Tuesday, August 07, 2007

Botulism and cats

Yesterday I learned: cats are relatively resistant to botulism.

So I have this thing about dented cans. In weaker moments I've been known to shout, "Dented cans will kill you!" and let loose my botulism rant. It's one of the only things I remember from my brief stint in junior high food science; I lasted 1 day.

And then yesterday I went and fed my cats from a dented can. Now what would possess me to do something so completely out of character and potentially life-threatening? Well, we only had 1 can left, the liquid in it didn't look cloudy or smell weird, last week I'd seen dented cat food cans on discount at the pet store and figured they wouldn't sell them if it wasn't okay, and... it was very early and the cats had woken me up by jumping on my face.

Even with all my fabulously logical reasons, I was still pretty sure I'd just killed them.

When I explained the situation to Jer, he did a quick Google search and we learned that botulism toxicity is rare and has not been reported in cats. So phew. I could stop staring at them then, willing each one to live another day.

Not that I wouldn't do that anyway, but now it was official. Google told me so.

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