Treatment Of Cat Having Eaten Too Many Onions

vince

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I had been discussing this over at the nutrition forum. I figured somebody might answer my question or the moderator might move it here, but that didn't happen. I'll ask here.

The eating of onions is supposed to destroy red blood cells in cats. I wonder how this illness is treated if the cat loses enough red blood cells to make it seriously anemic. The body can only make enough of them in a given period of time. Does the treatment of this condition require a blood transfusion?
 

FeebysOwner

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white shadow

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For a minute I thought your cat had become anemic after raiding the onions!

That new discussion in the Nutrition forum thread was only theoretical !

Meantime, no, anemia doesn't necessarily require transfusions. Here's all you'll ever need to know on the topic: All About Anemia.
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vince

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No, no. I had come late to the conversation and the thread went dead. Nobody responded, so I asked here. I just wondered what a vet would do. Purely hypothetical.

My cats won't eat onions or garlic if they find chunks in something like a pizza or spaghetti sauce, anyway. They leave them in the bottom of the plate. I don't give them that kind of stuff, and I don't use powdered garlic or onion powder since I think they might ingest the stuff if they can't isolate it from the rest of the food.

Most of my experience with this is from the cats' "washing" dirty dishes left in the sink overnight. I make sure they're rinsed off now.
 

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Lily sometimes eats something with a little onion in it or lots of onion/garlic powder, but has never gotten ill. Obviously, I don't deliberately feed her this stuff, but she washes my dishes, too. It's one of her great pleasures, so I let her do it.
 
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