Cannabis Edibles Are Everywhere — And They’re More Dangerous for Cats Than Anyone’s Saying

Marion Nestle — the food-politics expert I respect enormously — wrote a post on her Food Politics blog about dogs and cannabis edibles (“Weekend warning: pets and cannabis edibles,”). It was a good, thorough piece. I noticed that it never mentioned the real danger THC poses to cats specifically — something I thought was extremely important for her to know. So I wrote to her. She wrote back, “Wow, I didn’t know that. Can I put your comment in my next article?” I said absolutely yes.

The response to her original post had been so big that she was already planning a follow-up collecting reader stories: hikers rescuing stoned dogs off New Hampshire trails, a friend’s dog raiding a houseguest’s backpack full of THC chocolate, a Washington Post writer’s own brownie scare. My note about cats went into that same follow-up (“Dogs and cannabis edibles: readers weigh in,” ).

How my cat Angelica led me to this story

Angelica isn’t just any cat to me. I’ve had her since she was a tiny newborn who still needed to be weaned, and she’s approaching eighteen years old now. She’s in a fragile place health-wise — she needs dental surgery, already scheduled, and in the meantime she was prescribed the gold-standard medication for her pain, which left her with terrible side effects.

I’d heard cannabis edibles could help dogs manage pain, and wondered if something similar might work for Angelica. I almost bought one for her — though I’d have run it by her vet first, before ever giving her anything. But before that, I did what I always do: I dug into the research until I actually understood what I was dealing with.

What I found stopped me cold. THC is dangerous for cats, and these products are sitting on shelves everywhere, completely unregulated. What actually scared me wasn’t the abstract fact of it — it was this: Angelica is old, she’s already struggling, and giving her the wrong thing right now could have been the thing that pushed her over the edge. I came within a purchase of doing exactly that, without knowing it.

CBD products are ubiquitous now. You’ll find them on Amazon, on Chewy, in brick-and-mortar pet stores — sold right alongside food and toys, with no warning attached anywhere. And that’s the real danger: because supplements aren’t regulated the way medications are, a product can say “THC-free” on the label and still contain THC. Consumers have no way of knowing that just by looking at the shelf. None of these outlets — not Amazon, not Chewy, not your local pet store — flags any of this for you.

Cannabis, THC, and CBD — they’re not the same thing

Cannabis, THC, CBD — people throw these around like they’re interchangeable. They’re not, and the differences matter for your cat’s safety.

• Cannabis is the plant itself — the whole category, containing over 100 different cannabinoids, THC and CBD included.
• THC (tetrahydrocannabinol) is the psychoactive cannabinoid — and it’s the most dangerous one for cats.
• CBD (cannabidiol) is a non-psychoactive cannabinoid. It’s the compound behind most pet-wellness products — the calming chews, the joint-pain treats.

Legally, hemp-derived CBD is supposed to cap out at 0.3% THC. I want to underline “supposed to,” because that’s where this gets scary.

Even a tiny amount of THC isn’t automatically safe

That 0.3% number is a concentration limit — not a promise your cat won’t have a problem. Two reasons.

First: dose adds up. Even a product that’s honestly labeled at 0.3% THC can cause mild toxicity if your cat gets into enough of it — say, the whole bag of treats, or a knocked-over bottle of oil. The ASPCA’s own toxicology guidance confirms it.

Second: you often can’t even trust the 0.3% claim. In a peer-reviewed study published in JAMA, researchers tested 84 CBD products sold online and found only about 31% were accurately labeled — the rest were either underlabeled or overlabeled. THC was detected in over a fifth of the products tested. A separate study published in JAMA Network Open tested 105 hemp-derived topical products and found THC in 35% of them — including four products specifically labeled “THC-free” that still tested positive. And that’s before we even get to contamination: an independent analysis of 202 commercial CBD products found that three-quarters deviated from their labeled potency by 10% or more. Heavy metals were found in 22% of the products tested — a problem I’ve seen before in unregulated pet supplements, where toxic metals were present at levels far beyond what’s considered safe.

This isn’t a niche problem, either. Veterinarians surveyed across North America have reported a 448% increase in cannabis poisoning cases in companion animals over six years, and the ASPCA’s Animal Poison Control Center logged a 765% jump in calls about pets ingesting cannabis in a single year, as legalization spread and these products became more available.

The only thing that actually protects you is a Certificate of Analysis — an independent lab report tied to the exact batch you’re holding. No COA, no proof. That “0.3% THC or less” on the label is just the company’s word for it — whether it’s sitting on a shelf at your local pet store or one click away on Amazon or Chewy.

Why your cat’s body handles this differently than your dog’s

Cats are missing key liver enzymes — including one called UGT1A9 — that other species rely on to clear THC’s active metabolite. In humans, those same enzymes break down THC’s psychoactive byproduct so the body can get rid of it. Nobody’s directly studied this in cats yet. Still, given what we already know about their enzyme deficiency, it’s a safe bet THC sticks around longer in a cat’s system, and behaves less predictably, than it does in a dog exposed to the same product.

