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Most pet owners know that lilies don’t just make cats sick. They can cause deadly harm.

Every part of the plant is toxic, including the pollen, and for a cat that eats everything in sight, a vase of lilies on a dinner table is a genuine emergency waiting to happen.

One man realized this after sending his sibling a birthday flower arrangement that he thought contained orchids but actually included lilies.

The second he spotted them in the photo she sent, he flagged it, sent her information about the toxicity, suggested moving them somewhere the cat couldn’t reach, and offered to replace the entire arrangement with an identical one using orchids instead.

His sister’s response was far from what he had hoped.

You’ll want to keep reading for this one.

AITA for asking my sister to throw away the flowers I got her for her birthday?

Two days ago it was my (24M) older sister’s (29F) birthday. We don’t really live in the same city anymore, but we used to live together before she got married, and we had two cats.

We each had a closer bond to one of them, so when she moved out it was a no brainer that she’d take one and I’d take the other.

Still, we always refer to both the cats as “ours.”

Now onto the birthday gift.

So, for her birthday I got her flowers. She’s always loved sunflowers, and I have gotten them for her before so I figured it was a good gift.

I ordered a flower arrangement (with mainly sunflowers) from an online shop. It didn’t specify which flowers it included but it mostly looked like orchids and lavender.

When the flowers arrived she sent me a picture of them on her dinner table as a centerpiece, and a message saying thank you.

But then he realized something very important.

That’s when I realized that what I thought were orchids looked more like lilies. If you don’t know, lilies are very toxic to cats.

The cat that lives in her house is a little rascal. She is always eating anything in her way.

Since I wasn’t sure, I asked her if those were lilies and she said they were.

So he tries to give his sibling as much warning as possible, but his sister didn’t seem near as concerned as he was.

I sent her a google screenshot where it mentioned lilies were toxic to cats, and she said she’d be careful and watch for symptoms if the cat ate any.

I told her it’d be better to keep them somewhere the cat couldn’t reach like a very high shelf or in the kitchen (she doesn’t let the cat in the kitchen).

She said she liked them where they were.

He continued to plead, even offering to send her a new set entirely, but she still wouldn’t listen.

I told her if she threw them away I could send her new flowers for that space that won’t be toxic for the cat.

But she said that they were a birthday gift and she got to choose what to do with them, and then asked me why I cared anyway, it was her cat.

This made me kind of upset. We got her together and while I did bond more with the one I kept, I love both of them.

I told her again to please throw them away and that I’d get her the same arrangement but with orchids instead. They look pretty similar to lilies.

Now he’s wondering if he was doing the right thing or taking things too far.

She told me I was being controlling and we haven’t spoken about it since.

I am still worried about it, but maybe it was out of line to tell her to throw them away. Maybe I could have tried harder to compromise or get her to move them.

AITA?

What a disaster.

What did Reddit have to say?

“Careful” is the word this user would use to describe it.

As a pet owner, you have to be good at identifying risk, and his sister clearly doesn’t possess this skill.

This really isn’t a risk worth taking.

Or why not remove just the lilies?

Lily toxicity in cats isn’t a gray area or some overblown internet scare. It’s one of the most well-documented and serious plant dangers for cats, and veterinarians consistently rank it at the top of the list.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a DJ who promised to do his sister-in-law’s wedding, but says he’ll back out if she insists on including AI songs.

Even small amounts of pollen can cause kidney failure. And when you throw in a cat with a well-known history of chewing anything in its path, it sounds like a disaster waiting to happen.

Good people care about the wellbeing of animals, even animals that aren’t theirs. But in this story, this man had a genuine personal history with this cat which made the anxiety so much worse. No one wants a cat to get hurt because of a gift they gave.

The cat can’t advocate for herself, and someone in this situation has to.