Anyone that have some calming words for me - I got to air out my fear, cause I am making myself crazy - plausible garlic ingestion by cat

[pepsiandmax]

Okay, I am having severe anxiety, which is just making everything bad.

I read this thread in another place earlier today, about a cat licking a bit of garlic dressing, so I ended up googling it cause although I know garlic is bad for cats, it destroy red blood cells, I don’t know how bad it is. Just took it as a way to educate myself a bit.

Well that was a bad idea I think, cause now I am going crazy and giving myself a whole bunch of anxiety I would not have if I had not read this. If I had just not read this!

I had dinner that had a lot of garlic in it. Cremed potatoes with loads of garlic. I would never ever let my cat eat off my plate when the food contains garlic or any onion and such. But after I was done eating (I had cleaned up and came back to my seat), my cat was licking the carpet right by where I was eating, and yeah I am freaking out by it.

I would not really ever freak out by this, cause he does this everywhere, all the time. Especially if he finds some of his fluff on the floor he will eat it. So normally I would not react at all to this, something he has done 100 times and more. Absolutly not anything I would usually react to. What if I had not even seenhim do this, I would not be reacting to anything he does right now

But now I am just freaking out. What if there was some garlic there? What if I dropped some sauce down there as I was eating? What if? The «what if» is the drive behind my insane anxiety. And I don’t know how to make it go away. Cause I am fairly certain that there was no food on the floor (can’t remember dropping anything), like I am very sure, but that small «what if» just I keep looking at him, and thinking is he breathing a bit fast? Is he acting a bit different? I can add this happened about 3 hours ago, and its been some long 3 hours I know calling the vet can be a thing to do. Problem is; its expensive. Don’t get me wrong I would never heaitate to take him to the vet, but can I afford to pay hundreds of dollars just because of my anxiety? Cause I really absolutly do think I am making a big deal out of nothing. And the vet would be expensive since its evening and also a holiday where I live.

Does anyone have any calming words for me? How to put stuff like this out of my mind. Fudge, I hate my mind sometimes. I keep overthinking everything. Currently he is resting (not really deep sleeping, but doing that cat - I am sleeping but not really deep sleeping - thing.) He is currently lying steady at 17/18 breaths pr minute. Deep breaths not shallow. Yes I spent 10 minutes counting his breaths cause my mind is going crazy.

 

[Jcatbird]

We all get thise moments of panic sometimes. It has been three hours? Okay, that sounds pretty good! For teal relief you can just call the vet and ask what you should watch for , symptoms. Unless you dropped a lot of garlic I have trouble imagining that kitty got enough, even licking a glob of dressing, to be affecting to the degree you worry about. Long, long ago my mother used to add a tiny bit of garlic to the animal food as a deal preventative! Oh no! Not a good idea but back then she did not know. None of the cats suffered from it but looking back I just shake my head. I guess it was an old time remedy. I have recently seen some products that contain tiny amounts for cats. I don’t really know the level included. For your peace of mind, just make a call. That should not incur a cost. I think you would feel better to have a professional give you the facts and then you can determine kitty is perfectly fine. They do have a way of causing us to worry. Been there too! I have one cat that loves yo be overly dramatic. She does things to get extra treats. It works too!

 

[Mighty Orange]

the toxic dose of garlic is about 1-2 whole cloves per kilogram. I'm not sure how much your cat weighs, but an average cat is normally around 10-11 lbs which works out to 5 kilograms. So she would have needed to eat around 5 cloves of garlic (and/or an equivalent amount of scallions, which are not as toxic) in order to cause any problems.

But keep in mind that all accumulates so be very carefull for now on.
Link

 

[pepsiandmax]

the toxic dose of garlic is about 1-2 whole cloves per kilogram. I'm not sure how much your cat weighs, but an average cat is normally around 10-11 lbs which works out to 5 kilograms. So she would have needed to eat around 5 cloves of garlic (and/or an equivalent amount of scallions, which are not as toxic) in order to cause any problems.

But keep in mind that all accumulates so be very carefull for now on.
Link

So just to air out the math in this. In total in the entire dish, I believe there would be about 7 cloves of garlic. I used about 12 to make garlic butter (around 300g of butter) and used about 100g of that butter (so about 4 cloves in that), as well as 3 more cloves in the sauce itself, so 7 in total. I could add another to make it a worce senario and say 8 cloves.
The sauce mixed with potatoes; I ate about 1/4 of the dish, lets just round up and say 1/3 to make it as bad as possible; and 1/3 of 8 cloves = 2,67 cloves in my whole plate of food.

My cat is just about 6kg, and would need to consume about 6 cloves of garlic then (if we say 1 clove pr kilogram), and if he did ingest anything it would be a very small amount, like dropp size for me to have missed it falling to the floor, of my entire plate. And my entire plate should contain about 2,67 cloves. Maybe its a bit more and more like 3 cloves, but still this does make me feel a bit better that the plausible amount he might have found on the floor is very little.

I know the symptoms to look out for; drooling, oral irritation, pale gums, vomiting, diarrhea, discoloured urine, inappetance, lethargy, elevated heart rate and respatory rate, panting, weakness and coma.

So I will keep an eye out for him, but hope that I am just being a total overbearing and worrying cat-mum and that I am making a hugh deal out of nothing. Anexiety do make you panic and think bad things.

 

[Mighty Orange]

How's the cat?

 

[pepsiandmax]

How's the cat?

He is still fine, just like last night. He is just fine, just as always. This was just my overthinking, overdramatic brain making up bad mental images in my brain.

I am more calm myself, anxiety can really mess with everything. This makes me think about what so many cats get into every day, and also the food we as humans used to give them before; like leftovers from dinner. And nobody ever thought a second about it. And the cats were fine. And here I am making myself go crazy over something that only might have happened

Caring is good, but sometimes I wish I just cared a tad bit less, so as to avoid such anexiety in the future

 

[Mighty Orange]

Sorry I do not know of any way to care less about something you love. I'm glad the cat survived. You take care of yourself.