It’s likely that Dorothy Chapman is a rock star among feline fans across the country. But the cats aren’t talking.
In just two years, Chapman, a Sharon resident, has stocked pots of fresh organic cat grass — her own mix of rye, barley and oats — in more than 1,000 pet stores across 49 of the 50 states.
Chapman’s New Ipswich-based business, Mom’s Indoor Cat, supplies the homegrown grass to myriad pet stores, with Alaska the only outlier. “The only state we don’t supply is Alaska. I don’t think they like grass,” she said.
Cat grass is any type of grass cultivated for feline consumption. “If anything, cat grass will keep the cat from eating your mother’s spider plant,” Chapman said, noting the propensity cats have for eating and killing house plants.
The business grew out of Chapman’s love for her family’s own feline as well as from her knack for gardening. “Our cat Pillow lived just over 20 years. At 17 she became ill and started losing weight,” Chapman said. “The vet said she was just getting old. I didn’t like that answer.”
Chapman researched holistic ways to help Pillow. One of the first suggestions she found searching Google was cat grass.
“I saw that cat grass was great for helping with digestive issues,” Chapman said. While browsing pet stores for cat grass brands, she said she wasn’t impressed. “I didn’t like the store versions, there were too many ingredients for it to be healthy. None of it was organic.”
Chapman took an entrepreneurial approach and created her own three-ingredient organic cat grass mix, which is rye, barley and oats. She won’t grow wheat grass because, she said, 20% of cats are celiac intolerant. That is a digestive condition in which the body can’t process wheat gluten.
When starting out, Chapman’s son Jonathan helped lay the foundation for the unusual business. “Jonathan has been my sounding board. He’s an accountant and takes care of my financials,” she said. “We registered the business in December 2023 and had our first client in January 2024.”
To put her products before cat owners, Chapman went to every pet store within a three-hour drive.
“I first started by loading boxes of cat grass balls into the car and visiting every pet shop in New Hampshire,” she said. The balls are the containers she keeps the seeds and soil in. She then drove throughout Massachusetts, Connecticut and Rhode Island to advertise and sell her grass and soon, news of her products spread by word of mouth.
Besides minimal ingredients, Chapman said soil sets her cat grass apart from other brands. “Pet store cat grass doesn’t come with soil. Ours has organic soil sourced from Maine.”
She uses a combined soil-hydroponics system to grow the grass. “The soil is important for providing nutrients to the grass, while the hydroponic component allows for water to sit in the system and keep the roots strong.”
According to Chapman, the mix ensures the grass stays nutritious and sturdy. “One issue conventional cat grass has is that it gets pulled out by cats,” she said. “In our system, the cat can knock the container around, pull at and chew the grass, but the roots will keep them in place.”
Cats can enjoy their meal without making a mess. “I wanted our grass containers to be cat-proof,” she added.
Mom’s Indoor Cat products include single cat grass balls as well as trays for multi-cat households.
Chapman said she avoids chain pet stores, stocking her cat grass in virtually every mom-and-pop pet shop in New Hampshire.
For more, go to momsindoorcat.com.