Pets + Tea
My oscar, George Washington, stays away from my cuppa tea, but everytime I brew a cup he thinks I should feed him! I have to walk past the tank to get to the tea.
Strangely enough, this all has no effect on my pleco.
I’m not sure they’re into tea the way your cats and dogs are.
:D my beta Toulouse always thinks its time for food when i place my mug near his bowl on our side table and if he doesnt get some food he proceeds to threaten me with full gills out lol
Sakai and Bin, my two cats, like the mill around in the kitchen while I’m making tea. I think they think they’re going to get an extra feeding. I’ve also seen them put their front paws on the coffee table and hoist themselves up to sniff my cup (they also do this with coffee and other hot beverages). I’ll have to note what they tend to sniff.
My cat, named Wendy, likes to sniff at wet tea leaves left in my acorn infuser. I believe she especially was interested in Adagio’s Cream Tea. Then again, I have a whole backstory for her where she’s actually a Cambridge-trained laywer and currently is a visiting professor at Harvard Law school, so maybe that’s why she likes Cream tea. She’s English, okay??? :D
[Kitty in my icon is not Wendy. Photos of Wendy: http://www.flickr.com/photos/ragashanti/4105510686/ and http://www.flickr.com/photos/ragashanti/4105504004/]
i like that Wendy helps you stay on task :) Zoie my cat does not, homework is strictly prohibited http://photos-h.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-snc1/hs221.snc1/6828_1233702488339_1402480693_688062_2548949_n.jpg andhttp://photos-c.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-snc1/hs201.snc1/6828_1232680062779_1402480693_685235_4503531_n.jpg there cell phone pictures so there kinda junky
she also stops me from making the bed lol http://www.flickr.com/photos/46361108@N06/4268363752/in/set-72157623069116701/
LOL cute!! Wendy also loves to sit on TOP of my work…grr. The worst is when I have a huge stack of printed essays/journal articles that I have to read for class, and she knocks them over so she can sit on them. >:[
http://xa.yimg.com/kq/groups/2436594/sn/681322966/name/Photo+93.jpg
Hope the photo goes through.
Edit: Yes she has arms and isn’t some kind of snake-cat hybrid…I think she’s just sitting on them. She does look kinda creepy in that photo, though!
Ha! Yates liked to interrupt bedmaking. The bed belonged to HIM and he didn’t understand why you needed to change the sheets. :-)
I have a couple of pictures of Hunter “helping” with various projects:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/denisen56/2827087304/in/set-72157607871909594/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/denisen56/2826249945/in/set-72157607871909594/
LOL i LOVE that Wendy lays like that with her back legs all sprawled out :)
Hunter looks like he helps as good as Zoie does with my chemistry homework lol
@Shanti I totally want to hug Wendy!
@denisend Hunter is adorable!
@Kitch3ntools I love the way Zoie is sitting on the bed. Made me laugh!
Why oh why do I have to be deathly allergic to cats?
Denise, Hunter is so cute! I like his extra-high mittens…looks less like he’s wearing a tuxedo and more like a cute little cape! Or maybe a poncho. Oooh, kitty ponchos….err, no, I was not just googling kitty ponchos. Of course not, how silly. BTW, love the photo with the washing machine. ;)
@jennlea lol yeah that was y i took the picture! she has never sat all fatty girl like that seance that day lol she just hopped up and plopped on the bed
Wendy, Zoie, and Hunter are little cuties. Bin especially likes to block the bed-making.
the dogs at work always feel they need to sample my tea to make sure it wont hurt me lol i try to avoid letting them have it :) Zoie my almost 4 year old fur child likes to know what im doing so she will get nosie and because she never eats anything made for human consumption EVER i let her sniff everything :) my moms dogs (a female Shih Tzu named Pepper, and a female Lhasa Apso named Chloe) want some if what i have at all times (especially Chloe) they will get up on the couch and smell my cup and my breath lol pepper is afraid of cups near her face tho for no apparent reason either (shes scared of spoons and if my mom uses a new bowl for her water it will take her HOURS to muster up the courage to drink her water) so she wont try to sneak a sip but Chloe is sneaky u look away or leave the room it will be half gone and she will either be caught with her face in the cup or will submissively slither over to u b4 u even know what she did to apologize lol
Zoie: http://www.flickr.com/photos/46361108@N06/4267617791/in/set-72157623069116701/
Pepper is the brown and white one and Chloe is the black and white one: http://www.flickr.com/photos/46361108@N06/4270520295/
OK, since others are showing pictures, thought I would include a one of my baby girl. Her name is Faye and she is a Papillon. She is also the one I talked about earlier that loves tea leaves:
Pst pst, non tea related question. How do you get rid of fleas? Well, what would be the best solution? I spent a few hours researching and I came up with nothing. Every website offers a different opinion / trying to sell a product, but I feel like first hand experiences are the best.
