# eating leaves



## camel24j (Jan 12, 2007)

for some odd reason every yr Skeeter eats dead brown leaves yuck. i dont know why and well it is imposible to keep them out of my house. i have 4 dogs and 2 men who live here who well track them in. i am pretty sure they are maple leaves but they are brown and crumbly what in the world would make a cat think they tast good?


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## camel24j (Jan 12, 2007)

i guess no one else has this problem. both my cats are inside only. skeeter has always been an odd cat. 

i vacum the house once a day but the dogs go out to potty i think 100 times lol. the thing is i could see if he played with them but he just sniffs them than eats. i have seen him eat 2 already. i really dont think they could be good for him but i have not been able to stop him or keep all leaves out.


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## PeaceLoveRescue (Feb 15, 2008)

Don't have the problem, and with no dog in the house now leaves haven't been an issue. Though grass and weeds are a different problem, Reyna and the kitens love to eat the grass in the yard when they are out on their supervised visits and will chase after the leaves as they fall but won't neat them, maybe chew on them for a bit but then they go off again.

Skeeter has an aquired taste to leaves I guess. lol


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## marie73 (Jul 12, 2006)

It's on the toxic list for cats:

http://www.sniksnak.com/plants-toxic.html


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## Leazie (Apr 14, 2007)

SImba likes to play with dead leaves and crunch them up. I don't think he's ever actually eaten one, however. Maybe it's just the crunchy sensation that draws Skeeter to the leaves?


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## camel24j (Jan 12, 2007)

marie73 were i looked at it under m and t but couldnt find it?


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## marie73 (Jul 12, 2006)

It's under "R" - for RED maple (leaves).


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## camel24j (Jan 12, 2007)

ok didn't think of looking there lol. but what about the green maple leaves all the trees around my house are green. its funny but i always wanted a red maple but now i am not to sure i want one.


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## marie73 (Jul 12, 2006)

Even on other sites, I only saw red maple leaves - mostly dried, which are toxic to horses, too.


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## Bethany (Jul 19, 2006)

"Red maple" is the species, it doesn't refer to the color of the leaves. 

That said, I was curious and did a web search on red maple. It's apparently very toxic... to horses. So far I haven't seen any reference to maple leaves being toxic to cats outside of that one list (which has been cut-n-pasted to a number of different websites, of course.) I checked several veterinary "plants poisonous to animals" database websites and all of them mentioned only horses in connection to red maple leaves. (Fun fact: red maple leaves are apparently fine for cows.)

Honestly, call me insufficiently alarmist, but if your cat has been eating them and nothing bad has been happening, I wouldn't worry about it.


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## gunterkat (Aug 19, 2006)

Skeeter may be craving the leaves because he's missing something in his metabolism. 
When he eats the leaves, does he show any signs of having eaten something toxic, like wobbly walking, sleeping an abnormally long time, profuse drooling, or vomiting?


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## Dave_L (Jul 31, 2008)

My kitties will try to eat almost anything.


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## camel24j (Jan 12, 2007)

he has never had any problems no vomiting or anything funny. i feed felidae cat food both dry and wet. he is a cat who will eat almost everything. 


when i said green maple it becuse i am no plant expert but its the regular maple tree the woods in ny are full of them. all the red maples that i have seen around here were bought and planted.


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