Thread: Chocoholic Maine Coon?

Chocolate can be poisonous to cats... be careful please!!


Believe it or not, chocolate poisoning is one of the most frequent ways that our pets get poisoned, especially during festive events such as Valentine's Day, Xmas, or someone's birthday. We all love chocolates, so it is not intuitive to accept that chocolate can be a deadly poison. And if you believe that feeding chocolate to your cat will, at worst, cause only a slight stomach upset, you are deadly wrong. So make sure that the chocolate boxes are stashed out of the cat's reach. Also remember that includes cooking chocolate and chocolate chips.

What is so bad about chocolates?

Chocolate, or more precisely cacao contains a compound called theobromine which has four different effects on cats:

It is a stimulant which increases heart rate.
It is a diuretic (which means that it increases liroduction of urine) resulting in increased loss of body fluids.
It causes stomach uliset.
It acts on the nervous system.

Symptoms of chocolate poisoning

The symptoms will very depending on the amount of chocolate the cat has eaten. The most common symptoms are: vomiting, diarrhea, excessive urination, nausea, seizures, irregular heartbeat. A larger dose of chocolate may well cause a coma or death. Symptoms usually start within a few hours of ingestion but can take up to 36 hours. If you think that your cat has eaten chocolate, don't wait for the symptoms. Try to induce vomiting and contact your vet asap. Because the extent of poisoning will depend on how much chocolate is in your cat, the vet will almost certainly ask how big your cat is and how much chocolate she has had.
Are all chocolates equally poisonous?

Not all chocolates are equally dangerous because different chocolates contain different levels of theobromine. As mentioned above, theobromine is found in cacao, so the higher the percentage of cacao in the chocolate, the more poisonous the chocolate is. For example, milk chocolate contains 60mg of theobromine per oz whereas dark baking chocolate contains 450mg/oz. As a general rule, the more cacao in the chocolate, more dangerous the chocolate is. 45-50mg of theobromine per pound of body weight is sufficient to poison a cat; and 45-50mg is just 0.1oz of dark chocolate!