Does anyone know if imitation vanilla is toxic to cats? I was making whipped cream and flavored it with imitation vanilla. Some got splattered on my toaster and one of my cats decided to help me clean it. The whole batch of cream had about 1.5 to 2 capfuls of vanilla and he licked up probably less than a spoonful, so probably not much. All google really says is to use pure vanilla under your cats chin after vet visits or something, nothing about ingestion or imitation vanilla.