When trying to find a string pattern in a file grep returns the standard input of the binary file

I'm on Ubuntu and I typed cat .bash_history | grep git and it returned

Binary file (standard input) matches

My bash_history does exist and there are many lines in it that starts with git .

What causes the error? how can i fix it?

You can use grep -a 'pattern' .

from man grep page.

-a, --text
Process a binary file as if it were text; this is equivalent to the --binary-files=text option.