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Hi, everybody! Welcome back to Coffee Talk with– I’m Dr. Erica Barron, and this is Ellen Carozza, our head technician here at NOVA Cat Clinic. Well, Happy New Year! We haven’t been–It’s a new year!–here in a while. We’ve been working very hard. We just haven’t had a chance to chat with you, so sorry about that. But feel free to interrupt us at any time again. We are in Arlington, Virginia. So if we can help you in person, just let us know. Otherwise, we’re going to have a very quick talk today about essential oils and other alternative treatments that you can get for your own cats at home, and what we think about them. So real fast, Ellen, do you like using essential oils yourself?Myself, I love the smell of scented soaps and candles and everything like that. But I had exotic pets in my home such as parrots, etc., and essential oils basically are a big no-no when it comes to using essential oils, because they’re really sensitive to essential oils, depending upon is it an artificial essential oil, is it a natural essential oil, or is it like Teflon, all that other kind of stuff. Because they’re–Teflon is deadly.Deadly to birds.Deadly to birds. Don’t use it. You will kill them like that.And they have super sensitive respiratory tracts. And so recently we got a message on our Facebook page asking us to discuss essential oils because apparently there’s some story going around that some cat got really sick about essential oils, and what’s our view on essential oils, etc. And well, a lot of it boils down to common sense.Yeah. So cats are not people and they actually are a lot more sensitive to smells and things like that. We are more sensitive to sight and things we see than cats are, because cats don’t have the best sense of vision. Cats and dogs and some other species are very, very sensitive to respiratory tract. I remember when I was in vet school, Dr. Chu was giving us– he is a famous urologist and he always wears a bow tie, because all really famous urologists wear bow ties, in case you ever need to know. And he was giving– he told us this story about how this woman could not figure out why her cat kept having an asthma issue. They could not sort it out. And it turned out that every time she got ready to go out, her cat sat on the counter when she was putting on her makeup. And she would spray perfume, and that was the trigger. And it took a year to figure that out because most people don’t sit down and think about every single thing they do every day that could be a trigger. But cats are a lot more sensitive to respiratory things than we are.So if you have a diffuser in your house, and it might not bother you, but you also probably don’t walk up to it and stick your face in it. You might not sit next to it for like an hour at a time and whatnot. So there are some thoughts that a lot of essential oils and different aromatherapies could be very helpful for cats, but you need to find someone to help you make those decisions. You can’t just go on Amazon or go on some of the other– I know some people sell essential oil kits. Don’t do that because it could be negative for your cat. If you really wanted to find out more information about how to use the right essential oils for your cat, find someone who does it. You could find a veterinarian who’s trained through the College of Integrative Veterinary Technologies. They have courses about this. So people know how to do it. I know I have a CE I have to listen to about it, that I just haven’t listened to.Right. Your essential oil distributor is not a veterinary professional. Therefore, they’re truly not going to know what a cat or a dog or a bird, etc., are sensitive to. What they can simply say is, “this essential oil can cause sensitivities,” whether or not it’s truly toxic to the animal. Well, that’s up to Poison Control to tell you that.Right. And it is important that if you do think your cats’s been exposed to something negative, and that they’re having a toxic issue, you get a veterinarian on board, and you consider calling animal– the Poison Hotline.Right, I believe it’s through ASPCA, Poison Hotline.Another thing that a lot of people can do, is they can go online and just buy different types of herbs, Chinese herbs, just based on what they think their pets need. And that’s a really bad idea for a couple reasons. The first reason is herbs, just like a lot of other nutraceuticals, are not highly regulated. So it might say that this herb is Yunnan Baiyao, but unless you know the distributor and where they got it from, it might not be Yunnan Baiyao or–It just might be grass clippings in a capsule.Yeah. I mean, you wouldn’t know.Or something worse.I mean, they do that– they do the same things with nutraceuticals. You could buy glucosamine supplements