How do I stop my cat "tasting" toads ??

[llori]

This is the 4th time in 3 years my cat Charlie has had the same problem. The first time we were on holiday and my friend was house sitting and Charlie came in foaming from the mouth and was very weak. She rushed him to the vet , they pumped him full  of medicine and luckily he survived . The vet confirmed my friends fears that he had been poisoned . She asked if he could have eaten a mouse that had taken the pooison bait from another neighbours garden and was informed that this was highly unlikely as cats have a sixth sense and would know if a rodent is carrying poison .  We took him at his word . The second time this happened I was hysterical and wanted a search of everyone's garden and wanted to force feed someone with rat killer or something similar , How on earth could anyone want to poison a cat ?  Again Charlie survived . By now I was complaining to the council  ( we back onto a park) and even accusing them of puuting down some type of poison. The third time this happened and he was not too bad and recovered in a couple of hours . Still on the warpath I again contacted neighbours with no success . This morning Charlie has his breakfast as usual ,  went out into the garden for a stroll and was back within 10 minutes , foaming at the mouth , All goey dribbles and saliva . I know he had only been along four, five gardens at the most and then returned home so after comforting him , leaving my husband on standby to take him to the vet and my Daughter near tears I stormed around to the neighbours and virtually demanded explanations and threatened allsorts . Only one appeared to be economical withthe truth and I fear they may be poisoning foxes . I have reported them . Luckliy Charlie appears to have made a fully recovery so I decided to trawl the net to find some kind of explanation . I found some details which appear to be showing the same systoms as Charlie did and it has been caused by "toad tasting"  . It materialises that toads secrete a goo when "tasted" and this causes cats to literally foam at the mouth . I know there are a few toads around in the gardens and I fear that this is the problem. I will speak tothe vet in the morning to confirm my fears . I do sincerely hope that none of my neighbours deliberately tried to poison my cat and it is going to cost me a small fortune in chocolates and flowers by way of an apology to them all , but waht on earth do I do about the toads?  Charlie must play with them. When he was a kitten ( He's 14 now) I caught him in the garden frog tossing . He thought it was fun , Frogs was non too happy but survived , Now he's into toads and I cannot cope !! How on earth do I stop him from doing this ? You would have thought he had learnt his lesson by now but I am really very worried that one day he wont recover .

[Jade59]

Wow!  This is the strangest thing I've ever read on this forum!  I don't have an answer for you, but I'm so glad you posted so if someone else runs into such a problem, at least they will have a clue to what could be happening.

Poor Charlie.  Poor YOU!  It kind of sounds like these last 2 rounds didn't affect him quite as severely though.  Maybe his system is getting used to it, if in fact he IS "frog tasting."  

Gosh, I hope someone has a solution for you...