A hard lesson: Lilies and cats don?t mix

Editor’s note: This column was initially printed after Easter last year. Hopefully by printing it prior to Easter this year, it will prevent other cats from suffering the same consequences. As a guy, I admit that I sometimes don’t pay attention to things that are being told to me. It must be a testosterone thing. When my wife asks me to do something, she knows to write it down because if it isn’t a priority to me she knows I will forget it and very likely not even remember she asked me to do it. As a veterinarian, there are things that are very important to remember. These are a priority for my job, and remembering these can be a matter of life and death for my patients. I remember a lot of things in veterinary school 20 years ago that I have used on a regular basis, but I also remember a lot of things that I have learned that I haven’t used one single time since I graduated. For example, did you know the bump on the back of your pet’s head is called the external occipital protuberance? What a completely worthless piece of information. It has no clinical relevance and yet I will remember it until the day I die. We very commonly get calls from worried pet owners concerned that their pet has ingested something toxic. Interestingly enough, most things our pets eat are not toxic or at the most cause some temporary gastric upset. The toxicities we see the most by far are ethylene glycol (antifreeze), ingestion of one of the various rat/mouse poisons, and using canine over the counter flea medications on cats. Recently, I learned that a common plant was extremely toxic to cats. Maybe I had heard about this toxicity before, but I have searched the cobweb-filled corners of my old brain, and I honestly can’t remember hearing that this plant kills cats. My lesson started this past Easter morning while I was visiting my brother and his family. I received a call from a worried pet owner who stated that one of her two cats was acting unusual and had been vomiting a little. She asked if it could possibly be the Easter lilies recently brought into the house. Since I was out of town and had no access to my usual resources or even the Internet, I told her I couldn’t be sure but I didn’t think so since I had never seen a cat sick from eating Easter lilies. Certainly if they were toxic I would have seen a case in my 18 years as a veterinarian! As a matter of fact, we had given my brother and his family an Easter lily just the night before and he had a cat in the house. I told her she could call the Ohio Poison control to check with them, but otherwise I would be in the office first thing in the morning. First thing the next morning this owner told me now both cats were sick. I pulled out my toxicology book and looked up Easter lilies, expecting that if it was listed the signs would be some transient gastric upset. I was horrified to see that they (and all others in lily family) were extremely toxic to cats and that unless you treat them immediately after ingesting the plants, the prognosis is extremely poor. According to my toxicology book, cats are reported to be sensitive to an unknown toxin in these plants which causes the kidneys to shut down. Bloodwork on both cats revealed they were both in kidney failure. I put them on intravenous fluids to try to get the kidneys kicked into gear, but 24 hours later they had not produced one drop of urine, were progressively getting sicker, and were euthanized. The moral of the story is if you have a cat, make sure there are no lilies anywhere near the cat — outside or inside. It only takes one dead cat to learn your lesson. Unfortunately, it took me two dead cats to learn a lesson I will never forget. Chad Higgins is a 1989 graduate of Purdue University School of Veterinary Medicine. He has owned Amanda Animal Hospital outside of Spencerville for almost 11 years. If you have any ideas for future columns, you can e-mail it to him at aah45887@woh.rr.com.