Avoid anti flea treatments that contain Permethrin, it is lethal to cats.
We tried a product by Bayer that is for dog flea treament, but because we couldn't find anything else suitable at all the vets we tried, we used this particular spot on treatment between the shoulder blades of our dogs and kitties last night, in a desperate attempt to get rid of some persistent fleas on our dogs and cats after trying some natural home remedies, and with difficulty in obtaining some alternative natural products here that are easy to obtain in the west, like Diatomaceous earth and pet friendly essential oils. This is a challenge because we live in a hot climate in a third world country, where the postal service is unreliable. Therefore, our choices of anti flea treatments are limited along with an array of failed flea shampoos, powders and sprays. We scouted various vets for a product we might have success with, but ended up harming our little precious cat.
At 7am this morning, I was horrified to find one of my rescue cats having constant seizures on the floor. This particular cat, I had adopted from a rescue shelter because she also has a congenital condition with her eye corneas and eyes which were never properly formed, and her eye lashes grow into her corneas, so her eyelashes have to be trimmed every two weeks, it was for that reason no one else at the shelter wanted her 8 months ago, so she already has had a tough start in life. I felt awful being responsible for making her suffer more when I was just trying to get rid of fleas. My husband bought the product in one of those pippet tubes, we used just a tiny spot for our three cats.
One tiny spot of toxic chemical containing Permethrin, it soaks into the skin and cannot be metabolized by cats, but apparently it can by dogs, some of these products say “do not use on cats”, when they should say “this product kills cats”.
Permethrin belongs to a pyrethroid group of chemicals, normally used in many common insecticide sprays, ant powders, anti flea powders, anti flea sprays and anti flea pippet treatments, but it is highly toxic to cats because they cannot metabolize it, so it is hard to get rid of once it soaks through their skin and hits their blood stream and nervous system, causing severe muscle tremors and in most cases death.
How are Bayer and other well known brands getting away with selling such a dangerous product if is toxic to cats? So if you are a cat lover and pet owner, please for the safety of your cat's health and life, avoid using pippet mini tube anti flea products with Permethrin. We found with some research after we took our cat to 24 hour emergency pet hospital, that it is not only lethal to cats but even some dogs small and large, have also had adverse reactions to it. There needs to be a public campaign to get these products removed from the shelves of pet stores and vets counters.
Our cat Zen reacted with continous seizures and nearly died. She is still in critical care but Zen's seizures finally stopped after six hours of being on an aneasthetic and IV drip. After we returned home from the vets, we had to bath our other cats immediately, to get rid of the toxic chemical.
We went to visit our kitty Zen, tonight and the good news is she is stable so far, the seizures have stopped, but she has to stay in for three days on the IV and anaesthesia treatment, she is very weak but responded well to our visit and can eat tomorrow night. We look forward to having her home but feel awful about what happened and want to warn other pet owners especially cat owners. Our Zen was very fortunate to pull through.
If you have a cat in your home, always check whenever you use insecticides in your garden or home that the product does not contain permethrin. Make sure you use anti flea treatments that are licensed for cats, as they will not contain a toxic level of permethrin that some canine spot-on treatments may contain. For people who own both dogs and cats, either use spot-on products that do not contain permethrin to avoid accidental exposure to cats in case of the cat is close to their dog companions and they are used to mutual grooming.
Exposure to minute doses of concentrated permethrin can cause severe and fatal poisoning in cats.
Petition to remove products that contain Permethrin from being sold as anti- flea products
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