Cats and Chocolate

by Michael
(London, UK)

It's Easter. Piles of chocolate. We love chocolate but cats and chocolate are a recipe for disaster. The same goes for dogs. Easter is a time for celebration and the weather starts to become more acceptable in the UK. So some good vibes. We don't want to spoil that with a cat health problem because we left the Easter egg out and our inquisitive cat had a nibble.

• Easter Candy (sweets in the UK): Should be covered and containerised.
• Candy Containing Xylitol - sugar free: Xylitol is a synthetic sweeter that can be poisonous to cats. It is toxic to dogs and ferrets.
• Chocolate Bunnies and Eggs: Chocolate is toxic to cats because it contains theobromine, caffeine and possibly sugar. The toxicity of the alkaloid theobromine can take effect at what seems like relatively low doses scientifically speaking but what seems like a fair amount when actually eaten: a 50 pound dog needs to eat 9 ounces to ingest a toxic dose. Most of the research or information relates to dogs. But cats and chocolate don't mix either.
  
• Easter egg dye (for coloring) might contain baking soda. This might be toxic to cats if eaten in quantity
• Linear foreign bodies (love the phrase which means as you might guess, string like objects). This is not chocolate but at Easter there is an increased risk of this kind of object being about. Cat can play with these, chew them and swallow them causing a bowel obstruction.
  
• Easter Lilys: These are gorgeous looking but poisonous to cats so should not be in the house at all. See more on plants poisonous to cats. And here is another post on the subject with pictures: House plants poisonous to cats.
  

Cats and Chocolate to Cat Health Problems

Photo by freakgirl and published under a Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs creative commons License -- this site is for charitable purposes in funding cat rescue.