Perhaps you realise it and don’t care or can’t stop or perhaps it didn’t occur to you but if you live with a cat and if you smoke cigarettes inside the home it is very likely that you will be harming your cat. And if you love your cat it is crazy to be harming her because you want a fag.
In reference to the United States of America, it is likely that in millions of households there are cat owners who smoke. The American Pet Products Association say that 60 percent of US households own “some sort of pet” in 2016. If you combine that with the CDC statistics which tell us that, as at 2015, 15.1 percent of American adults smoke the likelihood of cats ingesting smoke and nicotine is high. The percentage of smokers is consistently falling. But 15.1 percent equates to 46.5 million people. A lot of them are going to have pets.
I’m not the only one writing about this and this is not the first time that I’ve written about it. And it applies to any country. However, I bumped into an image on the East Bay Times website which showed an x-ray of a cat taken at the Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine. The chest x-ray showed a cat suffering from lung carcinoma and the researchers said that cancers of this and other types are more likely in cats and dogs who have had repeated exposure to second-hand smoke.
In an article on the Daily Mail website dated 5 December 2016, the author states that the FDA had released, at that time, an advisory warning that smoke can kill your pets. Cats can develop mouth cancer and cancer of the immune system in addition to lung cancer. Even fish can develop cancer because nicotine dissolves in water. Cats ingest cancer straight into their bodies because they lick their fur on which nicotine is deposited. Nicotine is poisonous to cats.
I read once that there are over 4,000 chemicals in tobacco smoke most of which are toxic. This smoke can wreak havoc in the blood and organs of cats and dogs and other pets including fish. Cats spend a lot of time on the floor and on furniture where tobacco smoke residue is deposited. It also accumulates in house dust. It then gets on their fur and into their systems.
Cigarette smoke can also cause allergy and respiratory problems in cats and dogs according to studies done at Tufts University’s School of Veterinary Medicine in Massachusetts. The university’s researchers also found that repeated exposure to smoke doubles a cat’s prospects of getting cancer. If a cat lives with a smoker for more than five years the risk is increased by four times.
Dogs can eat and ingest nicotine cartridges from e-cigarettes. Dogs of any weight risk death if they eat a number of e-cigarette cartridges. They will certainly be poisoned. In addition the e-cigarette casing can cause injury to their mouse.
Sources: various including as stated.
