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The Gisborne District Council has issued a warning around urban poisoning after a family’s two pets died within hours of each other.
Angela and Paul Stuart lost their 1-year-old kitten, Tootsy, and 5-year-old rescue dog, Okee, on May 14 after both pets consumed poison.
The previousday, Angela Stuart noticed Tootsy wasn’t in her normal spot on the bed, so went looking for her.
She heard an awful noise coming from the couple’s backyard and went to investigate.
“There was some ungodly type of howling, it didn’t sound like a cat,” Stuart said.
After grabbing her phone light, Stuart saw Tootsy in a corner, “in agony, screaming, crying and howling”.
Okee (left) and Tootsy both died on the same day after being exposed to poison.
The kitten was rushed to the emergency vet, but despite initially being able to stabilise her, she died the next morning.
The couple returned to their home and checked their backyard for anything that may have contained poison and disposed of all the vomit they could find before letting out Okee and their two other cats.
“But we must’ve missed something. In the morning, Okee went out with his dog walk group, but later that day around 3pm you could tell something was terribly wrong with him,” Stuart said.
“He started to vomit, fit and have a psychotic episode. He was howling, shrieking, and running from a demon he couldn’t see, smashing himself at full speed against gates and fences.
“He was absolutely terrified, just horrendous.”
Okee was raced to the vet, where his body temperature was so high it was “starting to cook his internal organs”.
“They tried to bring the temperature down and got him semi-stablised,” Stuart said.
But within two hours Okee had died.
The vets said the poison in this case did not present like common domestic poison, such as rat bait, snail bait or antifreeze. All domestic baits have dyes in them, meaning you could see from the pets’ vomit if they consumed it.
“It was not something domestically available and should not have been used in an urban area. Whatever it was, it acted quickly and it was more likely a direct poisoning rather than secondary from eating a dead animal,” Stuart said.
“Whatever it was, it was transportable so a child could have picked it up. The only way Okee got it is if Tootsy brought it into the yard. Unless someone deliberately threw poison into our property but we prefer not to think someone would be so evil, we think it was negligence not a deliberate targeted act.”
Stuart said it comes after their older cat Lola survived a poisoning incident two years earlier, where three other neighbourhood cats died.
Gisborne District Council (GDC) biosecurity team leader Phillip Karaitiana said it was important to inform neighbours when using any approved poison in residential areas.
“Please make sure you use bait feeders/stations that exclude pets and children from direct bait contact and secure them at set locations wherever possible,” Karaitiana said.
“This story is a terrible reminder of what can happen in an urban environment when poison is used in an unsafe or indiscriminate manner.”
Karaitiana said using rat traps is an alternative option to laying poison and trap types can vary from kill traps to small live capture cage traps.
“If using rat traps, caution is advised around placement to prevent pets and children from harm. Ideally trap box sets are preferable with a securable lid to prevent access by pets or children.”