Vet! Do NOT use the stuff that they sell at the store…it is very unsafe. My friend who is a vet tech just told me about some cats that died last week from those drugstore flea baths/collars. It happens all the time – animals dying form the over the counter stuff—because it’s not properly tested. Instead, go to your vet. They will give you a certain medicine you can buy at his office. There are a couple different products but your vet will recommend the one that is best for your situation.
For example, our dog and one of our cats had fleas. Cats are inside-only, dog is mostly outside. So, he gave the cat a one-time kind of medicine, and the dog a different kind that we give every month.
Oh, Shanti is totally right about the OTC stuff – don’t use it. Another problem is that some of the more common vet meds (Frontline) MAY be losing effectiveness – the jury is still out. Talk to your vet. He/She will know if there are possibily resistant fleas in your area and can recommend a medication.
Good luck! Fleas are nasty critters!
im going to agree! my mom put frontline on her dogs and pepper (the shih tzu) has tremors from it her legs will twitch for 3 days and she’ll cry and shake.
of you add garlic to the pets food it is a natural way to keep fleas and ticks away because they hate the smell of garlic but its not strong enough for u to smell it on ur pet. but thats more of a preventative when they dont have the buggies.
Kitch3ntools – Frontline is supposed to be the safe but perhaps not effective stuff. Hartz (and store brands) is the dangerous stuff. I’ve never heard of a reaction from Frontline before. What did your mom’s vet say?
Another natural solution is to dust with Diatomaceous earth, but be careful because it’s a lung irritant.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diatomaceous_earth
Denised, one of my friends has her rescue license so she’s VERY up on pretty much any animal related issue and has heard of some absolutely horrible deadly side effects. But maybe that was just a bad batch in the midwest. (?)
Denisend – sadly it sounded as if the vet didnt care. he told my mother that the next time she gives it to pepper to try to half the bottle. my mother tried this the next month and pepper reacted the same, she called her vet and they wanted to give pepper a pill but pepper is so small and my mom was terrified she would end of having a full blown seizure she said no and is doing the garlic and she will bathe the girls if she sees buggies. (she uses baby shampoo not the flea stuff because of how pepper reacted with the frontline) pepper has also gotten Lyme disease and was receiving the lyme prevention vaccine and on frontline (the tremors and acting funny is a new thing she used to be fine with the frontline b4) we live in CT and my parents live pretty much in the woods so they live in tick city (my dad treats the lawn but it doesnt seem to slow the little stomachs with legs)
ive used the harts or whatever its called brand on zoie once and used the house spray (this was 2 summers ago) and it worked great and we havent had a problem ever seance :) now that ive looked stuff up about it i wont be using that again if we get critters again. the topical stuff is bad for my cat because she has very fine looooong fur and it will leak down her fur and get down on her upper arms where she can lick it (scary!) so i dont use that on her
Cofftea – there was a case a bit back where there were counterfit Advantage and Frontline meds on the market. The Frontline was particularly troublesome because while what was in the box WAS Frontline, often cat doses would be in dog boxes (and vice versa) and/or the wrong dose size would be in the wrong box. That would definitely make an animal ill. These products (from both companies) had been brought into the country illegally. Here’s the EPA’s page on the topic:
http://www.epa.gov/opp00001/factsheets/petproduct.htm
Perhaps that’s what you’re referring to? I’ve never heard of an animal who got the correct dose for his/her size and species get sick on Frontline. I’m sure it’s happened (side effects are inevitable), but not common.
Kitch3ntools- your mom needs a new vet! Wow.
Kitch3ntools – 1) Get a new vet. 2) I really really urge you to stop using Hartz and generic flea medicines. Not only are they only marginally effective, they are highly dangerous. One day puppy is fine, the next she has developed an irreperable neurological condition or is dead. It happens ALL THE TIME—not like those one-off allergies to the vet meds, but death from OTC flea meds occur pretty often. I’ve heard far too many stories of dogs dropping dead from that “stuff” (would like to use another word to describe Hartz but will refrain).
i know! i keep telling her that! luckily the garlic is working for the girls, the fleas they did have moved to my cat at their house whos an old man but he was frontlined as well and is clean again after the frontline killed everything on him. and their carpets/furniture were already treated
my sister bought frontline for her kitten (got the kitten dose) and she opened up the package and the dosage thingy was for a LARGE DOG! she only buys her frontline at the vet now and not petsmart. i can only imagine if she didnt read the thing and just gave it to her kitten! she noticed that the plastic thingys were really big which is y she read the foil backing thing.
Forgot to add, garlic and onion are quite toxic to both dogs and cats. I would NOT recommend purposefully feeding it to them, unless you want to give them hemolytic anemia.
