Your cat's taste for greens did not start in your living room. Scientists have recorded plant remains in the diets of wild cats across many species, long before anyone put a box of grass on a kitchen floor.
In true feline fashion, none of them has explained why.
- Plant remains have been recorded in the diets of 24 wild cat species
- Scientists have ideas about why, but they are still hypotheses, not proof
The biggest single look at the question is a multispecies analysis that gathered 316 records from 213 studies, covering 24 species of wild cat. The records come from plant material found in scat or stomach contents. That is a lot of evidence that wild cats eat plants. It is reused observation, though, not experiment: it tells us plants turn up, not what they do once eaten.
So why would a meat-eating hunter swallow leaves? Ecological patterns in that data, and possible parasite-related explanations, make an inherited tendency plausible. A broader review of self-medication in mammals offers similar ideas. Both are useful places to start. Neither has been tested in house cats.
One of the more intriguing clues comes from a relative, not a cat. A study of the Chinese lesser civet in northeastern Taiwan sampled droppings for seventeen months and found adult worms associated with folded leaves; four samples contained both. That supports investigating whether leaves help move things along. It does not show that civets end up with fewer worms, or that a house cat chewing young grass works the same way.
Then there is hair. A Japanese study of snow leopards analyzed 107 samples from ten cats and found no clear link between the amount of plant material and the amount of hair. Meanwhile, a small 2025 study of house cats looked at six hairballs from two cats under an electron microscope and found cat hair tangled in the tiny hairs and edges of plant leaves. These findings come from different species, different plants and different ends of the cat, so both can be true at once. Hair contact with leaves is real; what that means for every cat is still open.
House cats keep the habit. In owner surveys reported by Hart and colleagues in 2021, 725 of 1,021 cats had been seen eating plants at least six times, and only around 6 to 9% seemed unwell beforehand. Plant eating looked similar across coat lengths, which makes a simple too-much-hair explanation less likely, though coat length is only a rough guide to how much hair a cat swallows.
Even cats fending for themselves do it. Researchers in Perth examined stray cats and found that 23 of 108 cats that had been eating refuse had at least 5 grams of fresh green grass in their digestive tracts. Strays have plenty of other things on their minds, and they still found time for greens.
What nobody knows is whether the old reasons still apply. Any ancestral purpose would need rethinking for a cat with a modern diet, little exposure to wild parasites and a vet on speed dial. But an activity can be worth offering without recreating its evolutionary job. Cats nibble grass, many seem to enjoy it, and for most, that is reason enough.
Here is the catch for an indoor cat: the habit came inside, but the grass did not. Across the UAE, homes stay closed and air-conditioned for much of the year, and the plants indoors are usually decorative houseplants, many of which are not safe for cats.
That is where a box of fresh grass comes in. Wheat, oat and barley, organic and grown hydroponically in the UAE, harvested the morning they are delivered and ready to nibble the day they arrive. All three help with hairballs. Put the box somewhere your cat already likes, and let them choose. The research keeps landing on that point: offer grass as a voluntary opportunity, watch your cat, and keep going while it suits them.
When you see your cat nibbling, take a moment to appreciate that thread back to their wild relatives. Your cat may be a tame house cat who has never hunted anything more dangerous than a hair tie, but somewhere in that small, green ritual is a habit shared with two dozen species of wild cat.
