Ōtautahi / Christchurch Daily Photo

I’ve always loved Christmas lillies and planted them a few years ago. The smell always means Christmas to me. But today, I cut them down and gave them to my mother in law, as we became cat owners this year after Shadow a wee black cat walked up our driveway and decided we were her humans (after an exhaustive search for her owners we decided she was ours too). I had previosly learned via a friend that lilies can kill cats by causing kidney failure. Cats will get the pollen on themselves and lick it off, but even coming into contact with vase water or eating a leaf is very dangerous too. There’s lots of sad stories online about cat owners having no idea about the risks and losing their cats within days of the cat ingesting part of the lily. Tiger and asiatic lillies are also toxic. I’ve been pulling off the stamens of my tiger lillies but I think they’ll go as well. Many people have commented that they’ve always had lilies and cats and didn’t know of the risk and never had an issue. But I know now and decided it’s not worth the risk no matter how small.