Gisborne District Council is urging residents to exercise caution and responsibility when using poison in urban areas following a tragic incident in Lytton West.

On 14 May, Angela and Paul Stuart lost their one-year-old kitten, Tootsy, and their five-year-old rescue dog, Okee, within hours of each other due to poisoning.

This incident is part of a concerning trend, with their older cat, Lola, surviving a poisoning incident two years earlier where three other neighbourhood cats died.

Council Biosecurity team leader Phillip Karaitiana emphasises the importance of informing neighbours when using any approved poison in residential areas.

"Please make sure you use bait feeders/stations that exclude pets and children from direct bait contact and secure them at set locations wherever possible," he advises.

• Using rat traps is an alternative option to laying poison and trap types can vary from kill traps to small live capture cage traps.
• If using rat traps caution is advised around placement to prevent pets and children from harm.
• Ideally trap box sets are preferable with a securable lid to prevent access by pets or children.

“This story is a terrible reminder of what can happen in an urban environment when poison is used in an unsafe or indiscriminate manner,” said Mr Karaitiana.

On May 13, Angela noticed Tootsy the kitten wasn’t in her normal spot on the bed so went looking for her.

Tootsy was a bit special, a polydactyl which meant she had six toes on each paw.

Angela heard an awful noise coming from their backyard.

“There was some ungodly type of howling, it didn’t sound like a cat.”

She grabbed her phone light and saw it was Tootsy in a corner, “in agony, screaming, crying and howling”.

They rushed her to the emergency vet. Despite initially being able to stabilise her she died the next morning.

Angela and Paul checked their backyard for anything that might have carried the poison – and disposed of all the vomit they could find. Then they let Okee and their other two cats out - Charlie and Lola.

“But we must’ve missed something. In the morning Okee went out with his dog walk group but later that day around 3 pm you could tell something was terribly wrong with him.”

The poison was starting to take effect.

“He started to vomit, fit and have a psychotic episode. He was howling, shrieking, and running from a demon he couldn’t see, smashing himself at full speed against gates and fences.

“He was absolutely terrified, just horrendous.”

They raced him to the vet where Okee’s body temperature was so high it was starting to cook his internal organs.

“They tried to bring the temperature down and got him semi-stablised.”

But within two hours it was over and Okee had died too.

They couldn’t believe it.

Paul and Angela still have so many questions.

The vets said the poison in this case did not present like a common domestic poison – like rat bait, snail bait or antifreeze. Plus, all those domestic baits have dyes in them so you can see from their vomit they’ve consumed it – and there was no colour or sign of any dyes in their vomit or excrement.

“It was not something domestically available and should not have been used in an urban area. Whatever it was, it acted quickly and it was more likely a direct poisoning rather than secondary from eating a dead animal,” said Angela.

She and Paul have been over it many times in their head.

“Whatever it was, it was transportable so a child could have picked it up. The only way Okee got it is if Tootsy brought it into the yard. Unless someone deliberately threw poison into our property but we prefer not to think someone would be so evil, we think it was negligence not a deliberate targeted act.”

© Scoop Media