The other day I was watching Gatsby in his enclosure and I happened to notice him trying to poke his head though the Cat enclosure wiring to eat our garden Grass.  I have previously purchased cat grass from the grocery store but that was way way back when we first adopted him.  It comes in a container and you grow it yourself.  After that I purchased seeds from the local hardware store, however for some reason they seem to grown much slower than the ones from the grocery store!

A month ago or maybe two I did purchase some cat  grass from the garden centre, he loved it however, naughty mummy neglected to water it in his enclosure and it wilted.  So I dashed off to the garden centre again but they didn’t have any.  Due to the fact that I live in Alberta, Canada our growing and plant buying is a short period of time so trying to buy anything like this in August is basically silly.

When I had told my husband on Sunday that I was off to buy Gatsby some “healthy grass” he laughed at me.  The reason I call it “healthy grass” is due to the fact that I don’t know what is walking on the garden grass outside, plus we have a local Jack Rabbit and who knows what he’s bringing in.

So I wanted to delve into the health benefits of cat grass and why we should all consider keeping this on a regular basis for our feline friends

What is Cat Grass?   The first search from the internet via Cat World brought up this

Cat Grass is a name used to describe a number of different types of grass which are popular with cats. It would appear that there are two main species of grass referred to as cat grass. Dactylitis Glomerata (also known as Orchard Grass or Cock’s Foot) and Avena sativa (common oat, cat oat). Other common “types” of grass are often referred to as “cat grass” include barley and wheatgrass.

The health benefits as listed on Vet Info.com tell us that:

• Cats will eat cat grass to speed up their digestion process
• Cats that crave grass or eat lots of grass may lack fibre in their diets.  So try increasing their greens.  I have tried Gatsby on lettuce and he does appear to enjoy the darker thinner green bits not the tougher thicker whiter parts
• Eating grass induces vomiting, so if a cat has eaten something that doesn’t agree with them they eat grass on purpose.
• Grass treats and prevents diarrhoea and constipation
• Garss helps with hair balls
• It’s a good source of Vitamin B

Also reading further into Vet info.com it states that our grass outside may have chemicals in it, that can harm our pet cats.

As i’ve stated Gatsby does have a cat enclosure and I do keep a close eye on the plants I have growing around the vicinity of it.  I did have some lilies close by that I made sure didn’t over grow and once they started to wilt I chopped their heads off. Lol!  If you didn’t know, lilies are very poisonous to cats, make sure you look up on line what plants/flowers are safe, as there are many that aren’t.

I did have two catnip plants that were starting to die off and my husband suggested I plant them up, so I picked a spot that hopefully they will grow though into his enclosure.  I had also  noticed some dandelions and being the ever so protective cat mum I reduce them from growing near.

Apparently dandelions are non toxic to cats, in limited doses.  However, cats are not designed to eat a vegetarian diet, they are carnivores.  Their diets should be predominantly protein based.  If a cat eats too much plant based material, it can give them tummy upsets.

I hope this sheds some light on the health benefits of cat grass, I seem to learn loads when I do my research for both  my podcast and blog.  I guess we should all be running out this weekend to buy some great grass for our cats.

Last week, I had finished up making some cushions, I had previously made one and Gatsby loves it so I decided to make five to give away to our local humane society.  I also wrote a follow up letter from Gatsby as this is where he was adopted.  You can see the letter on my Facebook Page.  I’ve made a promise, that if I can get 100 likes to my page i’ll make another five more cushions to donate.  If you’re not following us please hit like, our page will inform you when we have a new blog, podcast, you tube video updates and I also try to find interesting cat news items to post.

That’s meow for now, see you next week!