Are you worried that you might be hurting your cat by burning incense? If yes, then you’ve landed in the right place. Cats are sensitive creatures. So there might be a chance that they might fight incense burning annoying.
What if they’re allergic and the smoke causes them health problems? We understand that as a pet owner, you don’t want to risk your cat’s health, so in today’s article, we’ll go over “Is incense bad for cats”?
And if so, what alternatives you can use to make the practice safer for your beloved pets.
Is Incense Bad For Cats?
Burning Incense can be bad for your cat. Here is a list of reasons why that’s the case.
The Scent May Be All Too Powerful
Cats have extremely sensitive noses with about 14 million odor sensors present. In fact, their sense of smell is 14 times better than that of humans, who have only 5 million smell receptors.
That is the reason why the fragrance of burning incense seems pleasant to you, but it might not be that enjoyable for your cat. Imagine the irritation you feel when you smell a dozen rotting eggs. That’s how intensely cats feel discomfort when there are incense vapors in the air.
Although the powerful smell itself does not cause immediate health risks, it will irritate your cat’s comfort zone and put it in a sour mood.
Your Cat Might Have An Allergy
Cats are not allergic to incense per se. But they may be allergic to particular molecules in its smoke. However, that is very rare and not always the case. Smoke irritates the nasal and oral mucosae causing airway congestion, sneezing, and coughing- all of which mimic allergy symptoms.
Long-term exposure may worsen respiratory defects and even cause cancer. Thus, limiting the number of smoke particles that settle in your pet’s lungs is very important.
It Might Cause Health Problems
The fumes produced by burning incense contain volatile organic compounds. These harmful molecules are known to cause nose and throat irritation and nausea and may even be cancerous. So burning incense is not only bad for your cat, but it can also be harmful to you.
Since smoke is dangerous even for us, imagine how bad it would be for a cat whose lungs are 10 times smaller than our own. Too much incense smoke may cause respiratory congestion, pneumonia, and even neurological dysfunction due to impaired oxygen delivery to the brain.
This will cause your pet to have difficulty breathing, coughing, higher than average respiratory rate, and even drowsiness.
How To Make Incense Safe For Your Cats?
It is possible that not using incense is not an option for you. It may be part of your meditation or practice. If that is the case, then you can adopt the following ways to protect the quality of your pet’s life.
Use Better Quality Incense
One way to help your pets is to use better quality incense to protect their lungs from toxins. Low-quality incense does not burn properly, producing more harmful and larger smoke particles. Even though the smoke may not cause your cat’s death, it does have harmful respiratory effects if inhaled long-term.
Cinnamon sticks, vanilla, mint tea, or cloves make for safe incense. These incenses can be used for a pleasing odor that isn’t harmful or irritating for your cats. The safest one, even out of these, is vanilla incense.
Keep Incense Where The Cat Can’t Get It
Cats are curious and playful creatures. This can cause a little bit of trouble for cat owners since the furry creature will most likely take a swing of curiosity at the wisps of smoke and knock off the incense. They may also accidentally displace it during their playful bouts of running around crazily. There is a high chance this may lead to fire risk.
To avoid this issue, we should make sure you separate the cat and the incense by putting them in different rooms. You may also place the incense at a height way out of your cat’s reach.
Burn Incense In A Well-Ventilated Room
When you’re burning incense, make sure you’re doing it in a well-ventilated room that will allow fresh air to enter the room, letting the cat breathe comfortably. Open your windows at regular intervals to keep the aroma from vanishing. You should also consider the importance of burning the incense in a larger room instead of a cramped space.
Alternatives To Incense
Here is a list of alternatives for using incense.
1. FeBreeze
Febreeze is very suitable as it is a scented spray that helps eliminate unpleasant odors and also does not last very long itself. Febreeze has rumors of being harmful to cats, but professionals confirmed that it’s safe.
1. Make Your Own Scents
You can also create scents right in your own kitchen! Using dried-up fruit, you can make nice-smelling potpourri. Vanilla and cinnamon can also be employed for this purpose. You can also utilize wax and scents to make scented candles.
There are many recipes on youtube for making homemade aromatics. You might want to avoid rosemary and citrus for making this stuff, as it’s been known that cats are not a fan of these.
2. Air Purifiers
The primary purpose of incense burning is to cover up the litter box smell and the general unpleasant odor that comes with animals. Well, an air purifier is a suitable means of sanitizing the air. It actually removes the scent as well as harmful smoke particles. Whereas incense only COVERS up the foul smell and adds smoke to the atmosphere.
Conclusion
Summing up, burning incense is terrible for your cat for several reasons. They may be allergic to the incense and may find it irritating because of their sensory receptors. But if you buy high-quality incense and air purifiers, you can make burning incense pet-friendly.
You can also go with some incense alternatives like Febreeze. We hope this article answered your question”Is incense bad for cats”?. Feel free to reach out if you have any more questions.
Of course ,if you want to know if this article suits for dogs ,you can check :Is incense bad for dogs?
