Indoor cat garden suggestions?
December 28, 2018 8:53 PM   Subscribe

I am trying to combat boredom in my blind, indoor-only cat in order to mitigate pica. I'm hoping to start an indoor kitty garden so he has a variety of interesting plants to chew that can definitely not kill him. Difficulty level: he vomited up twenty erasers an hour ago.

The problem is that many "cat-safe" plants are safe "in moderation," and this kitten has been known to gnaw through plastic bags to taste bokashi bran in his quest to put interesting things in his mouth. He likes strong smells and squishier textures. He was hospitalized last month because he ate about a dozen hair ties, half of which he swallowed whole. He has also demonstrated a lot of interest in my fabric-covered headphone cable. I am concerned for his safety if he keeps eating things, and I hear that pica can be mitigated somewhat by enriching his environment and minimizing his boredom. However, his being blind means that he frequently loses small toys. He loves bells with a special intensity, but his overarching goal is to bite them until they stop ringing.

We do not currently have any houseplants, except for a mostly-dead aloe that is kept on a windowsill he doesn't have much access to. I'm not sure he's noticed is there. He has eaten and vomited at least two dead leaves in the past three weeks, so I am confident that he will march mouth-first into the live thing (and probably the dirt). I'm picking up some catgrass tomorrow, but we are assembling a list of cat-safe species that we can use to create a rotating cast of interesting plants in a corner of the house.

He likes catnip but is not suuuuuper motivated by it. So far, we are planning to purchase:

oats
wheat
catnip
catmint
common mint
fern leaf
dill seed
anise
summer thyme
calendula
summer savory
common sage
parsley

If he eats an entire plant within 24 hours, will it do more than make him vomit? He is pretty well blind, so vision-related issues are not going to be an issue for him. (There are four other cats and a dog in the house, but none of them are his level of dipshit when it comes to eating non-food things to anyone's knowledge.) Toxicity is the thing we are trying very hard to avoid here.

Please give me suggestions of real greenery we can rotate through our house and maintain over the long term so he can nibble in safety. Here's Dent enjoying some (fake) greenery to pay the cat tax.
posted by sciatrix (0 comments total)

This post was deleted for the following reason: Meant for Ask! -- Eyebrows McGee



 

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