Witch Herbs and Pets: Which Plants Are Safe for Cats and Dogs, and Which Are Toxic
Rosemary, dill, basil and rose petals sit on the ASPCA's non-toxic list for cats and dogs. Garlic, bay, holly, ivy, mistletoe, yarrow, St John's wort, lavender and chamomile sit on the toxic one. Lilies are the urgent case: for a cat, even the pollen is a reason to call a vet the same day.
Below are twelve plants that keep turning up in home workings, each with where its old use is written down and what it means for an animal who shares the room. The safety line comes from the ASPCA's toxic and non-toxic plant list, which anyone can search by common name or Latin name. The old uses come from the herbals and the folklore collections, with their dates, so you can check them yourself.
Two honest limits. Non-toxic does not mean a cat should eat a bowl of it, and any plant can upset a stomach. And no list replaces your own vet, who knows the animal in front of you.
Four rules that do most of the work
- Check the plant first The ASPCA's toxic and non-toxic plant list is free to search, by common name and by Latin name, before you buy a bunch of anything.
- Height is not a plan A cat gets to the top of the cupboard; the real barrier is a closed door, a lidded tin or a corked jar.
- Dried is not safer Drying does not take the trouble out of garlic, bay or yarrow, and small dry pieces are easy to swallow whole.
- Have the number saved Your vet and an animal poison line belong in your phone before the evening you need them.
Herbs that are safe to keep around cats and dogs
These four are on the ASPCA's non-toxic list for both cats and dogs, which means a nibble is not a poisoning. They also carry real old uses, so you are not trading away the working to keep the animal safe.
1. Rosemary
Old: rosemary is the plant the English houses were full of. Levinus Lemnius, writing in 1658 and quoted in Brand's Observations on Popular Antiquities (Ellis edition, 1813), describes it set about rooms and doorways, and Gerard's Herball (1633) has it as a common garden plant.
Pet note: the ASPCA lists rosemary as non-toxic to cats and dogs. A pot on the sill and a sprig over the entrance are about as low-risk as a home working gets.
2. Dill
Old, with a caveat: dill appears in the much-reprinted couplet "Trefoil, vervain, John's-wort, dill, hinder witches of their will." It is quoted all through the nineteenth-century folklore collections, usually with no first printing named, and we have not been able to trace one. Treat it as an old rhyme of uncertain date rather than a dated source.
Pet note: the ASPCA lists dill as non-toxic to cats and dogs. It is also the easiest of the four to grow on a windowsill.
3. Basil
Old, then modern: Gerard's Herball (1633) reports the long quarrel the older writers had over basil, including the claim that smelling it bred scorpions in the brain, and the writers who thought that nonsense. The protective and money uses in today's books are modern, with no old source behind them. That is fine, as long as it is said.
Pet note: the ASPCA lists basil as non-toxic to cats and dogs.
4. Rose petals
Old, then modern: Gerard (1633) treats the rose as a garden and kitchen plant and gives it pages of household uses. The jars of rose petals on modern altars are a modern habit, not an old one.
Pet note: the ASPCA lists roses as non-toxic to cats and dogs. The hazard is mechanical: thorns, and florist stems that may have been sprayed. Strip the petals, bin the stems.
The witch herbs that are toxic to cats and dogs
Every plant below is on the ASPCA's toxic list for cats, dogs or both. Most of them also have a well-documented old use, which is exactly why they keep showing up in spell books with no safety line underneath. Keep the use; change where the plant lives.
5. Garlic, and the whole onion family
Old: Gerard's Herball (1633) gives garlic pages of household and country uses and passes on its old reputation as the countryman's cure-all. That is history, not advice.
Pet note: garlic, onion, chives and leeks are toxic to cats and dogs, and cats are the more sensitive of the two. Powder counts as much as the clove. Hang the braid where nothing can reach it, and pick up anything that drops on the kitchen floor.
6. Bay
Old: Culpeper's The English Physitian (1652) writes that neither witch nor devil, thunder nor lightning, will harm the place where a bay tree grows. It is one of the most quoted protective lines in the old English books.
Pet note: bay laurel is on the ASPCA toxic list, and a whole dried leaf is stiff enough to cause trouble going down. Cooking with one in a covered pot is ordinary kitchen use. A bay leaf left on an altar at floor level is not.
7. Holly and ivy
Old: John Stow's Survey of London (1598), quoted in Brand (Ellis edition, 1849), describes every house and parish church at Christmas "decked with holme, ivy, bayes". Holme is holly.
Pet note: English ivy and holly are both on the ASPCA toxic list, leaves and berries. Hang greens high, and sweep up what falls the same day, because berries roll. Artificial holly over a doorway keeps the shape of the custom with nothing to swallow.
8. Mistletoe
Old: Pliny's Natural History (translated by Bostock and Riley, 1855) describes Gaulish druids cutting mistletoe from an oak with a golden sickle, which is the source behind most of what gets repeated about it.
Pet note: mistletoe is on the ASPCA toxic list, and the berries are the part that comes off in your hand. If it goes up at all, it goes up over a doorway with nothing beneath it, and it comes down whole.
