Cleaning, Cooking, and Cold Weather
Cleaning, cooking, and cold weather advice for pet owners:
• Ventilate while cleaning: Properly ventilate your home while completing your routine house cleaning. Inhaled fumes from furniture polish, oven cleaners and rug shampoos can be fatal to a bird's delicate respiratory system if the house is not properly ventilated. Opening windows is a good idea. An even better idea is to leave your bird at a neighbor's house until you have finished a thorough cleaning and the air has cleared. Because other nosey pets, cats and dogs included, will ingest toxic chemicals, you should always make sure household cleaners are stored in a secure place.
• Cook with care: Those convenient non-stick coatings on your pots and pans release fumes into the home that can be toxic to birds. If you cook and have a bird as a pet, then you may want to turn in your non-stick coated pots and pans for the more traditional glass and stainless steel cookware.
• Be careful in cold weather: Try rapping on the hood of your car before you sit in and turn the ignition. A warm automobile is a hotel for outdoor cats during the winter months. Every year thousands of cats, who take comfort in sleeping under the hood, are injured or killed when a driver returns to his car and starts the engine. A rap on the car hood before starting the engine will awaken a sleeping cat, giving it time to escape before you rev up and go.