Compiled from Animal Poison Control’s list of death and illness in pets:
- Alcoholic beverages
- Avocado
- Chocolate (all forms)
- Coffee (all forms)
- Fatty foods
- Macadamia nuts
- Moldy or spoiled foods
- Onions, onion powder
- Raisins and grapes
- Salt
- Yeast dough
- Garlic
- Products sweetened with xylitol
For cats, don’t forget tomatoes are also poisonous.
I’ve seen dog treats w/ green tea in them so that got me thinking, could I give my dog (who can’t handle the summer heat) cold decaf white tea to help her cope better?
i used the hertz once in my cat but i dont plan to use it again after readin the first link posted about them. i was un aware of how dangerous it actually was. i wonder y they are allowed to seel that stuff if it is in fact so dangerous.
i didnt know garlic was poisonous either as ALOT of clients and our trainers at the kennel i work at feed and suggest using garlic as a flea and tick replant for their dogs. it is also in some of the raw dog foods produced by companys we sell at our kennel they also suggest garlic and sell it. i dont give any of that stuff to my cat as she refuses to eat her food if i add anything to it. even the hairball meds given to me by my vet to help her “eliminate” them. my mother is the one with the issue with the vet, my vet is amazing! lol if it wasnt over an hr drive for my mom i think she would bring the girls there.
Cofftea, coffee and tea are extremely poisonous to dogs and cats, and not just from caffeine. As you probably know, there are a number of chemicals in tea that are healthy for humans, but cause major health problems in animals. The “green” part you see in those Greenies treats is not tea—it’s chlorophyll. Decaf white tea, while free of most of its caffeine, still has some caffeine in it. More dangerous, though, are the other chemicals present in tea which are very toxic for cats and dogs. These include catechins and theobromines, and some other which I can’t think of right now. But yeah, it’s not good stuff (for pets)!
@cofftea – have you tried icecubes in her water? my moms dogs love icecubes also i found this http://www.drsfostersmith.com/product/prod_display.cfm?pcatid=12470
Shanti, I’m not talking about Greenies. I’m talking about treats that say “with green tea”. I’m not sure if the word “extract” is listed or not.
Kitch3ntools, I read that it was okay for dogs as long as it’s only a little amount the food is simmered with, but it’s a lot more dangerous for cats. Also, I can’t believe they’re putting raw garlic in raw food—that sounds really dangerous, and also unnecessary. What company? I know a lot about raw food, although I’ve stopped feeding it because of salmonella risk.
Shanti, here are some products I was talking about. I just did a search for green tea so not all of them will be dog treats. http://www.zootoo.com/overview_results.php?index=product&squery=+green+tea
Ooh, they sounds cool. :) Once again, the treats with green tea are probably fine because they’ve processed out all the bad stuff and have been tested. Giving your dog unprocessed green or white decaf tea is dangerous because decaffeination only takes out the caffeine and leaves most of the other dog-toxic human-friendly chemicals behind. Also, the caffeination process leaves ~5 mg behind, but animals are quite sensitive to caffeine/guarine and theobromines….which is why you don’t feed your animals chocolate, either.
BTW Cofftea, when I said “green tea treats are probably fine” what I meant was “giving your dog green tea treats while you’re sipping green tea nearby would be so cute!” Hehe!
i know our office manager feeds raw but she cooks her garlic b4 she adds it to get fur kids food(she only has dogs). i know we sell oma’s pride and i think 1 or 2 others i cant remember and i know oma’s pride doesnt add raw garlic to their food but they do sell a jar of garlic on their website. i know my mom adds a pinch of garlic powder to the girls food cuz she hates the smell and doesnt want to deal with it lol
i know you can feed cats raw diet but we rarely see cats at our kennel and the ones we do have come to us for a while and they eat either dry, or a wet and dry mix feeding. im a big advocate for wet food feeding for cats. my vet also recommends wet food feeding as he sees almost no kidney/urinary issues with cats that eat wet food, but i also give my cat dry for her chompers :)
cofftea – you can have a bowl of matcha and ur dog can nibble on a green tea treat and it could be like a tea party lol. just the thought of that is too cute to handle :D
And I thought I subscribed to this thread. There should be a setting to auto-subscribe ourselves to threads we post a reply in. Anyways, thanks for the replies. Yeah from my research I saw that collars and stuff were bad. My vet suggested FrontLine, but from what I reading giving baths only prevent those buggers for a few hours.
Every time I go to the vet somehow the bill comes out to be at least a hundred. I think I’m going to stay away for a while.
