Beware: many plants are toxic for our feline friends. All the more so that they all enjoy sniffing or nibbling some plants. Sometimes, a simple contact with the sap is enough. You’d better avoid to have those plants in your garden or in your house.
The greatest majority of cat owners are not aware that some of their plants can be toxic and sometimes very dangerous for their pets. And it’s true that cats are instinctively interested by what’s green.
According to some, this behaviour would allow cats to make themselves vomit, and thus regurgitate the hair balls accumulated in their stomachs. For others, by eating plants, domestic cats would recreate an ancestral behaviour, as they did when they ate their preys in the wild. There can be other reasons to this behaviour: your cat’s alimentation may not be rich enough in fibres. Some plants, like the cat grass, develop an appealing odour. Boredom can play a role as well. Indoor cats, which seldom or never go out, can suffer from boredom, and therefore develop behavioural disorders. Anyhow, no matter the reason, cats are really exposed to the risks, all the more so that people tend to have more and more exotic plants in their houses. Kittens under the age of one year are very curious and will therefore tend to play with plants more often than older cats. Fortunately, they do not really ingest plants, as most of the time they simply chew them. Therefore, serious intoxications are quite rare.
If your cat suffers from diarrhoea or vomits, if he seems ill or shows respiratory disorders, it may indeed be a plant-related intoxication. But unless you saw your cat chewing the plant or found scraps of the plant, it’s very hard to make the relation between the symptoms of the cat and the plant. However, the seriousness of the intoxication varies according to the plant - some can be lethal – to the quantity ingested, or to the sensibility of the animal. A plant can also become toxic after you’ve spray an insecticide on its leaves.
For cats, the most dangerous plants belong to the aracae family. The toxicity is maximal with the Dieffenbachia and the Philodendron. In those plants, everything is toxic, from the leaf to the sap. If sap went into your cat’s eyes, it could cause conjunctivitis or immediate ocular pains. Chewing those plants also causes violent pains and burning like sensations for the animals, as well as vomiting and kidney and respiratory disorders. Healing is quite slow, as the kidney toxicity appears one or two weeks after the first symptoms, and can lead to the death of the animal. Other common plants can also be poisonous: begonia, camomile, ivy, laurel, mistletoe, sorrel, rhubarb, lily, rhododendron, lily in the valley, tulip, all the bulb plants… And unfortunately, this list is not exhaustive. Other plants can be dangerous, even though they’re not toxic: pineapple, for instance, which cats lacking grass particularly enjoy. The cutting edge of the leaves can be dangerous for their mouths and lips.
In case of problem, you should contact a poison centre, which will answer your call 24 hours a day and 7 days a week. If you go to your veterinarian, you should try to collect your cat’s regurgitations, as well as the scraps of the plants: this will help your veterinarian in establishing his/her diagnosis.All that precedes should not however prevent you from having plants in your house, far from it. But the best thing is to provide your companion with cat grass. And if you catch your cat eating or chewing plants he shouldn’t, spray him with a bit of water, so that he won’t do it again.
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