toxic plants and pets do you worry?

[onlylobster]

Do you try to avoid plants that are known to be toxic to cats and dogs in your garden? My neighborhood has a sizeable stray/ feral cat colony and they are often in my yard. I have a lot of plants that are listed as poisonous to cats-a number of showy lilies, nightshades and azaleas-and there are plant's I'd like to grow (hellebores) but I worry that I should be trying to keep a petsafe property.

As much as I know about cats I really am a little clueless about their habits outside. I'm not sure how likely it is a cat would nibble on a hellebore. All I can say is that my cats have nibbled on houseplants (all cat-safe) but I don't know if outside cats would bother with non-grasses. So I keep going back and forth on the issue of whether or not to dig out the ones I have.

[GardeningCook]

I do take precautions indoors (all my dogs & cats are indoor-only - except for dog-walks), but do not worry much about outdoor plantings.

I did draw the line when planting a medicinal herb garden once. Left Monkshood out since it's so fatally poisonous.

[imafan26]

Cats generally don't bother most plants. The only ones at risk would be the mints that the cats love. They will sit in it and curl up until they kill it, it is as appealing as catnip to them. Cats develop their repertoire of what they will eat in the first 6 months of their life, they usually don't change their diets much after that. So they rarely do any tasting of things they find after that. Dogs on the other hand will chew up plants just because they are bored, so you may have to train them not to touch or keep them away from the plants.

I found this out because I had a cat with peculiar appetites. She lived indoors all of her life, except for a couple of times she sneaked out for a night. She liked to chew bamboo leaves, cardboard, and plastic bags, she liked the smell of bread and would chew through the wrapper to smell it. But when she got older and had a hard time chewing her dry food it was hard to change her diet since she would not eat the dry food wet, or eat canned food. So I had to buy her a fish and debone it for her every 4 days. (She and my other cat used to get sashimi once a week when we bought it for ourselves. She did not know how to eat around the bones). She would also eat cooked chicken, but unless I chopped it very fine, she would throw that up too.

My other cat used to love Christmas ornaments and she would climb the tree (and knock it down), but the resin from the tree would make her sick when she cleaned her claws. So I haven't had a Christmas tree in the house since 2005, and that tree was in a room the cats were not allowed to enter. If I left an orchid in the house over night she would dig it out of the pot.

The cats I have now leave plants in the house alone, I can keep orchids in the house with blooms on for a few days and they are not interested in it. I do have a new cat that has counter cat tendencies but for the most part they leave things alone.

[applestar]

We have indoor cats who only go outside under supervision. Inside, I keep unsafe for cats and safe plants I don't want them to chew up in a gated doorway no-cat-zone room. They've been trained not to try to get past the gate.

Outside, I removed toxic for toddler plants way back when I became pregnant except for those in fenced areas where my children couldn't get to as toddlers, and later taught them what are safe and what are not.

My neighbor feeds homeless cats, catches them and have them vet checked, etc. but I don't want them wandering into my garden and using my garden beds so I regularly chase them off.

I don't make my garden cat-safe for their sake. I actually put thorny clippings along the fence (mostly to keep groundHOGS out/punish them for trying to get in, but cats sometimes use same part of the fence to get in from) and where they have repeatedly made potty in the open front yard beds, sprinkle ground hot peppers and generally make my garden unsafe and uncomfortable for them.

I try to make it perfectly clear that they are NOT welcome in my garden. I don't feel that I'm being mean. In fact I'm pretty sure I'm being kind by not giving them conflicting messages -- this territory belongs to ME and they are NOT to enter it. I give them enough credit that they are sufficiently intelligent to understand and learn this.

I've also made it clear to the neighbors that I value my garden -- and my family's health -- over cats and have taken steps to exclude them and that their cats are at risk. I reject the notion that "They are only cats." as if that is an excuse for bad behavior on the cats' part or inadequate care for their pets as owners.

[rainbowgardener]

In general, I don't worry about outdoor stuff, because I don't think cats and dogs are very likely to ingest enough of most of the plants considered "toxic" to do much more than maybe make them throw it back up. In general the toxic plants also don't taste very good.

However there are degrees of toxicity and there are some plants that can be quite toxic in small amounts, such as poison hemlock, which I do remove.

But when you look at things noted as poisonous to cats, the list includes lilies, english ivy, hydrangea, azalea, cyclamen, kalanchoe, crocus, chrysanthemum, peace lily. I have all of these in my yard, some in the ground and some in containers that come in for the winter. We have had up to four outdoor cats we were feeding regularly and a couple of indoor pey cats. I have never seen any sign of them eating or being bothered by any of these plants.