Saturday, March 28, 2015

Danger..... Easter eggs can kill you.

Dear George,
Please would you warn your readers about next week. Humans go slightly mad on the food front. It's painful to see them sitting down to large meals of roast lamb followed by creamy deserts, while we cats and dogs just have our normal envelope of soft food or a handful of dry kibble.
Naturally, I keep an eye out for any crumbs that fall off the table or the kitchen surfaces - if I can get there before my friend, Daisy the dog. She's a Labrador so she will bolt down anything - bread, chips, potatoes, sprouts, fruit, and..... chocolate.
That's what she did this time last year. She found an Easter Egg on the coffee table, tore off its wrappings and ate the lot.  I didn't get a look in.
A few hours later she was shivering, breathing heavily and wandering around restlessly. Luckily the humans returned, found the wrapping, and rushed her to the vet. She survived.  This chocolate turns out to be poisonous to dogs, cats and even parrots.
I felt pretty smug that I hadn't had so much as a nibble. So warn your readers not to touch that stuff. It's dangerous.
Yours
Tabitha.

Dear Tabitha,
Humans make pigs of themselves with chocolate. And they are hopelessly irresponsible about leaving it around. Odd, isn't it? They can eat pounds of the stuff without getting ill - though they do get fat. Apparently the chemical, theobromine, gives them a high but doesn't hurt them. To us, it can be deadly.
Apparently most vets in the UK have to treat pets for chocolate poisoning this time of year. And warn Daisy about grapes and raisins.  Most humans don't know that these too can kill dogs and probably cats too, if we were silly enough to eat them. There's information here.
As for the selfish behaviour of humans around food... it never ceases to amaze me. Here I am stuck with the same old cat food day by day, while they feast on takeaways, roast dinners, and exotic dishes. Of course, I steal what I can. What cat wouldn't?
But I shall stay away from chocolate.
Yours
George.

6 comments:

  1. Who's between you and Daisy in this photo? Is there another dog? It looks like a mix of dark and milk chocolate :-)
    That's the chocolate Daisy had?
    Diego

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  2. George, Easter eggs do not kill anybody if there are chicken eggs, fresh and properly boiled. We wait until our humans crack few, peel and cut them in quarters (they make a salad with them) but we always get a quarter and eat it....and I'm a happy 12 year old cat and my brother is 14 years old.
    Minnie

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  3. Minnie, don't be silly! George is right; not all eggs are equal! Chocolate eggs kill cats and dogs.
    Thank you George for posting this "Easter alert" as a reminder for our eternally ignorant humans :-)
    Happy Easter to all!
    Love & hugs
    Fluffy

    ReplyDelete
  4. Carla, the tuxedo catMarch 29, 2015

    Excellent advice George! Thanks for the link too (I've seen mummy clicked on it)
    Happy Easter to all cats, dogs and their humans!
    Carla, the tuxedo cat

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  5. Yes, Happy Easter to all! But how happy is for lambs and bunnies? I hope humans will continue to eat the "chocolate" version and spare the real ones their lives.
    Yes, Mom is vegetarian and she only eats chocolate eggs and bunnies :-)
    I'm not a vegetarian but what I kill to eat does not compare with the damage humans do killing for their food!
    Stanley

    ReplyDelete
  6. Great post- it is important to keep our pets safe.

    ReplyDelete

Help for cats whose humans show behaviour problems.

This blog is devoted to the study of human behaviour. We cats, who live with this sometimes unpredictable and always feeble minded species, can benefit from seeing their behaviour in its proper scientific context. The study of feline dilemmas, training problems, and difficulties with humans, can only benefit all of us. All of us train our humans - to buy the right food, for instance, but many of us do not have knowledge of how to improve our training methods. The human species is obviously not as intelligent as the cat, but nevertheless can learn quite a lot - if properly managed. Topics of interest include the use of claw and order, purring as a human reward, rubbing your human up the right way, when to bite, spraying as a method of making our wishes known, ignoring the human, human harassment, human inattention and sheer human stupidity. I welcome your questions. Photos can be sent via my secretary's website, www.celiahaddon.com This blog has been chosen as one of the top 50 feline blogs by Online VetTechprogramms.org