Essential Oils in a House with a Cat: Why Every Bottle Lives in a Closed Box

This post contains affiliate links. If you buy through them, Tails Around the House may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you.

A friend gave me a set of essential oils a couple of birthdays ago. Small brown bottles in a neat row, the kind of present that looks good on a shelf, so that is where they went: the open shelf in the bathroom, at roughly the height of Mabel’s favorite route from the windowsill to the top of the cabinet.

About a week later I found one of the bottles on its side, cap still on, and a tabby cat sitting next to it looking at me as if I had left it there on purpose. Nothing had spilled. But it made me ask a question I should have asked before I put them on the shelf: are these actually safe in a house with a cat?

This post is about what I learned, and about where every bottle of essential oil in my house lives now.

What my vet told me

I am not going to give you a list of which oils are a problem for which animals. That is not my job, and getting it wrong could hurt someone’s pet. What I can tell you is the conversation I had at Mabel’s next checkup.

My vet was clear that many essential oils can be harmful to cats, and that cats are more sensitive to them than people tend to assume. Her advice for my house was simple: keep the bottles completely out of the cat’s reach, do not diffuse them around her, never put anything on her fur or skin, and call straight away if I ever thought she had been exposed. Dogs are a different case in some ways and similar in others, and she suggested asking about Rowan separately rather than assuming the same rules applied.

If you have pets and essential oils in the same house, please have that conversation with your own vet. It takes two minutes at a checkup, and they know your animals.

The shelf was the problem

Looking back, the bottles were not the issue so much as where I had put them. An open shelf in a house with a cat is not storage. It is a display for the cat. Everything on it is at her eye level, light enough to bat off, and within reach of a curious nose.

I have written before about the things I stopped protecting in this house, and about accepting that the animals win most arguments about furniture. This was not one of those. Some things in a house with pets need to be properly put away, not just tidied, and essential oils are one of them.

Where they live now

A closed box

Every bottle now goes into a box with a lid. Not a basket, not a tray, a box that closes. The point is that a bottle knocked over inside a closed box stays inside the box, and a cat who gets onto the shelf finds a lid, not a row of interesting caps.

Inside a closed cupboard

The box then goes into a cupboard with a door, not on top of anything. Mabel can open some cupboard doors in this house, so the oils are in one she cannot.

Used away from the animals

When I do use anything, it is for me, in a room with the door closed and the animals elsewhere, and I wash my hands afterward before I pick up the cat or let the dog lick my hand. I do not diffuse them in the house at all.

Never on the animals

Nothing goes on Mabel or Rowan. Not for fleas, not for smell, not because something online said it might help. Anything that goes on a pet comes from the vet.

A storage box worth a look

Rocky Mountain Oils is an essential oil brand, and the banner below shows one of their storage options: a bamboo box with a hinged lid and small compartments that hold bottles upright. It is exactly the kind of closed, compartmented box I am describing, and it is the sort of thing worth looking for if your oils are currently sitting out on a shelf.

Whatever box you use, a lid is only half the job. It still belongs inside a cupboard the animals cannot get into.

If something does happen

If you think your cat or dog has licked, chewed, walked through or been sprayed with an essential oil, call your vet or an animal poison control line straight away. Do not wait to see whether symptoms appear, and do not try anything from the internet first. Keep the bottle so you can tell them exactly what it was.

Back on the shelf

The bathroom shelf now holds a spare roll of toilet paper and a candle that has never been lit, and Mabel walks along it every morning on her way to the top of the cabinet. She has not knocked anything off in a year, mostly because there is nothing left up there worth knocking off.

If you have bottles of oil sitting out in a house with animals, you can take a look at Rocky Mountain Oils here. But whatever you buy, ask your vet first, and put the box away.

Photos: Arina Krasnikova and Tara Winstead via Pexels.