American researchers claim to have discovered that passive smoking affects felines as much as it does human beings, and have expressed the hope that endangering the family pet might shame some addicts, immune to the effect they are having on their immediate family, into kicking the habit.

Researchers at Tufts University, Massachusetts, reporting in the American Journal of Epidemiology, say that living in a household of smokers considerably increases a cat’s risk of acquiring feline lymphoma, which kills three quarters of its victims within a year.

Scientists studied 180 cats treated at a Tufts veterinary hospital between 1993 and 2000. They found that, adjusting for age and other factors, cats exposed to second-hand smoke had more than double the risk of acquiring the disease. In households where they were exposed to smoke for five years or more, cats tripled their risk.

Chris Laurence, chief vet at the RSPCA, said: “Lymphoma is far and away the commonest tumour in cats so this is a very important finding.”

However, prominent cat owners and smokers were divided about the findings.

The writer Beryl Bainbridge, who smokes 30 a day, said: “I used to own two cats, Pudding and Gerald, but I don’t think they suffered any ill-effects from my smoking. They both lived until 20. If I had cats now I would have no qualms about smoking in front of them although I might mention to them that I was a smoker.”

Jilly Cooper, who has four cats, said her pets had been healthier since she gave up smoking. “I was a smoker when I first married and our cats live much longer now that we don’t smoke,” she said.