Here’s what I want you to do

Lock up cannabis edibles and CBD products exactly the way you’d lock up any medication — and remember that “out of sight” isn’t good enough, since some of these edibles are flavored like chicken or bacon specifically because that’s appealing to pets. Your dog and cat will find those flavors tempting exactly as they’re designed to be, so they need to be somewhere your pet can’t smell them, let alone reach them. Keep them away from kids too, while you’re at it.

Don’t take a label’s word for it, either. If the seller can’t hand you a current, batch-matched Certificate of Analysis, assume they can’t back up what’s on the package.

And if your cat or dog does get into something, watch for unsteady movement, disorientation, dribbling urine, or unusual sensitivity to light and sound — and call your vet or animal poison control immediately.

Treatment starts with a diagnosis.

But here’s the bigger point I want to leave you with: if you’re reaching for a CBD product at all, it’s almost certainly because you think your pet is dealing with something — pain, anxiety, stiffness. Before you treat it, find out what “it” actually is. Don’t assume you know the cause. A vet can tell you whether that limp is arthritis, hip dysplasia, an injury, or something else entirely — and whether an over-the-counter product has any business being part of the plan at all.

It’s not the first time I’ve written about a well-meaning pet owner reaching for a supplement before checking with a vet first — I covered a similar situation a few years back, where owners were giving their pets a different unproven substance on their own, assuming it was harmless.

Treating a guess is how pets end up with the wrong product, the wrong dose, or a real medical problem going undiagnosed while you’re managing symptoms with something off a shelf. Get the diagnosis first. Then decide, with your vet, what belongs in the treatment plan.

A word about Marion Nestle

I started this work in 2009, and when Marion Nestle’s Pet Food Politics: The Chihuahua in the Coal Mine came out around 2010, it changed something for me. Here was someone who had actually looked behind the pet food industry — really looked, the way I wanted someone to — and I remember thinking: this voice needs to be magnified. That book was rooted in the 2007 melamine scandal, but it went beyond that single event to the deeper realities of where the industry doesn’t serve consumers. It’s part of why I do what I do.

And she hasn’t slowed down since. She’s in her nineties now, and she still publishes nearly every single day, still going behind the headlines to show you which “independent” study was actually funded by the industry it happened to flatter. Nobody else on the internet does what she does, at her level, for this long, this consistently. When she writes about pet food, I read every word. Marion Nestle is one of the most trusted voices in food policy anywhere, and honestly — she’s my hero. I don’t say that lightly. I hope that when I’m her age, I’m still kicking ass the way she is.

Two of her books are specifically about pets: Feed Your Pet Right, co-authored with Cornell nutrition expert Malden Nesheim, and Pet Food Politics: The Chihuahua in the Coal Mine, the one that started it all for me. You can see her full list of books at https://www.foodpolitics.com/publications/.

Why I’m telling you all this

I’m not telling you any of this because I think of myself as some authority on pet food safety. I’m telling you because I almost made this mistake myself.

Angelica is in a fragile place health-wise — the dental pain that started all of this, on top of everything that comes with being a very old cat. When I found out THC is dangerous for cats, what actually scared me wasn’t the abstract fact of it. It was this: she’s old, she’s already struggling, and giving her the wrong thing right now could have been what pushed her over the edge. I came within a purchase of doing exactly that, without knowing it.

That’s not a hypothetical for me. That’s how close I came. And that’s the only reason any of this matters to me enough to write it down: I don’t want anyone else’s cat to go through what almost happened to Angelica.

Sources

Why cats process THC differently:

• Court MH, “Feline Drug Metabolism and Disposition,” Vet Clin North Am Small Anim Pract, 2013.
• Mazur A et al., “Characterization of human hepatic and extrahepatic UDP-glucuronosyltransferase enzymes involved in the metabolism of classic cannabinoids,” Drug Metab Dispos, 2009.

Labeling accuracy and product contamination:

• Bonn-Miller MO, Loflin MJE, Thomas BF, Marcu JP, Hyke T, Vandrey R, “Labeling Accuracy of Cannabidiol Extracts Sold Online,” JAMA, 2017.
• “Cannabinoid Content and Label Accuracy of Hemp-Derived Topical Products Available Online and at National Retail Stores,” JAMA Network Open, 2022.
• “Heavy metal and phthalate contamination and labeling integrity in a large sample of US commercially available cannabidiol (CBD) products,” Science of the Total Environment, 2022.
• ASPCApro, “FAQs about CBD Use in Pets.”

Rising toxicosis cases in pets:

• Vogt NA et al., “Prevalence and characteristics of cannabis-induced toxicoses in pets: Results from a survey of veterinarians in North America,” PLOS ONE, 2022.
• Meola SD, Tearney CC, Haas SA, Hackett TB, Mazzaferro EM, “Evaluation of trends in marijuana toxicosis in dogs living in a state with legalized medical marijuana: 125 dogs (2005–2010),” J Vet Emerg Crit Care, 2012.
• Wismer T, “Marijuana Intoxication in Cats and Dogs,” Today’s Veterinary Practice, 2024.
• Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine, Tufts University, “Marijuana Toxicosis in Pets.”
• “Toxicosis in Dogs and Cats From Tetrahydrocannabinol (THC),” Merck Veterinary Manual, reviewed 2026.

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