Top 10 most poisonous plants to cats

Top ten most poisonous plants
Top ten most poisonous plants. Image: PoC. Source of general poisons: Cat Owner’s Home Veterinary Handbook (ASPCA). Source poisonous plants: Pet Poisons Helpline + other sites.
Two useful tags. Click either to see the articles: Toxic to cats | Dangers to cats

This is a list of the top ten most poisonous plants to cats. I used various websites and books to cross-check the worst plants and came up with this list in alphabetical order. The tiger lily is perhaps the most poisonous of all plants. Every part of it is toxic to cats. Even the pollen particles can harm a cat. So a cat brushing against a lily could severely harm the cat. It is that bad. I have cross-checked the top ten poisons of any kind with the top ten poisonous plants and the lily is king. Click this to read a page on why lilies are toxic to cats.

  1. Autumn Crocus
  2. Azalea
  3. Cyclamen
  4. Daffodils
  5. Dieffenbachia
  6. Kalanchoe
  7. Lilies – tiger lily the most toxic.
  8. Lily of the Valley
  9. Oleander
  10. Sago Palm

The severity of the symtoms put these in the top ten. Some can cause death. However there are many other plants poisonous to cats. Some lilies are not poisonous (see below). However, because of the dangers inherent in selecting a safe and non-safe lily I’d give them a wide bearth at all times if you live with a cat.

Thoughts

You have to be thoughtful when buying plants for your home if you live with a cat. That’s common sense but it appears that a small but significant percentage of cat owners are not applying common sense to the task. Lilies are in the top ten poisonings of cats (some varieties of lily are not poisonous). I am sure that other poisonous plants are in the top 50 but I don’t have the statistics. There is a long list of plants poisonous to cats. It is remarkable.

It is equally remarkable that cats want to nibble poisonous plants. Where is the inbuilt self-defence systems that nature should have given them? Although as mentioned brushing against some lilies can harm cats. My personal style is not to have plants in the home because I don’t want to have to trawl through a long list of strange sounding names of plants to make sure my selection isn’t poisonous. I am playing safe. But click this link to read about plants not poisonous to cats.

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