@sooby
My irises are currently in pots in a completely-different area of my yard, that I never let my cats in.
I have to wonder if some cats are affected by it and some are not, or if it might be that only certain daylily hybrids might cause it.
I wish there was more studies done on it.

TomThumb said:@sooby
My irises are currently in pots in a completely-different area of my yard, that I never let my cats in.
I have to wonder if some cats are affected by it and some are not, or if it might be that only certain daylily hybrids might cause it.
I wish there was more studies done on it.

If there is anything to it, as opposed to the plants actually being Lilium or something else and misidentified, it could certainly be an individual cat's reaction, a specific daylily, a specific daylily part, a specific stage of growth, etc. etc. There can also be a difference in plant toxicity to animals based on whether the plant part is wilted or not (as in red maple toxicity to horses). There are also toxicities resulting from endophytes in plants. The main issue with cats is supposed to be kidney failure, yet your cat's kidneys tested OK after eating daylilies.

The original idea that daylilies could be toxic to cats implicated daylilies in indoor bouquets. That's more likely to be related to the flowers, one would assume, yet we also have reports of cats who eat daylily flowers regularly without problems. So until someone actually does scientific testing with cats and correctly identified daylilies, we just don't know what the situation really is.

I'm not sure if I posted it earlier in the thread (I'm liable to lose what I've written here if I go back to look) but I've even seen veterinary articles online discussing this topic, and their example picture to illustrate what daylilies look like was actually Lilium. A pet page article I saw illustrates daylilies with an Alstroemeria. One other page calls daylilies "true lilies" whereas they aren't even in the lily family let alone genus. All of this just confuses the situation further.

Here you go, I managed to re-find the veterinary article, scroll down to Figure. 3:

http://www.vetfolio.com/emerge...

My cats over the years have chewed and eaten daylily foliage, without any symptoms afterwards. I have had them react to clamping their mouths around toads and once a wooly caterpillar that caused foaming at the mouth. The other thing that I am cautious about are mushrooms that will pop up overnight.

It would be good if we could know for sure if daylilies are a problem.

The VetFolio article lists one retrospective study published in 2003 specifically naming daylilies. I can find no other evidence of that. In fact, there is a more recent study that gives the botanical background to the daylily and it appears that for years it has biologically been lumped into a broader genus but this study clears that up.

From PubMed from the National Library of Medicine:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/p...

Gayle

The retrospective study was based on lay identification of the plants that were believed to be involved. If I recall correctly that's also the one that lists species of daylilies but they were not actually studied. This has resulted in some citing papers implying those daylilies were implicated in the poisonings but they were just given as examples of daylily species names (if I recall correctly two were synonyms and one is an outdated name that belonged to a hosta). There is no way that home gardeners or veterinarians could identify daylilies to species.

I have had cats in the garden for Many years. Cats eat grass--why, I have no idea---they just do. Invariably, they barf after eating the grass. I think it may be that they have a furball that needs to come out---but that's just a guess because I see one only occasionally when they do this. Do they eat the daylily leaves---yep. Do they get sick from it? They throw up---and that's all. Over the years we have had five garden cats. I have seen them all eat daylily leaves. They prefer the seedlings---darn them! I have a number of poisonous plants in the garden. The cats seem to know which plants are OK---and which not OK. Their main preference is grass---and that may be why they eat the seedling daylily leaves----they look like grass.

Despite an unholy interest in eating my daylilies, both my cats are unaffected and healthy.

They are ragdolls and are indoor cats but they have been amazingly predacious if I have ever left daylily seedlings unguarded inside the house. They eat them down to the soil. As well, I can walk Kaspar in the yard outside of the tick season but, if i am inattentive, he eats the daylily leaves with speed and gusto. When it first happened, I was very terribly upset because I thought he was going to die from what I read. However, it seems the only threat to his health is from me if I catch them at the seedlings.

@Glen,
Are you sure your Ragdolls don't have bunny genes? They're so pretty. Do you have any more photos of them you'd care to share on the Pets forum? I know what you mean about thinking a pet is going to die from something they ate. Been there but in your case it was daylilies. In my case, it was the dog who got ahold of an odd weed (from a neighbor's yard) and she ended up in the animal hospital quite sick. I learned my lesson and so did my purse.

Gayle

Well, I don't own a cat, but one decided to come by and stay for awhile. I didn't mind because I like cats. I put down some miloganite and 10-10-10 fertilizer for the fall in a small bed. Before I could put the mulch down the next day, the cat...not my cat...tore up the beds. Looked like a tornado when through them. The fans were broken, flatten and dug up. I'm not sure what was it that drove this cat so crazy...maybe the smell of the miloganite because it did rain over night. Not sure if he ate any of the fans but I have not seen him since.

I know this was off topic but the mention of a cat and my daylilies gets me going!

Strange I have cats on both sides of me, and I have never had a problem with them bothering my daylilies. I love for the neighbor cats to come in my garden and patrol for copperheads and other snakes. I think it helps keep the snakes out even if the cats don't actually capture and kill them (sometimes they do). But as far as eating the leaves of the plants, I have yet to see either of these two cats or a few others that occasionally stray into my garden eating any of the leaves. Good to know that it probably would not harm the cats even if they did develop a taste for daylily leaves.

I read above where someone said the real problem is not the daylilies but the overreaction of nervous pet owners. I don't want to be *THAT* owner so that is why I am here.

My very dumb 9 month kitten, Alfie, came in with a streak of yellow pollen on his forehead and I quickly cleaned it off and gave him a bunch of broth to get him peeing. I plan to give him sub q fluids in a little while. But before I get over excited I wanted to make sure the type of lilies I have are actually daylilies and not some more toxic sort. There are what they look like.



This is not my picture but is what my daylilies look like. Is this the type of daylily that everyone here is saying they've seen their cat eat and suffer no ill effects? I've had these lilies for 22 years and never had any issues with my cats eating them but Alfie is very dumb and if any of my cats were going to do it it was going to be him.

Even though he is very dumb we love him very much so please talk me off the ledge. I can't afford another 2k in vet bills just now.

I don't know anything about cats, but those are definitely daylilies.

Welcome, there is a lot of confusion over whether daylilies are toxic to cats. Many people have cats that eat daylilies without a problem yet Hemerocallis are listed by some veterinary articles as being toxic to cats. There are no published tests that fed daylilies to cats to prove they are toxic, therefore many gardeners feel it is a case of mistaken identity because true lilies (Lilium) are toxic to cats. Daylilies, Hemerocallis, are not lilies, they are not even in the same plant family as lilies, but are often misidentified as lilies. This probably doesn't help you much, but that's the current situation. There may, or may not, be a problem with some daylilies and some cats but many are unaffected.

Thank you so much for your responses. Alfie is currently in time out in the basement because he has been far too rambunctious so I think it's safe to say he is certainly not lethargic. No vomiting either. Fingers crossed that he's ok.

There is also the distinct possibility that Allie just pushed past some daylilies and got streaked with pollen. Back when all my cats were indoor/ outdoor ( until six years ago, when the coyote population got too high), they used to come in covered with Daylily pollen. No poisonings.