snopes.com: Kitten Dies Due to Home Depot Christmas Tree

Claim:   A kitten died after consuming chemicals sprayed on a Home Depot Christmas tree. 

MIXTURE:

	TRUE: A family in Ontario claimed their kitten died after ingesting a chemical intended to mimic snow sprayed on a Christmas tree purchased at Home Depot.

	UNDETERMINED: A kitten died due to chemicals sprayed on a Home Depot Christmas tree.
	FALSE: All Christmas trees sold at Home Depot are sprayed with a substance that can be lethal to pets, and Home Depot's corporate offices confirmed the details of the claim.

Example:   [Collected via Facebook, December 2014] 

URGENT!!! We just received a horrifying call from an adopter whose kitten Licorice died this morning of Ethylene Glycol poisoning after ingesting a Christmas tree needle from a tree purchased at Home Depot. Apparently, ALL Christmas trees from Home Depot are sprayed with this material found in ANTI-FREEZE! This has been verified through Home Depot Corporate and the veterinary office that tried to save the kitten's life.

Please keep this family (with four devastated children) in your thoughts tonight. One little girl thinks it's her fault, because she picked out the tree.

 

Origins:   On 10 December 2014, the Facebook page Forever Home Cat Rescue published a warning to its Facebook page. 

According to that page, an Ontario family claimed their kitten became ill and died due to chemicals sprayed on a Christmas tree purchased at a Canadian Home Depot location. The initial claim also stated "ALL Christmas trees" sold at Home Depot are treated with a chemical that can kill pets, which is not true.

The initial warning about Home Depot Christmas trees was quite vague, and many who passed the message on were confused as to the details of the kitten's illness and death. In addition to the somewhat difficult-to-understand chain of events, the death of the cat occurred on the same day the warning was posted. Consequently, it wasn't immediately clear how much of the claim was confirmed or by whom the poisoning complaint had been verified.

On 11 December 2014, CBCNews published an article about the death of Luna and the warning concerning Home Depot Christmas trees:

A Stoney Creek, Ont., family adopted a black kitten named Luna from the cat rescue group called Forever Home.

The family brought home a Christmas tree from Home Depot after taking the kitten home. They said the feline ingested pine needles and later died. A veterinarian informed the family the cause of death was poisoning from ethylene glycol, extremely toxic to cats.

Additional details were eventually disclosed by the rescue and the family who adopted the cat (alternately called "Luna" and "Licorice" in the comments). The tree involved was not artificial, and the spray was not standard procedure. Some commenters suggested cut Christmas trees were routinely sprayed with chemicals to extend their lives after purchase; however, this incident involved a tree that had been sprayed with a substance intended to mimic snow, not a common plain tree. That detail caused significant confusion, as a number of commenters suggested real trees or artificial trees pose risks to cats for any number of reasons but neglecting to factor in the artificial snow (flocking) on the particular tree purchased by the cat's family.

While the cat's untimely death is sad, the composition of the tree is only one component of the warning circulating on animal advocacy pages. Another is the timeline: according to Luna's owners, the kitten became ill on 9 December 2014 and died the next day. That same day the warning about Home Depot Christmas trees was posted to social media, leaving little time for the circumstances of the kitten's death to be fully investigated. If the warning is to be taken at face value, a comprehensive necropsy and testing of the tree would have to have occurred inside the space of only a few hours.

Home Depot's official Facebook account posted a reply to the thread on 10 December 2014, and its response addressed another consideration. Whether or not cut Christmas trees are frequently sprayed with artificial snow, many are sold from any given location. Some of those trees go to homes where cats reside, but there hasn't been a rash of cat or kitten poisonings due to the use of artificial snow on cut Christmas trees.

Home Depot did not dispute the poisoning claim in its reply, but did state it had not received any other reports of pet deaths attributed to its Christmas trees:

We take all of our customer issues seriously and are actively working with the customer, our merchants and vendors to investigate the situation. Although we've only one report of this, we're moving aggressively to address the matter.

So although it's possible a kitten died as the result of its consuming chemicals sprayed on a Home Depot Christmas tree, no evidence has emerged to definitively connect its demise to the tree. It's not clear the cat was poisoned by the tree, by another element in her environment, or died due to another ailment entirely. No proof has been offered that a veterinarian confirmed the kitten was poisoned by the tree, that other environmental factors were ruled out, or that the kitten died of poisoning at all.

Concerned pet owners should note the situation did not involve a typical cut Christmas tree or an artificial Christmas tree. The tree in question had been sprayed with fake snow, and it is that spray which the cat's owners believed led to her death. Fresh cut Christmas trees or artificial Christmas trees are not themselves suspect: the warning applies only to artificial snow spray. Erring on the side of caution is always wise, but pet owners who have purchased artificial or unfrosted trees from Home Depot or any other retailer need not take unusual precautions. 
Read more at http://www.snopes.com/critters/crusader/homedepot.asp#ToVycv4s5JbEUJTr.99