Ricky, what have the costs been from? My vet bills are only around 40-50, 60 if it’s including vaccines (same pricing in Boston city and in rural California). Are your cats indoor-only cats? Do they eat good, grain-free, corn-free food, supplemented by wet food? Do they go for yearly check-ups? Those three things cut down on vet bills a LOT, to the point that you should only be paying ~40-50 dollars a year. Ah, and brushing their teeth. If you brush their teeth with the kitty toothpaste they sell at the petstore, that can cut down on the chance they’ll need dental work.
PS not nagging on anyone if they’re not doing these things, because I know not everyone has the means to do so. But these things DO cut down on vet costs quite a bit, and keep your cats a lot healthier. (I work at a rescue, so I’ve seen the difference in surrenders that did the above, and surrenders that didn’t)
Eh, I’ve looked into it. It’s generally not a very good deal (especially since Yates was considered to have pre-existing conditions). Consumer Reports also recommends against it. The best thing to do is to budget for your typical annual expenses (shots, checkups, etc), and then sock some money away for an accident or something.
I imagine that we’ll be at the vet a lot less now. The current two are on a weightloss plan, so they’ll have checkups every two months until we get them to their ideal weight, and we’re looking at adding a third in the next few months, so I imagine there will be a few appointments as the germs settle themselves out. shrug
Maybe by next year we’ll be down to regular checkups/shots and that’s it! That would really be something!
Pre-existing conditions will get you:( I don’t trust consumer reports- I trust what my vet and other people active in the animal community say. It is imposible for me to budget for an accident. Thank God I made my mom pay for the vet bill when whe had to take her to the emergency vet after being attacked- that was $80 which was actually VERY cheap considering. (Don’t think I’m shirking responsibility- it was her fault she was attacked)
For what to do with my pets, I trust my vet; he has training in animal care. For how to spend my money, I trust Consumer Reports. It’s staffed by folks who have training in finances. shrug
My kitty’s an indoor only cat. She refuses to eat wet food, which is a problem. She’s had bladder stones twice, because of this (it’s my brother’s cat, but he dropped it off at my place). I tried mixing her food with dry food, but she refuses to eat it =(. Right now she’s on a prescription diet. Well surgery was $3000+ and then two checkups that were about $100.
Eep! Urinary problems are very troublesome, especially if you can’t transition her to wet food. We went through it once with Yates, fortunately (THAT time) we avoided surgery. Do you have a water fountain (running water)? Some cats drink out of those more, and that may make up for the hydration since she’s not eating wet food.
Good luck!
(And, yes, I’m still envious that your vet bills are that low!)
Oh, interesting. I don’t know about that specific treat and how the green tea was processed before it was made ok for animal consumption, but unprocessed decaf tea would still be toxic, due to the catechins and other compounds found in tea.
Madison thinks everything I have is for her, but she goes exceptionally nuts when I have Smoky Bacon tea from 52teas.=D
I can’t really wrap my head around that at the moment, but I’m sure Madison would love it!
I’m thinking like Chamomile (reportedly good for nerves and digestion), ginger (alleged circulatory stimulant), and maybe some Calendula (marigold) petals (supposedly beneficial to skin and digestion). We could blend that up and put some bacon flavoring in it, and I bet the puppies of the world would love us. The bacon flavoring we use (believe it or not) is all natural bacon-type flavoring. It is 100% vegan and certified Kosher.
Of course, we would have to come up with some fish flavoring or something for the kitties. LOL. FISH TEA.
Er, wow. I mean… I spend a lot on my cats (I’ve been told that I go above and beyond), but I wouldn’t buy tea.
I wouldn’t say that there isn’t a market for it (there clearly is, especially if you look at products like Rescue Remedy, which has a huge following). I just suspect that the intersection of people pet people + tea people = people who are likely to buy and brew tea for their pets is pretty small.
Most herbal products (that I’m aware of) are sold in a concentrated form to be added to drinking water. Less fuss.
If I’m going to go to the trouble of brewing tea, it’s going to be something for me! :-)
Heh, denisend, I was just thinking the same thing. That’s like an invitation to injure your cat…not only by spilling hot water on them, but also burning their tongues and damaging the delicate structures on it. Oh, and then, if it damaged their sense of taste or smell…that would just about kill their appetites and ability to eat, which is how a lot of older cats die. And if there’s any steam, that’s not good for the eyes or nose. Unlike humans, cats can’t set the mug down away from them and avoid steam burns and hot temps, or wait for the tea to cool down…if they’re ever going to drink it, they’re going to drink it at the moment it is set down, not sip it over the course of 20 minutes.
And then, there’s the scientist in me saying that those herbs and crap you put in the tea have not been tested for toxicity or effects on felines or canines. I do not feel comfortable feeding my cats “natural” plant products.
[On a side note, I’ve heard so many people swear that Rescue Remedy works, but I just don’t get it….then again, when I hear about homeopathic medicine my eyes just about roll right out of my head, lol.]
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