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Cocoa is lethal to cats?

post #1 of 10
11/14/05 at 8:03pm
Thread Starter 
My husband says that cocoa is lethal to cats. Is this true? I frequently make pudding at home from the powdered mix, which contains cocoa. Is that dangerous to cats? The powder does tend to make a mess. I'm afraid I might miss a spot.
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post #2 of 10
11/14/05 at 8:07pm
I don`t think you need to worry about a tiny bit. My cats will lick an ice cream bowl that someone has eaten out of with no ill effects...but we don`t actually 'feed" them chocolate.
Linda
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post #3 of 10
11/14/05 at 8:09pm
Yes your husband is right, the powdered cocoa, the semisweet and dark chocolates are all toxic to cats. Depending on how much they get into. It is not a good idea to give cats anything that has sugar or chocolate in it.
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post #4 of 10
11/14/05 at 9:18pm
It's amazing how they love what they can't eat... well at least that the case with Montgomery. He loves chocolate, wine and beer. Of course, we won't give him anything like that, but everytime we open a bottle of wine he tries to french kiss me after I take a sip. With chocolate, forget it, he begs for it, and we have to hide from him.
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post #5 of 10
11/15/05 at 7:51pm
Thread Starter 
Oh wow. I'll be extra carefuly to clean up when I make anything using powdered cocoa.
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post #6 of 10
11/16/05 at 5:15am
When I got up this morning I walked into the living room to chocolate chip cookies in a heap. They pulled them down from the fridge dragged them in the living room then opened the container and dumped them out.

A little bit is fine. If you see drooling/frothing at the mouth or anything like that then you know shes ingested something too toxic. My kitties are fine this morning so I don't think they got to much.

Other things that are toxic to cats are onions, garlic, cocoa, and pothos plants (ok there are other plants too but this one is common).
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post #7 of 10
11/16/05 at 10:31am
Chocolate can kill a dog or a cat. The darker the chocolate the more lethel it is. Baker's chocolate is the most lethal. Since a cat is smaller then a dog, it would take less to kill or make them sick.

When baking, I would keep the cats out of the kitchen till you are done and all cleaned up. And also make sure they don't get any of the chocolate in the cookies.

Our lab ate about a half of my brownie when I was not looking (she stole it off the bed) and paid for it with 2 days of diarrah! She's lucky that she didn't get any sicker then that.

If a small dog or cat ate a box of chocolates, they probably would be dead
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post #8 of 10
11/16/05 at 10:51am
I try to keep the chocolates away from the pets but my precious black lab at home LOOOOOOVES M&Ms!! My mom will get the holiday colored ones to put out for guests and we have to keep an eye on the dog - every once in awhile we'll give her ONE as a super special treat.... she used to love jelly beans too, but we haven't had any of those around for awhile (since I went to college anyway, haha)
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post #9 of 10
11/17/05 at 10:45pm
A small amount of chocolate is not harmful. Baker's chocolate or pure cocoa powder would be the most dangerous, but even then they need to ingest a pretty good amount to be harmed.

It's definitely not a good idea to ever let your cat eat chocolate on purpose, but things like chocolate cake, brownies, and ice cream have very little actual chocolate in them for their volume. They'd have to eat a pretty large amount of these to have any problems from the chocolate. They would have an upset tummy from the extra fat and sugar long before that. Milk chocolate is also relatively low in actual chocolate - a dog can eat a bag of Hershey's kisses without toxic effects.

So the answer is that yes, chocolate is toxic to cats. But realistically, it takes either a huge amount of chocolate product or extremely concentrated dark chocolate to cause toxicity.
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post #10 of 10
11/18/05 at 3:19pm
Thread Starter 
Hmmm, that must explain why my in-laws' dog didn't get sick after eating half a chocolate cake off their counter. Poor Buster has crossed the rainbow bridge (she was 17) but I always wondered how she managed to avoid being sick from all that chocolate cake.
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