Fireworks and Lunar New Year: Noise, Smoke and the Holiday Table

Lunar New Year is the loudest night of the year in East Asia, and for a cat the loudest of its life. Fireworks start at dusk on New Year's Eve, peak at midnight and continue until the Lantern Festival. The risks split into sound, smoke and fallout, and the food and flowers visitors bring.

What a firecracker does to a cat's ears

Cats hear from 48 Hz to 85 kHz, well beyond the human range, and are most sensitive where a firecracker's crack sits. A close blast runs at 140 to 170 decibels; pain begins at 120. The eardrum can rupture, and the hair cells for high frequencies are damaged even when it does not.

The behavioural damage is more common than the physical. A frightened cat flattens its ears, hides in the smallest space it can find, drools, pants, refuses food and may urinate outside the box. Stress can also trigger a flare of feline idiopathic cystitis, with straining and blood in the urine appearing two or three days later. A cat that has not eaten 24 hours later needs to be seen: two days without food risks hepatic lipidosis.

Build the safe room before dark

Do this in the afternoon, not at the first bang. Choose an interior room with no exterior window, or one you can close and curtain: a bathroom, a walk-in closet, an inside hallway. Put in water, a litter box, a soft bed and a cardboard box on its side so the cat can hide with its back covered. Lay a towel along the door.

• Start white noise an hour before dusk at conversation volume: a fan, a TV, a radio between stations.
• Plug in a feline pheromone diffuser two or three days ahead; it does nothing on the night if you start it at 11 p.m.
• Do not pull a hiding cat out from under the bed. Being held during a barrage is worse than the barrage.
• For cats that have panicked in previous years, ask the vet in early January about gabapentin for the night; it is far safer than a sedative borrowed from a dog's prescription.

Smoke, fallout and unexploded fireworks

Fireworks push particulate levels up for hours; in Chinese cities the New Year's Eve reading climbs into the hundreds of micrograms. Ash, paper and unburnt powder settle on balconies and fur, and a cat that grooms swallows perchlorates, barium and copper. Wipe the coat and wash the paws when it comes in, and keep asthmatic cats indoors.

Unexploded firecrackers are the other problem. Children collect duds, cats chew the paper and powder. Gunpowder and potassium nitrate cause vomiting and, at higher doses, methaemoglobinaemia: brown gums, weakness. A chewed firecracker is a call to the vet, not a wait-and-see.

The reunion table: allium, bones, alcohol and 年糕

• Onion, garlic, chives, leek, scallion damage red cells and cause Heinz-body anaemia. Cats are the most sensitive species: 5 g of onion per kg of body weight can produce signs, and garlic is stronger per gram. Signs show days later as weakness and pale gums.
• Cooked bones splinter into needles. Fish bones perforate the oesophagus and are a common surgical emergency of the season.
• Alcohol, including the rice wine used in cooking and the dregs in a glass, hits a cat hard: 5 to 8 ml per kilogram of pure ethanol can be lethal, and a small cat needs only a couple of tablespoons of spirits.
• 年糕 and 汤圆 are glutinous rice: a choking risk, and enough fat and sugar for pancreatitis. Raisins in 八宝饭 cause kidney injury.
• Chocolate coins, candy and salted seeds complete the list; salted sunflower seeds are a sodium load for a 4 kg animal.

New Year plants (年花) and the gifts that come with them

New Year plants are the Christmas list under local names. 水仙 (narcissus) is the worst, because every household grows it in a shallow dish: the bulb carries lycorine, and cats chew bulbs, then vomit, drool, develop arrhythmias and convulse. 百合 in a New Year bouquet causes acute kidney injury from one bite of pollen. 富贵竹 causes vomiting and dilated pupils; 杜鹃 contains grayanotoxins that can stop the heart. 蝴蝶兰 and 圣诞仙人掌 are safe. Put the narcissus dish out of reach.

Visitors, open doors and the Lantern Festival

Spring Festival is a peak season for lost cats. Relatives arrive in groups, the door stands open for luggage, and children chase the cat. Brief every visitor: do not open the door with the cat in the hall, do not feed it from the table, do not pick it up if it is hiding. Keep the cat in its room and put a note on the door.

The Lantern Festival closes the season with more fireworks and paper lanterns lit by candles, hanging at cat height and tipping easily. Use LED lanterns, and keep 中秋 mooncake boxes away: the desiccant sachet is often quicklime, which burns the mouth and oesophagus, and a whole mooncake is enough fat for pancreatitis. Crab shells are sharp enough to perforate.

The morning after

Check the paw pads for burns and the eyes for grit, wipe the coat, count the meals. A cat still hiding, still not eating, or urinating in odd places 24 hours later needs a vet: stress cystitis and hepatic lipidosis both start quietly. The emergency guide covers burns and smoke, the toxicity checker covers the table, and the health section covers the cystitis this season triggers.

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