Cat owners and lilies: AGAIN

[thecatneuterer]

I know this has been mentioned on here plenty of times, but as it seems so many people are unaware of the dangers I wanted to flag it up yet again.

This has been sparked by a visit this morning to a house with cats, where they had a big vase of lilies, on the floor!, dropping pollen everywhere. When I expressed my horror, and explained why, they said they had no idea it was dangerous.

Lilies kill cats. A lot. A cat doesn't need to eat the lily - it only has to brush past them and get pollen on it's coat, or walk on dropped pollen, and it will ingest enough poison when cleaning itself to die. And as soon as symptoms of poisoning are evident it is too late to save the cat.

I feel the water is somewhat muddied by the long lists of plants on the net that are dangerous to cats. With most of those the cat needs to actually eat the plant and even then is unlikely to die. I've never seen a case of poinsettia poisoning in our clinic for example. The flower that, in practice, actually kills cats is the lily. Lumping the lily in with all those other plants dilutes the message.

And that message is, if you have cats, don't have lilies in the house (or garden).

I don’t have cats but I don’t grow lilies in the garden because I don’t want to risk poisoning a cat that might come in. I love them but only grow Arum lilies .

Wow, what a lovely attitude - thank you.

I love lilies, always used to buy a bunch at least once a month. They have not crossed the threshold in the 13 years that I’ve had cats.

I do try to pass the message on whenever I can. But I wish warnings were available and very visible on bouquets. And every florist should be encouraged to ask if cats are in a household when selling/arranging bouquets.

Interestingly neither I, my DSis or my DM can abide the smell of lillies. Even one in a bouquet smells awful and gives us headaches. Even cutting the pollen stems out doesn't sort it. So we all throw them out anyway, even without cats.