A cat eats one true-lily leaf at 11 p.m. Two bills are on the table: USD 85–95 for a poison-line call, or a USD 395–770 first invoice at an emergency hospital before any treatment. The phone costs a fifth as much, and for three of the six toxins below it is also the faster route to the right answer. For the other three, paying first costs the cat time it does not have.
What the two US lines charge
Neither is free and neither bills insurance at the phone. Pet Poison Helpline publishes a one-time fee of USD 85 per incident, covering all follow-up calls on the same case; ASPCA's Animal Poison Control Center charges about USD 95 per case and says only that "a consultation fee may apply" until you are connected. Your vet can call either line back for treatment advice at no extra charge.
Against that, the first hour at a hospital: assessment USD 95–150, after-hours loading USD 100–220, access and first fluids USD 80–150, minimum blood database USD 120–250. Our ER fee breakdown adds those lines one by one.
Three regions, three price lists
| Line item | United States (USD) | United Kingdom (GBP) | China (CNY) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Owner poison line | 85–95 per case | 35 in hours / 45 out of hours | No national line |
| ER assessment | 95–150 | 90–140 | 150–300 |
| After-hours loading | 100–220 | 80–160 | 100–250 |
| First invoice before treatment | 395–770 | 315–600 | 550–1,250 |
One call is 11%–24% of a US first invoice and 6%–14% of a UK one. It buys no exam, antidote, fluids or bed — only advice, worth exactly the drive it saves or triggers.
What the call actually buys
A board-certified toxicologist at 03:40 with dose thresholds by species and weight. You supply weight, product, amount, time since exposure and signs; you get back milligrams per kilogram and a plan — monitor at home, or go now and say this at the desk. The case number lets the hospital call the same specialist for the whole stay without paying twice.
Call first: three toxins where the phone rewrites the plan
Anticoagulant rat poison. Coagulation parameters do not move for 2–5 days; bleeding shows at 3–7 days. A midnight ER visit yields a normal prothrombin time and false reassurance, unless exposure was under 4 hours ago and decontamination is still useful. Vitamin K1 runs 2.5 mg/kg every 12 hours for 28 days, and the dose depends on active ingredient and grams eaten — arithmetic a hotline exists to do. See the rat poison timeline.
Onion, garlic, leek. MSD's veterinary manual records toxicosis in cats after less than a teaspoon of cooked onion, and 15–30 g/kg of raw onion in dogs. Heinz bodies form within 24 hours, peak near 72 hours, hemolysis lands at 3–5 days. Nothing is visible tonight; what decides the case is grams divided by kilograms. Details in onion and garlic toxicity.
One tablet of a human medicine. 10 mg is 2.5 mg/kg in a 4 kg cat and 1.25 mg/kg in an 8 kg cat. One needs action, one may not, and vomiting induced on a guess is its own injury.
Go now: three toxins where the phone burns minutes
True lilies. Any exposure counts — leaf, petal, pollen groomed off the coat, vase water. No safe dose is established in cats, vomiting often starts within 2 hours, and kidney injury lands at 24–72 hours when the cat is already critical. Decontamination pays best inside 2 hours, so a 12-minute hold is a real cost. Drive, and call from the car: lily poisoning in cats.
Dog flea product on a cat. Permethrin signs appear from minutes to hours, occasionally up to 36 hours: drooling, ear twitching, tremors, seizures. There is no antidote, only tremor control and supportive care, and earlier is better.
Antifreeze. The minimum lethal dose of undiluted ethylene glycol in cats is 1.5 mL/kg — about 6 mL, a teaspoon and a bit, for a 4 kg cat. The antidote only works before oxalate crystals form, so the window is hours: antifreeze poisoning.
Five rules in one table
| Situation | Clock | First move |
|---|---|---|
| True lily, any part or pollen | Kidney injury 24–72 h; decontamination best under 2 h | Drive, call from the car |
| Anticoagulant rat poison | PT rises 2–5 days; bleeding 3–7 days | Call first; decontaminate under 4 h |
| Onion, garlic, leek | Heinz bodies 24 h, peak 72 h, hemolysis 3–5 days | Call first with grams and weight |
| Permethrin dog spot-on | Signs in minutes to hours, up to 36 h | Drive now |
| Ethylene glycol | 1.5 mL/kg lethal; crystals form within hours | Drive now, call en route |
Have these five things ready before you dial
- Weight to 0.1 kg. Every threshold is per kilogram, and "about four kilos" can move a borderline dose across the line.
- The package in your hand. Active ingredient and concentration — one brand sells 0.5% and 2.5% versions.
- How much is missing. Count pills, estimate the chewed leaf area, weigh what is left.
- Time of exposure, to the nearest 30 minutes. Decontamination is clocked, not dosed.
- Signs with times. "Vomited twice at 23:10, wobbly at 23:40" beats "acting strange."
UK and China: same decision, different arithmetic
Britain has one owner-facing line, Animal PoisonLine, run by the Veterinary Poisons Information Service: GBP 35 from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. Monday to Friday, GBP 45 at all other times. It triages and cannot give treatment advice, which is the vet-only VPIS line. Its own list routes four cases straight to a vet with no fee: adder bite, blue-green algae, true lilies in a cat, a bronchodilator inhaler.
China has no owner-facing national line. The substitute is the night number of a 24-hour hospital: ask for the night vet and describe the toxin by ingredient, not brand. Outside the five largest cities the nearest hospital with oxygen and a chemistry analyser may be 60–180 minutes away. Compare totals in emergency visit costs.
Does insurance pay for the call?
Sometimes. ASPCA Pet Insurance covers up to 90% of the APCC fee for enrolled pets, and several US plans reimburse poison-line charges. Keep receipt and case number together, name the toxin and exposure time on the claim. On a USD 700 hospital bill the USD 95 hardly matters; on a case handled at home it is the whole claim.
The 60-second version
Call first for rat poison, alliums and any single tablet of human medicine; drive for lilies, permethrin, antifreeze, button batteries, and any cat collapsing, seizing or working to breathe. Write both numbers by the door with the fees beside them, so nobody hesitates over a card number while the cat drools — the poison contacts card takes 25 minutes to build.
This article is not a substitute for veterinary diagnosis or treatment. Fees change; confirm both when you call. If the cat is unresponsive, breathing hard or seizing, skip the phone and go.
Frequently asked
Is the ASPCA poison control fee per call or per case?
Per case. The ASPCA Animal Poison Control Center charges about USD 95 for one exposure, and Pet Poison Helpline publishes USD 85 per incident. That single fee covers every follow-up call about the same case, including calls your own veterinarian makes to the same toxicologist for treatment advice during a hospital stay.
Will the poison line ever tell me not to go to the vet?
Yes, and that is the point of the service. For an exposure that falls below the toxic threshold, the toxicologist may give a home-monitoring plan with a recheck time. Ask for the case number anyway: if the cat develops vomiting, wobbliness or pale gums before that recheck, the emergency hospital can pull the full history with one phone call.
Do I still need the hotline if my vet is already open?
Usually not. A clinic that can see the cat within 20 minutes does its own triage, and it can call the poison service itself for treatment advice. The hotline earns its fee at night, at weekends, and when the exposure is below the threshold for a visit but still needs a per-kilogram calculation.