Cleans the Air and Kills Your Cat

When we applied for the cats at the DC Humane Society, part of the process included a home inspection. What this meant was that an experienced (and, of course, crazy) cat lady came to our house and pointed out all the places a cat might get into trouble. She seemed to consider cats akin to flying squirrels or some other animal kingdom acrobat. She assured us they would leap from the top of the stairs and land on the folding screen in front of the window; they'd walk along shelves there was no way they could access and fit themselves in out of the way alcoves--basically smashing all our glass and china and shredding anything else if we didn't carefully pack it away until they were grown.

While this advice was excessive, she did point out something I hadn't even thought about: Plants.

Listing of Plants Toxic to Cats
Listing of Plants NOT Toxic to Cats

For a time, the Snake plant (which I ADORE as a low maintenance house plant) was on both lists--as Mother-in-Law's Tongue on the toxic list and Snake plant on the nontoxic list. This more recent version of the safe list seems to have removed ol' snakey altogether, which makes this next picture look highly irresponsible.

I didn't think it was poisonous when I took this picture. Louie used to bite into the leaves every chance he got. He must have liked the texture, which I would assume is similar to the cardboard he also loves to sink his teeth into.  Perhaps he learned his lesson and that's why this time around he simply sniffed it and walked away. 

The crazy cat lady did not tip me off about the Snake plant. She only mentioned the Peace Lily in the front room that I didn't bother moving it since it was on top of a speaker on top of a cabinet. The cats would never get to it.

So, fast forward a couple years. My sister gets a cat. My mom brings her a housewarming gift for her new apartment: A Peace Lily. Since they're known for purifying the air (as are Snake Plants. Perhaps it's all these toxins they take from the air that make them so poisonous?) I point out that the plant is poisonous, it goes on top of a high shelf, catastrophe averted.

Until I see my sister's Facebook post a few weeks later that her cat, Zizek, (named after the Slovenian philosopher) has ingested lily pollen, which it turns out is even more horribly toxic to cats than the plant itself! I Google it immediately to find accounts of how people kept the plant out of reach but the pollen fell on the cat's fur from on high, the cat licked it off, and then died. I assumed that's what happened to my sister's cat. I was relieved my own Peace Lily did so poorly in its designated spot that it had never flowered.

But no, it turns out the pollen was from a bouquet that contained lilies. My sister came home to find her cat's face covered in yellow pollen. I immediately thought of all the times I'd put bouquets containing lilies on our dining room table. And if there are flowers on the table, our cats have to take a sniff. So Zizek was rushed to the vet and had his stomach pumped and then filled full of charcoal, which he went home and promptly threw up. But Zizek made it through the ordeal, and I learned an important lesson about watching out for lilies in bouquets!

Zizek models his bowtie and fine white mustache weeks before the pollen mishap. I hear he's doing fine. I only regret that due to an egregious error on my part he did not make it into the 2010 cat calendar. Such a fine specimen of a cat!