You will know which plant has no place in a home with a cat, how to decide about all the others, and what to do if yours has been nibbled.
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The list of plants that are toxic to cats is long and nobody remembers it. What you can remember is a handful of decisions taken at the moment of buying.
Lilies, in the broad sense, are recognised by veterinary bodies as dangerous to cats, and to cats in particular. Every part is involved, including pollen that lands on the coat and the water in the vase.
The organ at risk is the kidney, and harm can follow a very small amount. This is the one rule in this piece that needs no qualification: a bouquet containing lilies does not come into a home with a cat, it goes back or it stays outside.
If a cat has chewed a lily, licked the pollen or drunk the vase water, ring a vet straight away, without waiting for a symptom.
Nobody memorises three hundred Latin names. What does fit in a head is a sorting rule: a plant whose exact name you do not know is treated as suspect, so it goes out of reach or out of the house.
Get into the habit of photographing the label when you buy and keeping it. On the day you ring a vet, the exact name of the plant is worth more than any description you can give.
The idea keeps coming back: if it eats greenery, something is missing from its diet. That explanation is not established. Other suggestions circulate, the texture, the movement of a leaf, boredom, or help bringing up fur, and none of them is settled.
In practice the exact cause changes little for you. A cat that nibbles anything growing means sorting through the plants, whatever the reason behind it.
Compost, fertiliser sticks, clay pebbles, bark mulch: what fills the pot is not neutral, and some cats dig the soil exactly as they would a litter tray.
Two moves settle most cases: cover the surface with something heavy and smooth, large pebbles for instance, and keep fertiliser out of the cupboard your cat opens. A dug-up pot is not only mess, it is soil swallowed and a plant left weaker.
Out of reach, for a cat, is not measured from the floor. It is measured from the nearest piece of furniture, and a cat that reaches a shelf reaches the hanging pot beside it.
Trace the route with your eyes before you hang anything: where can it set off from, and what is one leap away. Trailing leaves, meanwhile, are an open invitation to play.
It is often sold as a diversion: give it grass and it will leave the rest alone. That works with some cats and not at all with others, which eat the grass on offer and carry on sampling everything else.
Offering grass is still worth doing, as long as you do not treat it as a safeguard. The safeguard is distance from the risky plants, not a competing offer.
First, take away access and keep what is left of the piece that was eaten. Then identify the plant from its label, a photo or the seller's name. Then ring a vet or a veterinary poison line, giving the name, the rough amount and the time.
What not to do: make the cat vomit on your own initiative, give milk, or wait and see whether it passes. With some plants, hours without symptoms mean nothing at all.
Keep your vet's number visible somewhere in the kitchen. On the day it happens, it is always an evening or a weekend.