You will find it difficult to glean an answer as to why domestic cats appear to like drinking antifreeze. My research indicates to me that we don’t know. It seems that domestic cats drink antifreeze even when it has been spilled accidentally onto the road or leaked out of a vehicle. Most often it …
I recently wrote about a group of members of Parliament in Britain debating the possibility of making it obligatory to add a bitterant to car antifreeze and unpalatable to cats. This is a quick follow-up posting. Unsurprisingly, but regrettably, and I say incorrectly, the British government’s environment minister George Eustice has rejected the idea. …
The bosses of Halfords, in the United Kingdom, deserve a pat of the back for voluntarily deciding to add a bittering agent (sometimes called a “bitterant”) to their antifreeze. They also add a bitterant called “Bitrex”® to their screen wash. It is probably the same chemical that is added to their antifreeze. Although Halford’s …
Photo by eskimo_jo (Flickr) Making antifreeze unpalatable to cats would save many thousands of cat’s lives and prevent hundreds of crimes. News on the subject of cats contain on at least a weekly basis one incident of antifreeze poisoning. These poisoning are either accidental or deliberate and they most often kill the cat, period. …
