Friday, May 06, 2005

Plants Dangerous to Cats

Today I learnt something new, something that should be of concern to all who are owned by cats. It appears that certain plants are really dangerous to cats and can kill. Lillies, or more particularly the pollen from lillies, can cause kidney failure in cats, and can kill if not treated in time.

There was a terrible story in today's Telegraph about it, at http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/05/06/nlilly06.xml. My heart goes out to the owners of the siamese who died so horribly. Mystifyingly it appears that this information about the dangers of lillies to cats has been known and publicised in America for some considerable time but has certainly not been highlighted over here. I love lillies and have been thinking of planting some in the garden. Not now. My two, Nimrod and Pickle, love going out in the garden and I wouldn't like to do anything that could endanger them.

I suppose that I could plant some lillies in a container or something. I'd have to be very careful though of the size of the pot and the shape, to make sure that there would be no risk of my two, or any of the other cats who treat our garden like a public park, going anywhere close to them.

2 comments:

andy said...

Thanks for the warning - I had no idea either that lilies could be so dangerous. With 2 inquisitive cats, I certainly wont be buying any more.

Thanks too for the link to O&G, and congratulations on your blog!

Adele said...

It is worrying isn't it. I had no idea just how dangerous lillies were. Also, thanks for the kind words about the blog. I'm slowly working at it to try to get it the way I want it, but I have the feeling it's going to be an ongoing project.