron, monstera, peace lily, dieffenbachia - all contain insoluble calcium oxalate crystals, which cause immediate mouth pain, drooling and sometimes vomiting, and are miserable rather than usually life-threatening. The genuine emergency for cats is true lilies, the Lilium and Hemerocallis kinds sold in bouquets, where even pollen or vase water can cause kidney failure and there is no wait and see - that is an immediate vet call. Spider plants are not toxic, which is why yours is the one being eaten most enthusiastically. None of this is veterinary advice: keep your vet's number and your country's animal poison line somewhere you can find them at 11pm, and if she is drooling heavily, unsteady or off her food, ring rather than search.
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@rust_rescue_rin · 6d ago
The bouquet point deserves more attention than the houseplant one. Most people worry about their pothos and then someone brings flowers to the door.
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