Frogs

[LottieAnne]

A neighbour's cat has recently had to undergo some very expensive vet treatment after it appeared to have been poisoned. The vet seemed to think that it could have been caused by another cat in the household bringing in frogs which he catches. The vet says that frogs give off a toxic substance which is highly poisonous. Has anyone had any experience of this? It seems funny that the problem has only surfaced now and that the other cat has not suffered any symptoms.

[Mr Veritas]

We have a very large country garden (2 acres) with several ponds,and lots of frogs.
By and large cats know when something is distasteful,or downright poisonous.Our cats have very rarely brought us frogs(they have though) and showed no signs of poisoning.
I get the feeling that this is more likely to be symptoms of consumption of slug pellets,which sadly people still use.
Of course (being cynical) it might be that the vet suggests frogs as the treatment for that will cost more!

[LottieAnne]

Thanks. I think you are probably right. I had a cat a few years ago who liked to try and catch frogs and she never suffered any ill effects.

[fredpuli47]

Hmm. Toads are reputed to be poisonous. Don't know whether that's an old wives' tale. One of my lot made the mistake of tasting one once and was utterly disgusted. She never went near one again ! Never heard of frogs being poisonous, in themselves.

[wildwood]

The poison used by South American Natives for their arrows is extracted from stressed frogs, so there is no reason to assume that local frogs won't exude some level of poisenous substance, even if it is less toxic.

The cane toad - an introduced species to Australia - has become a pest there and is responsible for thousands of deaths of endemic animals, especially Dingos.

Cats are notorious for the odd taste idiosyncrasy. One of our neighbour's cats eats paper, but only if it is screwed into a small ball and thrown at it - it will play for hours and than eat it. No harm has cone to it.

[blackcat77]

We used to live next door to a house with a pond and my cat was forever catching frogs and bringing them into the house via the upstairs window - he thought that it was great fun and never hurt them and left us to return the frogs to the pond - fortunately my sister lived next door to us then and there was a handy gate we used! After several years of this she covered the pond over with mesh so cat didn't have so much chance of catching them. He lived to a good old age of 16 1/2 and died of natural causes so I don't think that frogs hurt cats - he only ever brought in a toad once or twice, so I think that maybe they didn't taste too good.