I hear about this a lot. My cat has not tried to mess with my plants at all. Of course, my dumb cat thinks he's a dog, which is fine with me. He comes to the door, I let him to eat. he gets done eating, walks right by my open cabinet that has my plants, looks up at em, then comes to the couch and jumps on my lap. When he has to use the bathroom, or just ready to get back to cattin around outside, he goes to the door and looks at me and barks, errr meows.
Actually, the only problem I have with him, is that he wants too much attention. He will not stay off of me, wants to sleep on me all the time. If I'm up and doing shit around the house, he keeps running up and headbutting me, then runs and jumps up where I usually sit on the couch and meows at me. Other than that, he's low maintenance. I'm not a big cat person, but I love this furry fucker I got. He's also bigger than most small dogs.