poinsettia - poisonous?

[paneer]

I cannot work out whether these are poisonous to cats or not. Anyone have a definitive answer?

ive always understood that they are toxic to cats so have avoided having them in my house better to be safe than sorry

Yes they are toxic.

Yes. Very. As are lillies.

I seem to recall that poinsettias are in fact not nearly as toxic as lilies and rather depend on the pet actually chewing some of the plant. (Which would be a problem with my own boy who likes to chew a leaf if he gets near one.)

Whereas with lilies, one of the difficulties is that every part of the plant is poisonous including, of note, the pollen which can be ingested eg if the cat brushes against a plant and then grooms. (And some lilies have very heavy pollen which drops everywhere.)

Having said which, they're still one to keep out of the house, especially if you have inquisitive kittens.

thanks. she has been ignoring it but the plant is at my mum's now just in case.

I actually had a panic over this at the weekend as I suspected my dog had possibly eaten some of the leaves of a poinsettia that was dying and some of the bit were beginning to drop off.

As it happened she was fine but I looked at everything I could find on the plant and it would seem that although poinsettia can cause vomiting and diarrhoea in both dogs and cats if ingested, it's generally not severe and the symptoms will usually clear up without treatment.

Lilies however, are a whole different ball game. As cozietoesie says they are extremely poisonous to cats (slightly different for dogs, depends on the type of lily as far as I can gather) and if a cat ingests any part of the plant or the pollen it will generally result in the cat's death.