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Smoking can kill your cat, researchers discover

Associated Press

BOSTON -- Antony Moore knows smokers often won't quit to protect themselves or their children. But he hopes his new study tying secondhand smoke exposure to the most common kind of feline cancer will persuade pet lovers people to kick the habit.

"I think there's a lot of people who might not quit smoking for themselves or their family," said Moore, a veterinarian at Tufts University. "But they might for their cats."

In the study, Moore and other researchers at Tufts and the University of Massachusetts say living in a household with smokers considerably increases a cat's risk of acquiring feline lymphoma, which kills three-quarters of its victims within a year.

The researchers, writing in today's issue of the American Journal of Epidemiology, studied 180 cats treated at a Tufts veterinary hospital between 1993 and 2000. They found that, adjusting for age and other factors, cats exposed to secondhand smoke had more than double the risk of acquiring the disease.

In households where they were exposed five years or more, cats had more than triple the risk. In a two-smoker household, the risk went up by a factor of four.