Himalayan salt lamps are an extremely popular home decoration these days. However, experts have issued a warning for anyone who has purchased one of these iconic lamps in recent years. These salt lamps can actually pose a danger to pets. While there are benefits to these Himalayan salt lamps – like ionizing the space they’re in, improving air quality, helping to improve your quality of sleep, and they can even allegedly help with serotonin levels for anyone who experiences an imbalance with that neurochemical – they might be best avoided for anyone who has a pet that they care deeply about.
Maddie Smith noticed something strange about her cat after she purchased a Himalayan salt lamp and brought it home. After running the lamp for the night, she awoke to find her cat holding its head in an odd position, which was something that the cat, Ruby, had never done before that day.
“We initially thought this was just because she was so cold,” Smith wrote in a Facebook post, which has since gone viral, “so we got her nice and toasty and left for work as usual.”
Unfortunately for Ruby and her owner, the cat was experiencing an underlying neurological issue. Maddie rushed Ruby to the vet later that day after returning home from work to find the cat in even worse condition. And what she learned at the vet shocked her since she never knew that Himalayan salt lamps could be dangerous to our four-legged friends.
“The vets were extremely concerned for her and could see she definitely had neurological problems because she simply could not walk properly, could not hear or see, couldn’t even eat or drink properly because she couldn’t function [with] her tongue,” Smith wrote on Facebook. “Her basic senses and abilities were GONE in 12 hours. She was so helpless.”
The vet conducted blood tests on the cat and found Ruby to have unnaturally high levels of sodium chloride in her bloodstream. Although Ruby did not have any changes to her diet during her time living with Maddie, one thing had recently changed that shocked the pet owner – she had recently purchased a Himalayan salt lamp for her home.
The cat had licked the salt lamp and accidentally ingested dangerous amounts of sodium. This caused the cat’s brain to swell, which in turn caused her to suffer from neurological issues.
Fortunately, Ruby’s vet was able to get to work quickly to remedy the situation. They put the cat on intravenous fluids with a potassium flush. Eventually, the cat’s levels returned to normal and she was able to return home after a stay in the animal hospital.
“Ruby’s case simply highlights … that for dogs and cats, sometimes the most innocuous sources of sodium chloride can cause issues if the particular animal is drawn to it,” First Vets wrote on Facebook. “Another good example is when dogs ingest homemade playdough in large enough quantities for a toxic dose of sodium chloride to be reached for the particular dog’s size.”