What do you say to your son when he asks you… why do cats eat grass, Mommy? (Or dad, if that’s the case.) The children asked the most innocent and unarmed questions, didn’t they? They are so young and innocent, and as they say, from the mouths of babies comes the wisdom of the ages.

I don’t have an answer for them to this innocent and quite observant question of nature, well we do. It may surprise you, it will certainly gross you out to some degree, but it’s the real deal.

A cat’s natural diet is meat, raw meat, prey: mice, birds, anything you can catch, kill and eat is your cat’s natural diet. Well, when a cat eats, for example a bird, it just swallows the sucker, everything is swallowed at once, the feathers, the beak, the claws, etc., etc. Hey, we said it was going to be a little gross.

Your cat can’t really digest some of the “bird stuff” anyway, shall we say. So in order not to break down their digestive system, cats have an instinctive behavior where they will eat grass to regurgitate this material up and out of their stomachs, this is very healthy for them, in fact essential to their health. .

If you have a cat that is outdoors all the time and you suspect they are biting tweetie birds, you might be better off letting your cat chew on some grass too. Remember, it is perfectly natural and good for the animal. If you don’t let them eat the grass, they’ll go after your house plants, which are often toxic to the cat, and then you’ll have a big mess on your hands.

You don’t want to kill your cat, do you? Let them eat the grass if they need to, you’re doing them a favor. People shouldn’t eat grass, but cats should, now that you know the facts of life.

However, you may be wondering about big cats. Do lions eat grass? Indeed they do, but not for the same reasons as our domesticated friends. Lions and other big cats will eat grass and leaves to neutralize stomach acid after a particularly large and fatty meal, such as a whole antelope. And all this knowledge from the simple question of a child, thank God for children.