Our two cats have taken well to out door activities and I will publish their respective tallies of the local wildlife (excluding butterflies, dragonflies and baby lizards, which we have decided don't count) at the end of the year.
Maigret is particularly outdoorsy - her thick and lush fur protects her from scratches, other than other cats, her perfect form means she is well placed for hunting and she doesn't set her sights too high. Poirot, on the other hand, is not well formed and her coat is much thinner. She also has large expanses of pink skin under white fur which all kinds of everything finds particularly attractive. Consequently she has had bites, eczema, scratches and fleas through the summer. She is also rather ambitious when it comes to catching things - pigeons (three this year), chickens (not ours, the neighbour's and thus very embarrassing), other cats, and her latest attempt was the garden toad.
Now Toad is a very good garden companion. He or his descendants have been getting rid of our slugs for the past 8 years at least. He generally stays near the house now, since we started to keep chickens 3 years ago, and favours the heaps of stone as his dwelling. Imagine his horror as he started to get his winter quarters to his liking when all of a sudden a white furry paw followed by a white furry face tried to get in there as well!
We presume he squirted some secretion or Poirot got some secretion on her paw, which she then stuck in her mouth. The upshot of it was that Poirot jumped off the rock pile and started whimpering and foaming at the mouth. She carried on slathering at the mouth for a good half hour. Initially we were really worried - we thought she had been stung - and then I checked round the rock pile and found Toad and realised what had happened.
Once she had been sick, we provided a wee morsel of tasty food to take away the taste and over the next hour she perked up, had a fight with Maigret, had her little lump of garlic sausage and then a bowl of crunchies and was fine. She won't go near the rock pile though!
I didn't have the presence of mind or heart to photograph the wild killer cat in her moment of frothing at the mouth, so here is an aerial shot of her pretending to be a jungle panther.
Yes, that is exactly it – rather worrying to see, distressing for the cat, but at least the toad lives on to eat more slugs. Another toad that was doing the rounds in the garden was found by the chickens however – they did not have the adverse reaction and the toad did not survive!
Posted by: Jane | 08 January 2010 at 09:16 AM
it shouldnt last more than 48 hours, i should think. is Poirot fine now? if she starts vomitting then its a real cause for concern.
do you have cat insurance for your two cats - it will save you the ridiculous vet bills for simple things like these, i know it saved me.
take care, now.
Posted by: cat insurance | 09 February 2010 at 09:38 AM
Yes, a good 18 months on and Poirot is totally fine, but does keep away from toads (and a good thing too). The drooling lasted for about half an hour, but she did need something strongly flavoured to help her through - garlic sausage worked and also helped her (at that time) flea problem.
Posted by: Jane | 09 February 2010 at 04:26 PM
This has happened to my cat too.. Thanks for the blog..
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Posted by: Moist Eczema | 30 April 2010 at 08:04 AM