Poison warning after pet falls ill
Cat suspected of drinking antifreeze
A Kinross-shire woman is calling for pet owners to be on their guard after her family cat was poisoned.
Tanyke Cooper from Kinross says her mother-in-law’s cat Vinnie took ill earlier this week and has spent days in hospital after digesting antifreeze.
Antifreeze is poisonous to cats, and can cause damage to their kidneys and can even result in death.
Fortunately, Tanyke’s family cat is on the mend - but she now wants others living in their area to be more aware of the dangers of antifreeze.
She said: “We go to my mother-in-law’s every Sunday on Montgomery Way, and last time there was cat sick on the doorstep.
“Vinnie had not been himself, and he took quite ill and he would not go to the toilet.
“He was quite poorly, so we ran him to the vet to get him checked over and straight away they said it was a suspected poisoning.
“We had to take him to the vet surgery in
Dunfermline for them to take his bloods, and they confirmed he had antifreeze in his system.
“I think it is quite common at this time of year because people put antifreeze in their cars and in garden water features.
“I didn’t know this myself, but cats are drawn to the taste of antifreeze, it is quite sweet to them.
“Farmers and people with greenhouses are known to put antifreeze down as a pesticide to kill cats.
“I would hate to think someone intentionally poisoned the cat, because we live in a nice community.
“I think someone has put it in a garden water feature and spilled it, and then the cat has drank it.”
Tanyke said Vinnie is the second cat on the street to get antifreeze poisoning in the past fortnight, and thinks her mother-inlaw’s cat, who died last year, may have also succumbed to the same thing.
She continued: “She was an older cat, but she got very sick very quickly, and now looking back we are wondering if antifreeze poisoning is possible.
“Someone else on the street lost their cat two weeks ago to the same thing, so it is quite worrying.
“I really hope this was accidental, which it might very well have been at this time of year.
“We want people in the area to know if they are filling their car screen wash with antifreeze and they spill some, they need to clear it up to make sure cats don’t drink it.”
Thankfully, because of the family’s quick actions, Vinnie is set to make a full recovery.
She added: “He is doing a lot better, the vet has been on the phone to say he is doing really well and there is no lasting damage.
“We are all over the moon.
“It was touch-and-go, because antifreeze erodes their kidneys and it can cause their kidneys to fail and their organs to shut down.
“A cat only needs to ingest a small amount for that kind of reaction.
“Thankfully we got him to the vet quickly enough that he could be treated, but he has still been in for three days and there is a £500 vet bill.”