Mary Allen
Your garden will bloom in its most beautiful splendor and your cat will nibble on your garden plants with relish. As beautiful as this backdrop may seem, life can be threatened. Because not every plant is healthy for your cat! Find out everything about the important topic of “Poisonous plants for cats”.
Symptoms: What are Typical Signs of Intoxication?
If your cat has eaten a poisonous plant, the symptoms will depend on the dose ingested. Typical symptoms of poisoning, however, are:
- Increased salivation
- Vomit
- diarrhea
- Seizures up to paralysis
- Possibly breathing problems or cardiac arrhythmias
Depending on the dose, cats can die as a result of poisoning. If you suspect that your cat may have ingested a poisonous plant, you should contact your veterinarian as soon as possible.
Why Do Cats Eat Plants?
When cleaning their fur, cats swallow a lot of hair by licking it with their coarse tongues. In the stomach, these then mix together with the saliva to form larger hairballs. Long-haired cats are particularly affected. If the hairballs are too big and they don’t get into the intestines, your cat will vomit them.
To encourage this, your cat will eat plants. The fibers of young, non-toxic grasses have a supportive effect and thus indirectly prevent dangerous intestinal obstruction.
You can support your cat with freshly sown grain, Cyprus grass, or ready-to-buy cat grass. Additionally, these plants will help keep your cat away from poisonous houseplants.
So that your cuddler picks up the right grass, you should definitely pay attention to the grass edges. These should be soft and not sharp. Sharp-edged grasses can seriously injure your cat’s oral cavity or get stuck in the esophagus.
Non-Toxic Plants for Cats
Cats like to eat some non-toxic plant species. These include in particular the following three plants:
- Catnip. This plant, known to cat owners, contains a substance that is intoxicating for cats. Its invigorating effect euphorizes many cats and makes them want to play with the plant. Other cats, on the other hand, simply give the herb the cold shoulder. The reason for this has not yet been clarified. You can often find the herb in toys for cats or other objects (e.g. scratching posts)
- Cat Scamander. Furthermore, the smell of the cat’s Scamander (lat. Teucrium marum) is attractive for some cats. The plant comes from the western Mediterranean and you can grow this well as a pot or container plant. Although the pretty purple blooming plant smells rather strongly of ether for cat owners, most cats fly on the cat’s Scamander even when dry
- Valerian. Valerian (lat. Valeriana officinalis) also arouses the interest of many cats. In the vernacular, it is also known as cat root, as cats like to roll over the herb, which smells of camphor when it is dried and meows loudly with pleasure. Here, too, the knowledge about the background to the behavior is still largely unexplained.