from somewhere on Amazon, and there might not actually be any glucosamine in it. Even though it’s a reputable brand, it just all depends. That’s why a lot of people like the website Labdoor, because they check all of the ingredients in the actual bottles and break them apart. And they’ve actually purchased the same vitamin from different distributors and it’s not the same vitamin, which is really scary when you think about it. So the first thing is, is if you’re going to buy herbs online, you actually need to know what you’re doing, because unlike other types of modalities, herbs you need to be right with, or you could really hurt someone. And then the second thing is, is you need to make sure you know the distributor. So the distributors I use for my herbs– I actually visited one of the factories, which is in Gainesville, Florida, with Jin Tang Herbal. And then the other one is through Kan Herbal, which I’ve used, and they’re wonderful, and they’re in California. But if you use the wrong herb, you could really hurt your pet or yourself. So it’s really important to know what you’re doing, and get someone who knows what they’re doing on board, otherwise it will be very bad.Right. It’s just like a lot of the other stuff that people tend to use in their homes, that can cause other sensitivities to pets such as, oh, I don’t know, Febreeze couch spray, all these carpet additives that you put on to make your carpet smell good. And you have to remember, these animals are actually on these objects a lot, closer with their face than we are. So they’re actually getting more of that product in their respiratory tract. So you can’t just say one product is bad over the other. Technically, we should be more mindful of the stuff that we use in our homes. And if our pets are having any kind of respiratory sensitivities, that’s an indication that maybe everything should stop right there. Stop what you’re doing. Call your veterinarian. If worst case scenario, call the ASPCA Pet Poison Hotline. Discuss it with them. But unfortunately, we can’t give our opinion of the story that’s been going around on Facebook, because personally that’s not one of our patients. There’s not a lot of information that’s been given about in regards to care, etc., so basically the only thing we can touch base on is just to kind of be mindful on what you know. That yeah, the some of the stuff that we use in our house is– of course pets are going to have a respiratory sensitivity to it. Does that mean you need to stop using candles, etc., in your home? No.I had to stop using candles because my cat’s not smart and he burned his whiskers off [laughter].Yeah, that can happen, too.He’s not smart.But as far as certain scents and everything goes, if you guys notice a problem, just stop it and give your veterinarian a call. That’s basically all we can give our information on in regards to essential oils, etc., in use in the home.Does anybody have any questions for us? Also, if there’s a topic you’d like us to discuss, I know we haven’t been here in a while. We’ll try to be better. We’ll try to do it hopefully–It’s been crazy in the new building.It’s been really crazy. And Ellen was gone for a couple weeks. She went to England and found cats in England. She had a good time.I think I’m going to go move there. Bye [laughter].All the cats in England will be happy [laughter].They’re very polite.They are polite. They’ll have you over for crumpets.Right? Tea and crumpets.All right, well, we hope you all have a wonderful rest of your day–There’s a question on Instagram.Oh, there’s a question on Instagram.Oh, we do?Yes. One of our lovely listeners has a cat that is two years old, and she’s noticed that her left eye has been twitching. She wants to know if that’s normal.Go to the vet.It might be normal, but it might not be. I would go to the vet. And it also depends on the amount it’s twitching and how it’s twitching.When all else fails, go see your veterinarian. Unfortunately we can’t give medical advice like that over–It could be something like herpes virus, or it could be– I mean, it could be a lot of things. So I would recommend to have it seen, because if something is stuck in there, I wouldn’t want it to wait. That would be really painful.Yeah.Are there any other questions, Sophie?Not so far.All right, thanks for the questions. We hope you all have a fabulous day, and if there’s something you want us to talk about, we’re happy to talk about it. I can’t think of anything new to talk about. I just feel like I’ve just been seeing sick cats–Dental health month is starting up in February. We’ll probably be doing something about dentistry again like we always do, so.Oh, yay! That’ll be exciting. All right, so if we can help you in any way, just let us know. Thanks for sharing this time with us. Bye.