9. St John's wort
Old: St John's wort hung over doors and windows on Midsummer Eve is recorded in Brand's Observations on Popular Antiquities (Ellis edition, 1813), drawing on Stow's account of the London watch. John Aubrey, Miscellanies (1696), tells his own Midsummer story about it.
Pet note: the ASPCA lists St John's wort as toxic to cats and dogs, with sensitivity to sunlight among the effects. The old placement is actually the safe one: high over a door frame, where a jumping cat has nothing to land on.
10. Yarrow
Old: Halliwell's Popular Rhymes and Nursery Tales (1849) prints a rhyme said over yarrow placed under the pillow, addressing it as the "herb of Venus" and asking it to show who the sleeper's true love will be. It is a looking custom, not a working on anybody.
Pet note: yarrow is on the ASPCA toxic list, and under the pillow is exactly where a cat sleeps. Sew it shut in a cloth bag and keep the bedroom door closed, or put the written rhyme under the pillow instead of the plant.
11. Lavender and chamomile, the two that surprise people
Modern uses, old plants: both are strewing and garden plants in the old herbals; the sachet-and-sleep uses in today's books are modern.
Pet note: the ASPCA lists both English lavender and chamomile as toxic to cats and dogs. A sachet sewn shut in a drawer is a different thing from a cat chewing a stem, but the list is the list: keep the plants and the sachets out of reach, and keep lavender oil out of the house entirely if there is a cat in it.
12. Lilies, if you have a cat
Why it is here: lilies are not a spell herb. They arrive in bouquets and end up in the vase on the altar, which is how they get into the room.
Pet note: true lilies and daylilies can cause kidney failure in cats. Pollen brushed onto fur and licked off is enough. There is no safe placement in a house with a cat: refuse the stems at the door, and if you think a cat has touched one, call a vet immediately rather than waiting for signs.
How to keep a working out of reach of a cat who climbs
Height alone is not a barrier. A closed door is. So is a tin with a lid, a corked jar, a drawer, or a box on a shelf inside a cupboard. If the working wants to be hidden anyway, and many of the old ones do, the safe place and the quiet place are usually the same place.
Three habits worth keeping. Label your jars, so nobody has to guess what the dried gray leaves are at eleven at night. Sweep after you work, because the piece that drops is the piece that gets eaten. And keep the toxic plants in a different container from the kitchen ones, so a tired hand does not reach for the wrong jar.
If you want the placement written into the working rather than bolted on afterward, that is how The Practical Grimoire of Protection is built: old ways to guard the home, each with its source and its year, and a pet, plant and fire note wherever a working needs one.
Burning herbs, smoke and the smoke alarm
Smoke irritates animal lungs the way it irritates yours, and birds are far more sensitive than cats and dogs. If you burn anything, burn a small amount, open a window first, and let the animal leave the room rather than shutting it in with you.
The fire rules are plain. A candle stands in a jar or on a plate, never beside dried herbs, never unattended, never where a tail can swing past it. An LED tealight does the job of a flame in every working where the light is the point. For a smoke alarm in a small apartment, a sprig smouldering on a dish under the kitchen extractor beats a bundle in the hallway.
We leave white sage smudging out of our workings. The practice belongs to Native nations, and commercial harvesting has put pressure on the plant. A sprig of rosemary, juniper or garden sage is the kitchen-and-garden answer, and it is what the old English books had anyway.
Essential oils and diffusers around animals
Essential oils are the modern addition to witchcraft that causes the most trouble for pets. Veterinary poison centers warn repeatedly about tea tree, pennyroyal, wintergreen, pine and citrus oils around cats and dogs, by skin contact as well as by swallowing.
Three lines we keep. Nothing goes on an animal's fur, paws or bedding. A diffuser does not run in a room a pet cannot walk out of, and ideally not in a shared home at all. Bottles live in a closed cupboard, because a spill on the floor is a dose.
Worth noticing: the old books do not use essential oils. They use the plant, the branch, the thread and the words. Every working in these pages can be done without a single bottle.
What to use when a working calls for a toxic plant
A recipe is not a rule. The old records are full of substitutions already, because people used what grew near them. Swap, and write down what you swapped.
- Yarrow under the pillow: the written rhyme on folded paper, or a sprig of rosemary sewn into a closed bag.
- Bay leaf for a wish: the wish written on paper, kept in a jar or a book instead of on a leaf.
- Holly or ivy at the door: rosemary high over the frame, or a cut green branch of something non-toxic, with nothing within reach.
- Garlic hung in the kitchen: a braid on a hook no animal can jump to, or an iron nail or key on the lintel instead.
- Lavender sachet: dried rosemary and rose petals, sewn shut, in a closed drawer.
The working does not live in the shopping list. It lives in the words, the placement and the fact that you did it. If you want the whole set with the swaps and the safety notes already on the page, that is what the complete Practical Grimoire series does: four books of workings, each with its old source and its year, kitchen and garden things first.
