But all this human effort is really done to replicate what would happen naturally if you had a flock of sheep in your yard/field. The lawn “fad” is just an attempt to get the look of a pasture without the grazers.
You have never lived anywhere with a lawn???
the environmentalists say that lawns, regardless of geographical location, are a horrible disaster. The machinery used to maintain lawns emits more pollution than cars, the chemicals dumped on lawns end up in the water, and no wildlife can really live in a lawn environment. I’m sure they are exaggerating a tad, but they do have a point.
I’d have to guess that you have never lived in apartments or in central Arizona. I don’t consider those pathetic 2 foot strips of grass between the parking lot and sidewalk to be lawns. While living in Arizona, I didn’t know anyone with a lawn. Every so often, I’d go to the courthouse to walk on grass.
I’m going to take DrCube’ssuggestion and trim one pot while leaving the other one alone and see what happens. I wasn’t arguing with my BB about this, I was just confused.
What does BB stand for? I’m not coming up with anything.
A lot of this can be minimized if you use a reel mower, or electric, don’t spray poisons on your lawn, and live somewhere without a water shortage. You’re correct in that there is no real environmental benefit to having a lawn, though. Well, I guess it helps keep erosion of the topsoil down, in comparison to plain dirt. 
Snakes, rats and other critters live in tall grass. A abandoned home in a neighborhood can create a serious pest problem for many surrounding homes.
Meh, depends on the location. I live where I don’t need to water the lawn, I don’t dump chemicals on it, and I mow it a couple of times a year. I tried other groundcovers, and “lawn” turned out to be the easiest for me to maintain, as well as relatively pleasant to walk on in bare feet. One problem with other groundcovers was that grass tended to grow in them.
Mowing yard grass discourages it from going to seed and also kills a lot of the competing weeds. Or, rather, it does more damage to the weeds than to the grass, since most weeds tend to grow from the top, but grass grows from the bottom. So mowing tends to maintain the lawn as mostly grass. (I have several other species. So long as they are green, can be maintained short, and are pleasant to walk on, I don’t really care. In fact, when I seed the lawn, I toss some clover around, as well as grass seed.)
The grasses that grow where I live mostly don’t grow multiple feet high. A few of them do, but not the ones routinely planted in lawns.
All of that being said, there’s no way I would bother to trim grass growing in a pot for my cats. If I noticed it was going to seed, I might trim off the fruiting stalks, but that’s it.
Our homeowners association requires every house to maintain a mowed front and back yard. But our fenced-in side yard is something we can pretty much use as we like. We got it leveled and it’s covered in tiles and artificial grass.
Every now and then I go out and sweep the grass with a vacuum cleaner. The first time I did it my wife had to take a picture to post on Facebook. But after clearing the big leaves and stuff away with a blower the vacuum is the best way to clean it. Much better than mowing!
I let a bunch of oat grass for my cat grow too long. It flowered and put out little oat seeds. Then it died. Keeping it trimmed below about six inches seems the best strategy for long lived cat-palatable oat grass. Much longer and it’ll tend to sudden drying. Shorter, and it goes unhealthy, while the cat gets bored with it. Maybe it gets tough? Of course the optimum varies depending on the purpose for which you’re growing the grass.
We have less rainfall than is ideal for forests - that is also a factor. In this region the only places that naturally go to trees are streams/rivers/wetlands. Anything mostly dry will tend towards tallgrass prairie if left alone long enough.
Well… we don’t use any chemicals on ours, it’s mowed only often enough to keep the locals from complaining, and there is a wide variety of critters, from deermice to deer, that use the backyard. Even caught a 40 pound snapping turtle in my garden once.
Then again, not everyone would call what we have “lawn”, even if it’s more than 50% grass and mowed now and again.
Thanks all for the interesting replies about how meadows become forests and why grass should be cut.
For those who were breathlessly awaiting the results of my experiement, our cats like the cut grass better. I think its probably because it smells grassier or something.
So, based on the advice I’ve gotten here and on the empirical results of my admittedly small experiment, I will trim one pot every week and let the other one recover in the bay window.