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I have a few outdoor cats that like to roam freely along the street sometimes. I've just learned that lilies are poisonous to cats and I don't have any in my garden, but there is a lady nearby who grows day lilies in her garden.

Now, I can't ask her to remove them (because she won't, I tried) so I was wondering if there was another way to stop them from going there? I had these cats for years and I've never had problems with lilies before so I was wondering do cats maybe know by instinct that lilies are not good for them?

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There's some good advice on this website.

Cats given free access to the outside world tend to have other things to occupy their minds than sampling unfamiliar vegetation. But even free-roaming adult cats may accidentally ingest needles or seeds that have become entangled in their coat during grooming.

So it's unlikely that this will cause a problem for your cat. Many people have free-roaming cats, many people grow lilies and other poisonous plants, and not many cats suffer as a consequence.

However:

Free-roaming cats have access to many gardens so it will be impossible to prevent all possible contact with potentially harmful plants. You can, however, remove the most toxic plants from your garden and make a note of any in your neighbours’ gardens that are potentially dangerous. List common and Latin names. This list may help your vet if poisoning is suspected.

So, take a note of what the variant of lily is and in the unlikely event that your cat shows signs of illness, you have the right information to hand over to the vet (of course, not all illness will be lily-related, and there may be other plants around that you don't know about).

Basically, don't worry about it too much.

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