Plants that will not poison the cat

Every plant on this page has been checked, one species at a time, against the ASPCA’s toxic and non toxic plant list, and found on the non toxic side for both cats and dogs. Nothing reaches this page on the strength of a blog post, a plant label or a family resemblance. Where we could not read a specific entry for the exact species, the journal says unknown, and unknown plants are not listed here.

That strictness costs the page some plants that are almost certainly fine. It is the right way round. A visitor filtering for pet safety is asking one question, and a maybe is not an answer to it.

What safe means, exactly

It means not poisonous. It does not mean edible, and it does not mean a cat can strip it without consequence. Any plant eaten in quantity can upset a stomach, and the fibres in a palm or a spider plant will come back up as surely as grass does. Safe means that if you come home to a chewed leaf you do not need to telephone anybody.

Cats chew plants for reasons that have little to do with hunger. A bored indoor cat will go for anything with a swaying leaf, which is why spider plants and palms take the worst of it. Giving the cat its own pot of cat grass, and standing it somewhere more interesting than the houseplant, solves more of this than moving the houseplant does.

The ones people buy by accident

The plants that send pets to the vet are mostly bought without knowing. True lilies, the ones in supermarket bouquets, cause kidney failure in cats from the pollen alone, and there is no safe amount. Sago palm is severely toxic to dogs, seeds especially. Dieffenbachia, philodendron, monstera and pothos all carry calcium oxalate crystals that burn a mouth badly enough to cause drooling and refusal to eat, though they rarely do lasting harm.

None of that means those plants cannot live in a house with animals. It means they live on a high shelf, in a hanging pot, or in a room the animal does not use, and that everybody in the house knows which plant is which. The entries for those plants say so plainly, with the toxic principle named where the source gives it.