Easter Toxins

Easter is a happy of time of year to celebrate with family and friends and welcome spring. But it is also a busy time of year for pet toxin ingestion making March Poison Prevention Month. The most common calls this time of year involve Easter lilies, chocolate, and Easter grass.

True lilies such as Tiger, Day, Asiatic, Easter, and Japanese Show lilies are highly toxic to cats. All parts of the Easter lily plant are poisonous – the petals, the leaves, the stem and even the pollen. Cats that ingest as few as one or two leaves, or even a small amount of pollen while grooming their fur, can suffer severe kidney failure. In most situations, symptoms of poisoning will develop within six to 12 hours of exposure. Early signs include vomiting, loss of appetite, lethargy and dehydration. Symptoms worsen as kidney failure develops. Some cats will experience disorientation, staggering and seizures.

There is no effective antidote to counteract lily poisoning, the sooner you can get your cat to the veterinarian, the better his chances of survival will be. If you see your cat licking or eating any part of an Easter lily, call our office or Pet Poison Helpline (855-764-7661-fee applies) immediately. If left untreated, his chances of survival are low.

Treatment includes inducing vomiting to get any remaining plant material out of the stomach, administering drugs like activated charcoal (to bind the poison in the stomach and intestines), fluid therapy to flush out the kidneys, and monitoring of kidney function through blood testing.

Tiger, Day, Asiatic, Japanese Show, and my personal favorite Stargazer lilies are popular in many gardens and yards. These lilies are also commonly found in florist bouquets, so it is imperative to check for poisonous flowers before bringing bouquets into the household.
Non-toxic types of lilies – such as the Peace, Peruvian and Calla lilies typically only cause minor drooling.

Thankfully, lily poisoning does not occur in dogs or people. However, if a large amount is ingested, it can result in mild gastrointestinal issues such as vomiting and diarrhea.

With Easter comes Easter baskets and decorations and Easter grass… the fake grass that often fills those decorative Easter baskets. When your cat or dog ingests something “stringy” like Easter grass, it can become anchored around the base of the tongue or stomach, rendering it unable to pass through the intestines. It can result in a linear foreign body and cause severe damage to the intestinal tract, often requiring abdominal surgery.

And what’s the other favorite thing in those Easter baskets? Chocolate of course! Chocolate rabbits and hundreds of kinds of chocolate eggs! While the occasional chocolate chip in one cookie is not typically an issue, certain types of chocolate are very toxic to dogs. In general, the darker and more bitter the chocolate, the greater the danger. Baker’s chocolate and dark chocolate pose the biggest problem. The chemical toxicity is due to methylxanthines (a relative of caffeine) and results in vomiting, diarrhea, hyperactivity, an abnormal heart rhythm, seizures, and possibly death. Treatment here too requires inducing vomiting to get as much of the chocolate out as possible. The colored foil wrappers on some of those chocolate eggs do make vomiting a colorful process in a lot of cases! The treatment is much the same as lily ingestion where we give activated charcoal (not at all the same as grill charcoal, so please don’t try that) to absorb the toxins. We control the seizures and abnormal heart rhythm with supportive medications as warranted. And give fluids to help flush the toxins out of the blood stream.

Just a reminder, our family of clinics always has a doctor on call 24/7, 365 days a year. Call one of our regular clinic phone numbers and follow the prompts to reach our emergency doctor.

Xylitol: Sweet...but Deadly!

Xylitol is a low-calorie sugar substitute that has helped diabetics and weight loss seekers to get their sugar fix without the calories. Xylitol is appearing in products you'd never suspect. New products on the market such as sleep aids, multivitamins, sedatives, antacids, stool softeners amy contain unexpectedly large amounts of xylitol. Dogs that ingest these products may face a double risk – poisoning by the xylitol (a sugar alcohol) and also liver failure.

Just a small sample of some of the more popular household products containing xylitol.

Xylitol is also sold in bulk to substitute of table sugar for baking and home use. Pet Poison Helpline has had several cases of dogs becoming severely intoxicated after ingesting homemade bread, muffins and cupcakes made with xylitol.

Toxicity is dose dependent. The dose necessary to cause dangerously low blood sugar could be as little as one piece of xylitol chewing gum for a 10-pound dog. To obtain a list or which products contain xylitol, google “products containing xylitol.”

If you suspect that your dog has ingested a xylitol containing product, call the Poison Control Hotline at 1-800-548-2423.

Cats!

 It is no secret that I am a cat lover. Don't get me wrong, dogs are great, too, but there is a special place in my heart for the furry felines (and the not so furry, for that matter...I'm looking at you sphinxy)! I could go on to say that if they happen to be orange this only ups the ante. The staff here for the most part knows that if there is an orange cat in the facility I am to be notified right away. The technicians have gone out of their way to come out of an exam room to plop an orange cat in my lap, especially when they know I am having a particularly stressful day. I owe my love for cats to my own orange cat, Oliver. I adopted him my first year of vet school, and he has been with me ever since. He was my shadow all throughout vet school; keeping me company while I spent countless hours studying, even if only to sleep on his bed next to my desk till all hours of the night and early morning...and in true cat fashion to often sleep ON my desk or ON my books, keyboard, lap, back of my desk chair, etc. (cat people, you know what I am talking about)! 

Now that I am part of the family at Pine Bluff Animal Hospital, I have been working on educating myself about a cat-friendly practice. There are 86 million owned cats in the US and 78 million owned dogs yet there are twice as many cats than dogs that never see a vet. 39% of people say they would only bring their cat to the vet if the cat was sick. It is just as important that a cat sees us at least yearly for health checks and preventative care such as vaccines, fecal tests, etc. Senior cats, cats that go outdoors, have exposure to outdoor cats, or already have chronic diseases such as Feline Immunodeficiency Virus (FIV or feline AIDS) and/or Feline Leukemia Virus (FeLV) are among the many that should visit the vet even more frequently than just the basic yearly health checks. Just because a cat is healthy as perceived by their owner does not mean it does not need to see a vet. We see sick AND healthy pets and checking in with our fantastic felines once a year can increase the likelihood that we will catch an early disease state while it is still manageable.

Some of the hallmarks of a cat-friendly practice are found in the waiting room and traced all the way to the very back of the hospital where pets are boarded. Staff that is knowledgeable about the least stressful restraint and handling techniques and understand the little idiosyncrasies of cats can make all the difference in our feline visits. We've already made some small changes at our hospitals and will be working towards more in the coming months. My ultimate goal is to increase our feline visits by making them as minimally stressful on our owners AND their special cats. In the meantime, I encourage you to bring your cat in if it hasn't been seen by a vet in awhile (or ever). And if it is orange...be prepared :)