Since she mentions they are using oils in that spray, and they also say it is safe for cats, I did some looking around to see if Dr. Becker had addressed this topic of essential oils being toxic to catspets. I found this article:
_http://healthypets.mercola.com/sites/healthypets/archive/2012/05/14/dr-shelton-on-pets-essential-oils.aspx
The most relevant parts (my emphasis):
For what it's worth. It doesn't address at all the question about cat's livers being unable to process some oils, so I'm still a bit nervous. Why don't they provide a link to the 2006 study that showed their product to be safe?
[Edit to deactivate link and add the following:] Here's a Dr. Becker article about dealing with fleas, which agrees with much of what has been said so far:
_http://healthypets.mercola.com/sites/healthypets/archive/2010/08/12/natural-strategies-for-a-fleafree-itchfree-pet-this-summer_2620_.aspx
_http://healthypets.mercola.com/sites/healthypets/archive/2012/05/14/dr-shelton-on-pets-essential-oils.aspx
The most relevant parts (my emphasis):
As some of you know, I’m a wildlife rehabilitator. Twenty years ago, the woman I apprenticed under said,
“You know, if you have really stressed wild animals coming in, just put a few drops of very pure pharmaceutical grade lavender oil on a cotton ball, tape it outside of their cage, and you will see an overall calming effect.”
I have done this trick with lavender oil for years. It’s tremendously effective. But suddenly I had people gasping and saying, “Oh my gosh! There’s not a cat in the room when you’re doing that, right?”
A Controversial Treatment
I started to get a little panicky thinking I might be causing harm with my use of lavender oil.
I asked Melissa if she’d received feedback from others in the veterinary community about the supposed dangers of using essential oils around animals.
Dr. Shelton’s experience has been similar to mine. She’s contacted regularly by others in our profession with questions like, “How dare you even recommend that you could do this [use essential oils] around cats?”
Melissa has been using essential oils in her practice for about three years now, but before that, she was cautious about even using a diffuser at home with her own cats (she has over a dozen at the moment!).
She would watch her kitties very carefully for reactions to the diffuser. And she ran tons of bloodwork to reassure herself they were healthy.
Then Dr. Shelton noticed that her Munchkin cat spent a lot of time at the diffuser, lying next to it. In fact, she actually delivered a litter of kittens right next to it. And it occurred to Melissa that her cat was certainly smarter than most humans when it came to how her body responded to the oils in the diffuser.
But Melissa continued to check blood and urine in her cats and monitor them closely. Over time she felt confident no abnormalities were developing and she began to relax with the idea of essential oils around cats.
Then it occurred to her the kitty probably didn’t lay next to the diffuser just because she liked it, and that there were certainly more compelling reasons driving her to be close to it.
The Quality of the Oils is Paramount
I asked Melissa whether she thinks the information about essential oils and animals comes from those who are simply misinformed, or is there an element of fear mongering involved.
She believes it’s a little of both. She’s done her own research on reports of toxicity from oils, hoping to learn why some people can successfully use them and others are so dead set against them.
And from her research, she has determined it comes down to an issue of the quality of the essential oils used – just as many things in veterinary medicine come down to quality. For example, pet food. When we see pets that have become ill thanks to a poor diet, we recommend the owner upgrade the diet as soon as possible. We don’t outlaw all pet food because there are low quality brands on the market – we just pick a better food.
Dr. Shelton says it became very obvious to her that there are just as many variations in the quality of essential oils as there are in brands of pet food. She has her own brand preferences based on the quality of the oils. As a holistic vet, when she finds a product that is safer or more effective, that’s the one she uses and recommends to clients.
When it comes to essential oils, what Dr. Shelton has found is a lot of people jumped on the bandwagon initially because it was a natural remedy. But the majority of those folks had no knowledge of essential oils, or how to distinguish a high quality grade from a lesser grade of oil. She has discovered even companies that are big warehouses for essential oils don’t understand about testing the quality of the oils, or how to evaluate an oil at all. They just warehouse them.
There’s a lot of misinformation out there was well. Dr. Shelton has spoken directly to people with cats that have been damaged by essential oils, so it does happen – just not as often as many people think.
Melissa has met or knows of thousands of people who use essential oils successfully, and only a few that have had major problems with them.
I asked her if in her experience, problems from use of essential oils were primarily a purity or potency problem, or a mishandling problem.
Dr. Shelton believes it’s a quality problem (for example, a five-dollar bottle of essential oil purchased from the local drug store is mostly likely a poor grade oil), and also a mishandling problem when the person gets the oil home. She can usually trace a problem with an essential oil back to it being a synthetic oil, a poor grade oil, or a situation of misuse by the consumer. For example in one instance, a bottle spilled and a cat wound up basically covered in essential oil.
For what it's worth. It doesn't address at all the question about cat's livers being unable to process some oils, so I'm still a bit nervous. Why don't they provide a link to the 2006 study that showed their product to be safe?
[Edit to deactivate link and add the following:] Here's a Dr. Becker article about dealing with fleas, which agrees with much of what has been said so far:
_http://healthypets.mercola.com/sites/healthypets/archive/2010/08/12/natural-strategies-for-a-fleafree-itchfree-pet-this-summer_2620_.aspx
The pupa stage is the most problematic because the cocoon is quite resistant to agents that can kill fleas in the other stages of the life cycle.
The only way to eliminate pupa is by vacuuming them up and disposing of your vacuum’s contents right away. Even if you manage to kill all the adults, eggs and larvae, if you don’t get rid of the pupae, you’ll have more fleas in short order as the adults hatch from the pupae.
It takes about 45 days of diligent effort to fully resolve a flea infestation.