Christmas Pet Safety: The Tree, the Lilies and the Wrapping Paper

A cat does not have to eat a lily to be poisoned by one. It brushes past the vase, gets pollen on its coat, and grooms it off, and a few grains are enough to start kidney failure. A rabbit treats a light cord as a root. A puppy treats a glass bauble as a ball, and a strand of tinsel as spaghetti. A parrot in a room with a simmer pot of scented oil is breathing something its lungs were never built for. Christmas brings more new objects into a house in one week than any other time of year, and nearly every one of them is at floor level, smells interesting, or both.

The lily is the one that kills, and it is the one most people bring in without a thought.

The Plants

The holiday plants are not equal.

Lilies

True lilies, the Lilium kinds, and daylilies, Hemerocallis, are a kidney poison for cats and for cats only. Asiatic, Easter, Oriental, stargazer, tiger, rubrum, Japanese show and wood lilies are all on the list, and so are daylilies. Every part is toxic: stem, leaves, flowers, the pollen, and the water the stems stand in. A small bite of a leaf or petal can cause fatal kidney failure in under three days. A cat that licks pollen off its fur, or drinks from the vase, has had enough.

The timeline is what makes the plant so dangerous. In the first 12 hours the cat drools, vomits, goes quiet and stops eating, which looks like a minor upset. Between 12 and 24 hours it drinks and urinates more and starts to dehydrate as the kidneys take damage. Kidney failure follows at 24 to 72 hours, and without treatment it is fatal. Treatment started early, with decontamination and two or three days of intravenous fluids, gives a good outlook. Treatment started 18 hours or more after the exposure usually meets kidneys that cannot be brought back. Chronic kidney disease takes the same organ from cats over years. A lily does it in a weekend.

Not every "lily" is this plant. Peace lilies and calla lilies carry calcium oxalate crystals that burn the mouth and are rarely worse than that. Peruvian lilies cause mild stomach upset. Lily of the valley is a different danger entirely, a heart poison to dogs and cats both. Dogs that eat a true lily get a mild stomach upset and nothing more. The simplest rule for a house with a cat is that no true lily comes through the door, in a bouquet, a centerpiece or a gift. Florists often put them in mixed arrangements, so the bouquet from a guest gets checked at the door.

Mistletoe and holly

Mistletoe is the second plant that matters. Every part carries toxic proteins, and a large enough dose causes vomiting, profuse diarrhea, dilated pupils, fast labored breathing and shock, with collapse possible within hours. Most pets chew a leaf and get a sore stomach, but the plant earns the high shelf.

Holly is milder. Two or more berries can bring on belly pain, vomiting and diarrhea, and death is rare. Rabbits are the exception on both plants: holly, mistletoe and several ivies are toxic to them, and a rabbit with floor access treats a dropped sprig as salad.

Poinsettia

The poinsettia is the plant everyone warns about and the one that does the least harm. Its milky sap irritates the mouth and stomach, so a pet that chews it drools and may vomit, and most recover in a day or two. It does not kill. For a rabbit it may mean a mild stomach upset. It still goes out of reach, because a vomiting dog on Christmas morning is nobody's plan, but it is not the plant to worry about.

The Tree

A real tree, and what hangs on it, brings six separate hazards into the house.

The stand. The water in a tree stand turns into a bacterial soup within days, and a tree that was sprayed or fed will have preservative and fertilizer in it too. A dog or cat that drinks from the stand gets nausea, diarrhea or worse. Cover the stand or fence it. And tie the tree to a wall or the ceiling: a cat halfway up it, or a dog that catches a low branch, brings the whole thing down on whichever animal is underneath.

The cords. Light strings and extension cords are the hazard for the chewers: rabbits, ferrets, guinea pigs, parrots and puppies. A chewed live cord delivers a shock that can kill. Rabbits will chew cords, and a plastic cord protector slows a rabbit down without stopping a determined one. The fix that works is distance: the tree in a room the rabbit does not use, or a puppy pen around it, with the cords tucked and taped out of reach. A bird chewing a light set risks the same shock, and a parrot loose in the room with the tree is a parrot in the tree within minutes.

The tinsel and the ribbon. Tinsel is not a poison. It is a string, and a string is the problem. A cat that swallows a strand can end up with one end anchored under the tongue or in the stomach while the intestine tries to move the rest along, bunching the gut along the strand until it tears. That is an abdominal surgery, and the signs come after the damage: vomiting, refusing food, a painful belly, lethargy. Some decorative tinsel and garland also contain zinc, which is toxic on its own. Curling ribbon, gift string and the strings from party poppers all behave the same way inside a cat. For a rabbit, synthetic tinsel and garland mean stomach trouble or an impaction. A house with a cat does not put tinsel on the tree at all, and the ribbon goes in the trash with the paper before the cat finds it.

The ornaments. Glass and brittle plastic ornaments shatter into shards that cut the mouth and gut. Cheap ornaments can contain heavy metals, which matters most to a bird that chews them. Button batteries from light-up ornaments burn the mouth and esophagus if punctured. The low branches get the wooden and fabric ornaments, and the glass goes up top.

