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My cat licked shampoo with cedar essential oil. Is it safe for cats?

Updated On September 23rd, 2025

Is The Soap Works Biodegradable Pet Shampoo safe for cats? Ingredients: water, potassium cocoate, potassium palmate, glycerine, chlorophyll, thuja occodentails (cedar) leaf essential oil/l'huile essentille. I stupidly used it without fully checking, they seam to be fine so far but theyre almost dry and they've been licking and now im mildly panicking. one is male (fat) and neutered and the small one is female and spayed (had minor infection after procedure a year ago).

1 Answer

Most Helpful Answer

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Answered By Alysia Van Scoy, DVM

Veterinarian

Published on October 19th, 2017

I did research the name, and I could not find any information about it being toxic to cats. I suspect that if it was causing problems, it would have come up on my veterinary database. However, I am not a big fan of essential oils in cats. They do not tolerate them as well as dogs do. So, I would not use it again in my cats to be on the safe side. I think that they are going to be just fine. If they did start to show irritation - you will need to bathe in Dawn dish soap to get the oil off. I don't expect it at all, but just wanted to let you know what to use if they did get irritated. Good luck! Thanks for reaching out to Petco Pet Education Center, formerly Petcoach!

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