06/05/2025
Featured Pets
This story is brought to you with the kind permission of the Footitt family, who want to share their experience.
Warning to our readers: you may find some parts of this story and pictures quite distressing. We are all animal lovers and whilst there is no intent to upset anyone, we have taken the decision to share this “warts-and-all” version in the hope that it prevents the same ever happening again.
Sarah and her family say:
We consider ourselves to be incredibly privileged to share our family home with three beautiful cats, who light up our world. Coco, our more mature lady at 13 years, is a British Short Haired cat. Arlo is 4 years old and is a British Short Haired cross Persian cat. Heidi, the baby of our bunch, is a 2-year-old Scottish Fold. These three enjoy a life of pampered luxury as our family world revolves around them.
Recently we hired a local trader to professionally power clean our patio and driveway. It never crossed our minds that there may be consequences for our beloved pets. Like many people, we searched the internet for local services, read the online reviews and made enquiries regarding pricing and service. With prices confirmed and accepted, we booked a local trader to come and carry out the work in early April. We didn’t have any information sent by them ahead of time and a brief verbal discussion advised that we keep pets off the area while it was wet, but that’s all.
The trader arrived as arranged and power washed the areas to begin with. He had a chat with a member of our household and said that he was going to nip off and get what he referred to as a “fungicide” and be back “in a couple of hours”. He told her to get the cats inside and they’d need to stay there for “a couple of hours” afterwards.
In fact, he didn’t return that day. With no confirmation from the company about when they were going to return, we assumed we’d pick up with them to rearrange the remainder of the service and complete the job. We all left the house as normal the following morning. Unbeknown to us, the contractor returned to our home and, without ringing the doorbell or contacting any of us, much less checking the whereabouts of our beautiful cats, he began his task of liberally spraying his treatment across our driveway. He also extended this to our low boundary wall (which hadn’t been requested). With the benefit of our doorbell camera, we can see exactly what happened that day – and the previous day with his conversations perfectly audible.
If we’d been at home at the time, it probably wouldn’t have worried us that he used no mask, gloves or goggles himself. Nor that he used no barriers and or signage to indicate any hazards. In fact, his relaxed approach to the task would have assured us that there was no risk. We reasonably assumed that any service we contracted would be carried out safely and competently.
But we weren’t there anyway. We knew nothing of his presence, or the treatment having taken place, or the chemicals being used until we came home. The first member of the family to return home realised the driveway was wet and, as it was a dry day, she concluded the contractor had returned. She also realised, at this time, that the cats had not been left indoors and were freely roaming around the area, across our wet driveway, scattered with residual puddles of the solution used to carry out the work. But still, she wasn’t alarmed as we knew of no reason to be.
As the day went on, it became clear that something was terribly wrong. The cats all started to display unusual behaviour, they were uncontrollably drooling, clearly agitated and uncomfortable, they became lethargic and inactive. We knew that we needed to get them checked out and contacted Oakham Veterinary Hospital and were asked to bring them straight down as emergencies. We contacted the trader to ask for advice; one of them accompanied us to OVH, to bring the chemical with him and speak directly to our vet. We were grateful for this as it meant that appropriate treatment could be started without delay.
Our worry soon turned to horror when all three of our beautiful pets were admitted as in-patients to hospital and the outlook for them was grim. The cats had ingested a caustic substance, either from licking puddles left on the driveway or from walking in them and washing their paws to relieve irritation on their feet. Either way, the substance had entered their mouths and respiratory systems. The caustic nature of the chemical had caused terrible damage and, amongst other things, included the surface of their tongues “sloughing” off. This left them in agony, unable to eat, drink or groom themselves. Simply, the cats had all suffered chemical burns inside their mouths. They all had to be anaesthetised to allow feed tubes to be placed.
The range of symptoms they suffered varied, but it broke our hearts to see them in hospital.
We discussed the devastating reality that we may have to say goodbye to any one or even all of our babies. We knew they were in pain and were suffering and couldn’t bear to think of leaving them in such distress. We had long discussions with the clinical team at OVH and, eventually, as their pain was managed and they were being fed and hydrated by tubes, being hand-groomed by the nursing staff, we felt more confident about their recovery.
We can share the news that all three of the cats have returned home. Initially the tube-feeding had to continue at home, with their devoted humans caring for their every need. We took time out of work to look after them and, with the care, love and support combined with the continued monitoring by the vets at OVH, they are all on the mend. We don’t yet know if the exposure to such a harmful chemical will have long term implications for them and we will continue to monitor them very closely. As if we weren’t already over-protective pet parents before, I think we’ll all find it hard to take our eyes off the cats ever again!
This has been a huge learning experience for us as a family. We had, as many other people do, put our faith and trust in someone offering a “professional” service to take care of everything that they need to. They have a duty of care to their customers. They should be trained and competent and are required to carry out their services with care and skill. But not all service providers take these obligations seriously. We will no longer rely on internet reviews alone, when looking for services. We would urge readers of our story to also dig deeper.
If we’d been told that a substance used on our property could be harmful to anyone or anything, we would not have used the service or would have declined that aspect of it. Not just based on the safety of our own household, but for neighbouring cats, local dogs on their walks, wildlife or even the safety of local people. We now know the chemical used can also cause respiratory difficulties in humans too and were not even asked if anyone in our home was asthmatic or potentially vulnerable to chemical vapours. We could “taste” the chemical ourselves, throughout our home, that day but disregarded it in the worry of looking after our cats.
It’s not rude or impolite to ask a trader to explain their processes to you. It’s not unreasonable to ask them what chemicals or substances they may use and how their working practices take account of hazards, what measures they put into place to ensure the safety of their customers, pets and property. Please ask. Please probe deeply with someone coming into your home. Please get details of their chemicals understand their processes. Don’t be afraid to ask them to explain how they minimise risks. Check with manufacturers and make sure you know what they should be doing. Ask traders to email this information over to you. If they are unhappy or unwilling to share this information with you, take that as the warning it should be and call the next provider on the list. It’s not worth the risk to trust based on anything less.
We are, of course, following this up with the trader and hope that this experience will shape their own services, moving forward. But we’d rather not have been the part of the experiment, if we’re honest.
We can’t thank Oakham Veterinary Hospital enough for their wonderful care and support, through this stressful and difficult time.
The Footitt Family.
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Every member of the OVH clinical team was involved with the care of the three Footitt cats, as they were in hospital for so long but, Chris Folberth, the vet primarily involved with their care from the start, says:
On first examining Coco, Arlo and Heidi when they arrived in the hospital as emergencies, it was quite clear that they were in urgent need of treatment. It had been several hours since they had come into contact with the caustic substance and the cats all had chemical burns. We use the VPIS (Veterinary Poisons Information Service) to advise on emergency treatment in cases like this and were able to start the cats on treatment very quickly. They needed intensive and extensive clinical care as in-patients and, for a while, we were not sure if they would recover. Being a fully equipped hospital, with round-the-clock care and a large team, we were able to provide the level of care they needed, rather than having to transfer them elsewhere.
The family’s devotion to their pets was clear and the care they continued to give to the cats on their return home, undoubtedly, was key to their recovery. I’m very happy that they’re all on the mend and it’s been an honour to be a part of their treatment. I would certainly echo the family’s advice to be cautious when booking services like this.
