Safety Archives - Page 11 of 13

Don’t Eat That: Onions

Ashton: I love to eat the stuff the peeps eat. Turning on the cute to get some of their food is kind of an art form. Watch me go at the dinner table!

And it works every time. Who can resist that face? SCORE!

But listen up, peeps, this is important: No matter how much I beg, or your cat begs, you shouldn’t feed anything that contains onions. They can cause Heinz body anemia. A Heinz body is damaged hemoglobin inside your kitty’s red blood cells. It’s something that can only be seen with a microscope, but you can see symptoms like:

Fever
Sudden onset of weakness
Loss of appetite (anorexia)
Reddish brown urine (in severe cases)
Pale mucous membranes (mouth area, for example)
Skin discoloration

Heinz bodies can form from cats ingesting raw, cooked, or dehydrated onions or scallions.

Foods you don’t think about having onions or onion powder may have enough to trigger this dangerous condition.

Although baby food is often suggested as a means of getting sick cats to eat, many companies started adding onion powder to baby food recipes in 1995. One study found that as little as 0.3% onion powder in a feline diet resulted in Heinz body formation. This means that “Oh, a little won’t hurt” isn’t true at all. Small quantities of onions aren’t recommended for cats, period.

References:
Heinz Body Anemia In Cats, Jaime Tarigo-Martinie, DVM; Paula Krimer, DVM, DVSc
Anemia Due to Red Blood Cell Damage in Cats
Image “Onion_8174068” by Dubravko Sorić CC-BY-2.0

Just Say No to Lilies

The head peep’s favorite flower has always been the stargazer lily. She loves how they look and especially how they smell.

But we can’t even have them in the house. Do you know why?

If you said it’s because stargazer lilies are poisonous to cats, you’re right. She knows that if there are flowers in the house, we absolutely must have the taste. It doesn’t matter how where she puts them. Cats can jump five times their height, so it’s hard to find anywhere safe to put toxic flowers.

This is especially important this time of year, since the tradition of Easter lilies can be a dangerous one for the cats in your house.

According to the pet poison helpline, some lilies are more dangerous than others, but even the least dangerous lilies cause tissue irritation in the mouth, tongue, pharynx, and esophagus, causing drooling, foaming and pawing at the mouth, and vomiting. And those are the less dangerous lilies! The potentially fatal lilies, including the Easter lily, can cause acute kidney failure if cats eat only two or three petals, or even if they just drink the water from the vase.

Instead of listing which lilies are more dangerous than others, it stands to reason that the best thing that you an do is just avoid having lilies around cats entirely. The risk is just too high.

We are indoor kitties, so we enjoy looking at the lilies in our garden from the safety of our screened porch.

Just say no to lilies. Let this guy enjoy them instead… for your safety.

Poison Prevention Week: Making Your House Safer

Did you hear that this is National Poison Prevention Week? It’s a week to raise awareness of poison prevention for the whole family, and we all know that our cats are an important part of the family. Every day of this week has a different awareness focus, and today is Home Safe Home day.

We live in our home with cats every day and don’t think about the trouble they can get into until a breakable vase is knocked on the floor, then we realize that the vase was in a dangerous place all the time. Things that may be poisonous to our cats in our home are like that, too. We live alongside them all the time without thinking about them until something unfortunate happens. Take a few minutes during this awareness week to look around your house at a cat’s eye view.

Has your cat ever gotten into the attic or basement? Many attics and basements have moth balls, rat bait, or ant poison in unprotected locations because you don’t expect a cat to be in there. Putting these items in locations that are accessible to moths, rats, or ants rather than cats is always a good idea, just in case a cat visits the area.

Does your cat know how to get into cabinets? What about drawers?

Take a look in the cabinet under your kitchen and bathroom sink. What do you store there? Cleaning products and detergents? If your upper cabinets are like ours, they probably have bottles of vitamins, human medicines, and veterinary medicines. If your cat is as adept at opening cabinets and drawers as Pierre, you might want to look into baby latches intended to keep children out of cabinets. They’re not expensive, and can keep curiuous cats out of the cabinets. We have posted previously about solutions for securing pantries and other storage areas that have bifold doors.

You may have houseplants in any room of the house. Some houseplants are toxic to cats, while others are fine. A good resource to check about the specific plants in your house is the Pet Poison Helpline list of poisons. This resource includes plants and many other poisonous items found throughout your home, so you can find out about their potential effects on your cat.

Does your cat have access to your garage? Walk out there and take a look at what you’re storing there. Are there slug baits for the garden? What about weed killers? If your washer and dryer are in the garage, the dish washing detergent and fabric softener sheets are toxic, too. (Though not related to poisons, don’t forget to be careful to always check the interior of the dryer before putting in a load in case a cat gets inside!) Automotive chemicals such as oil, gasoline, and antifreeze are also toxic. It only takes a teaspoon of antifreeze to kill a cat.

Take a few minutes to move poisonous items out of your cat’s reach today to make your house a safer place for your cat each and every day.

Safe Disposal of Medications

As part of a massive spring cleaning effort, we managed to clean out cabinets recently that hadn’t been touched in several years. Included in those cabinets were bottles of medications from the cats who came before us, which led to the very important question: How do you safely dispose of medications you have around the house?

We know that there are a lot of ways that you shouldn’t dispose of things.

Flushing your unused medications down the toilet or drain is a bad idea. The US Geological Survey has already found levels of drugs such as antibiotics, hormones, and contraceptives in 80% of the rivers and streams tested in part of a nationwide study. Additional studies have shown that fish and other wildlife can be adversely affected by medications, even when they are expired.

Instead of flushing medications, check to see if there are drug take-back events in your area one of the following ways:

Call your city or county government’s household trash and recycling service to ask whether a drug take-back program is available in your community. Some counties hold periodic household hazardous waste collection days, where over-the-counter and prescription drugs are accepted at a set location.
Ask your pharmacist whether he or she knows of any medicine disposal programs in your area.
Find a local, independent pharmacy in your area who participates in drug disposal through disposemymeds.com.
Check the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration’s web site for National Prescription Drug Take-Back Event information.
Ask your veterinarian. They may be willing to include unused medications originally purchased through them in shipments to their medical waste company.

If there aren’t any drug take-back events in your area, you can purchase special postage-paid packages from your local pharmacy that send medications back to a medical waste company. Some medications are ineligible for this program so read the fine print before you purchase.

The same guidelines can be used for disposal of human medications, though your veterinarian is unlikely to be willing to take back unused human medication. Keeping our groundwater safe is everybody’s responsibility!

Don’t Eat That: Onions

Just Say No to Lilies

Poison Prevention Week: Making Your House Safer

Safe Disposal of Medications

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