The salt dough. Homemade salt dough ornaments are mostly salt. As few as one or two can make a dog seriously ill, trembling and stumbling from salt poisoning, and the baked dough is hard to pass and can block the gut. They dry somewhere high, hang on a sturdy upper branch, and the dog stays out of the room while they are made.

The snow globes and bubble lights. Some imported snow globes contain ethylene glycol, the antifreeze chemical, which is sweet enough to lick up and toxic to every pet. The pattern is the trap. The animal looks drunk and uncoordinated, drinks a lot, and goes flat, then seems to improve after 8 to 12 hours while the kidneys fail. The antidote works only if it is given early, so a broken snow globe near a pet is a call that night. Bubble light fluid contains methylene chloride, which causes depression, aspiration pneumonia and irritation of the eyes, skin and gut.

Scent, Candles and the Food Table

Scent is the hazard nobody sees. Liquid potpourri and simmer pots of scented oil are a cat problem first: some contain cationic detergents, and a few licks cause chemical burns in the mouth, fever, difficulty breathing and tremors. Dogs are less sensitive but can still be burned. A bird in the same room has a worse problem, because its respiratory system absorbs airborne particles a person never notices: scented candles, potpourri, room fresheners and smoke are all on the avian list of things that hurt, the same list as an overheated nonstick pan. On a day with a roast in the oven and a candle on every surface, the bird's room is the one with neither.

Candles themselves are a knock-over risk for any pet and a burn risk for a kitten testing the flame, and a rabbit that gets into a fireplace finds that cold ashes turn caustic when they mix with saliva. Enclose the hearth. Hand warmers, the disposable kind in a stocking, contain elemental iron, and a pet that chews one gets a bad stomach, possible organ damage and, if it swallows the packet whole, an obstruction.

The side table carries the food. Chocolate and xylitol do what they do in a Halloween candy bowl, rising dough and fatty scraps what they do on a Thanksgiving plate, and Christmas adds two of its own. Fruitcake and Christmas pudding carry raisins and currants, which have no known safe amount for a dog, and often enough alcohol to matter on its own. Alcohol-soaked desserts, eggnog and an unattended glass are absorbed fast and drop blood sugar, blood pressure and body temperature, with seizures and respiratory failure at the far end. A candy bowl on a coffee table is at rabbit height, and a rabbit can eat a fatal dose of salt from a bowl of snacks. Ferrets chew through soft rubber and foam toys and the pieces block the gut, which is why foam and rubber toys are off a ferret's list, and a ferret loose on Christmas morning finds foam and rubber in every second package.

The Guests

Guests bring a hazard of their own, and it is in their luggage. A bag or suitcase on the floor with a bottle of pills in it is an open invitation. Medication, yours and theirs, goes in a closed cabinet, never a bag, and that gets said when they arrive.

The rest is noise and strangers. All but the most social animals get an interior room with a bed, water, a closed door and something to chew for the loud hours. A dog that paces, pants or hides from the crowd is not misbehaving, and the behavior has a cause that a closed door answers. A rabbit or guinea pig moves to the quietest room before the first guest, keeps its routine as close to normal as the day allows, and is never left alone with a child. Visitors who want to hold the rabbit get shown how first, and told not to feed it. A bird keeps its usual cover-and-lights schedule even with the house full, and a visiting dog or cat never shares a room with it: the cage reads as a lunchbox to an animal that has never seen a parrot.

Party poppers, noisemakers and fireworks frighten pets and scatter string. The thrown confetti strings that come out of a popper are one more linear foreign body for a cat, and they go up with the wrapping paper. The paper itself is the least of the wrapping. Ribbon, curling ribbon, tape and the plastic ties are what get swallowed, and a rabbit that wants something to shred gets plain white tissue paper instead. After the gifts are open, the paper, ribbon, tags, batteries and plastic ties go into a bag and out of the room before any animal is let back in. The floor after unwrapping is the one surface in the house that nobody checks.

What To Do First

If a pet eats or chews something from any list above, the order is the same every time.

1. Take the item away and clear what is left so no second animal gets it.
2. Keep the plant, the packaging or a photo. A vet can tell a true lily from a peace lily from a picture, and the label settles what was in the snow globe or the potpourri.
3. Estimate how much, roughly. A chewed leaf, a swallowed strand, a licked puddle.
4. Note the time and the animal's weight. Both decide the dose and the window.
5. Call now, before signs. Your vet, the ASPCA Animal Poison Control Center at 888-426-4435, or the Pet Poison Helpline at 855-764-7661. Both are open 24 hours a day, every day, and both charge a consultation fee.
6. Do not make the animal vomit unless the person on the line or your vet tells you to.

The lily sets the pace for the whole list. A cat that looked at a bouquet on Christmas Eve and has slightly damp fur on one cheek on Christmas morning has, at that moment, a good prognosis. The same cat on the 27th does not. Every other hazard here is slower or louder than that one, which is why the plant that kills is the one that gets checked before it is even in the house.

Sources & Further Reading