Found this one online while browsing for what cats shouldn’t eat. However I feel like this area is quite controversial and opinionated. Also feels like half the websites are written by AI and riddled with ads. So if anyone has a good source as to what cats should avoid then let me know.
Anyways, I found this nice illustration, but wanted to hear with you peeps whether you have any experience regarding these food items.
Also what’s your take on milk/sour milk for cats? My previous cat loved it so much, and she aged until she was 17 years old, and never seemed to have a problem with it. Also asked the vet at the time and she said it was OK. However every other website I visit tell to never give milk(dairy) to cats. So which is it? Does it just depend on the cat?
Yeah… don’t pay any attention to this kind of nonsense. Cats are obligated to carnivores. They don’t have the machinery to process a lot of non-meat foods. If they occasionally get into some things, it shouldn’t cause a problem.
Ultimately, just listen to your vet.
So far as the milk and cats thing… I think the issue is that they love it, they’ll almost always go for it, but many if not most are lactose intolerant… so too much will cause issues. If you had a cat who could process it, then great!
Just for clarity, not trying to be a pedant:
Cats are obligate carnivores
Cats must eat meat to live. Like you said they can’t really process other stuff.
Damnit… that’s what I get for trying to sound smart, lol.
I love what spellcheck did to ‘obligate carnivores’ here. 🤣
Ugh… I really try to keep shit like that from happening. Autocorrect bonked on “carnivore” too, and that’s what grabbed my attention.
My cat is in LOVE with ice cream from a specific ice maker ( with high percentage of milk of course ). We only give her like a finger tip of it and she doesnt have any problems ( the cat is 17, soon 18 ). We know its not so good to give her ice cream, but she annoys us until we give her a little bit.
Seconding the lactose intolerance, I’ve also heard that most cats can’t tolerate it well. My baby girl (11) loves to beg for yogurt but she gets a dime-sized dollop at most, otherwise I’m cleaning up kitty barf within the hour.
It’s also true that kitties (and dogs) shouldn’t eat onions or garlic as alliums are toxic to them, in a single large enough quantity or over time. And we don’t want to feed any animals cooked chicken bones as they are way too brittle and can break into dangerous shards.
That said, a cat wrote this infographic and put turkey and shrimp in the top section 😅
That said, a cat wrote this infographic and put turkey and shrimp in the top section 😅
🤣
Yet my cat loves pumpkin and olives. Omg, will she go crazy for some pumpkin and olives.
I mean, this is mostly about treats, so…
Cats being obligate carnivores means most of their calories must come from meat because they e.g. can’t synthesize taurine like a human or dog can. But eating a bit of cat grass isn’t gonna kill them.
I was going to say that my cat must be broken, none of them eat anything that it’s not cat food/treat or meat. One of them likes lemom pie ans coke, but she’s an orange, she’s weird
#FeelTheBernCats
That man has been on the right side of every issue forever.
But salami contains garlic, doesn’t it?
There are different kinds of salami.
Ah, I didn’t know that. Where I live, they kind of always do (or did, when I was a child and still ate meat) but Wikipedia days the Italian salami typically doesn’t have it.
That shows the limits of this picture.
Salami is not healthy for cats.
Sure, but they can still have a little, as a treat
Exactly!
Yeah don’t give them raw chicken because cats that kill chickens in the wild will always cook them first.
It’s bc of how our meat is processed/what bacteria may be one it. Cats are not immune to salmonella nor most other foodborne pathogens.
Yeah, but that’s not a chicken-specific thing. The actual infographic is utter horseshit, of course. Especially with recommending so many greens, as if cats can do more with that than pass them unprocessed and then demand more food as they expelled non-trivial amounts of energy on it.
It kind of is. You know how it’s fine to eat a rare steak, but not rare chicken? It’s because of higher contamination levels.
oh yeah fs, the infographic sucks ass but i thought id chime in on specifically why chicken sucks
yeah. until it eats the wrong chicken, gets sick and dies.
some stuff is fine until it isnt.
Animals in the wild die of food poisoning all the time; that doesn’t mean that we should have our pets doing the same. It’s a bit like playing Russian roulette, the risk is better than outright starving, but it isn’t riskless.
Also, I’m not sure but I think that battery farming increases the proliferation of salmonella.
Don’t let your cat eat lithium
My cat is bipolar, OK? Her vet prescribed lithium and she’s getting it! Otherwise she becomes like the feline equivalent of that squirrel from Over The Edge.
I stand here defeated. You my sir are the true king 🙇♂️
Fresh kill is a far cry from raw meat days after butchering which is only deemed safe on the condition that it gets cooked.
That list gets a few details right but is also full of nonsense. Grain is not appropriate food for cats. Fruit and anything else that contains sugar is also not appropriate. High quality cat food with at least 90 percent meat and no grain, no sugar is best. I sometimes serve fresh meat and fish too, like chicken hearts or cod. Just make sure there are no bones or bone fragments in the meat or fish and also that it has been frozen to make sure there is no risk of any infection.
Edit: removed a few details which I am not sure about
I’m not sure the sugar argument holds, plenty of animals naturally eat foods with sugar, and do not brush their teeth. Of course they don’t eat nearly as much sugar as a typical human, but that doesn’t mean that sugar should always be avoided.
For cats specifically though I am not sure, maybe all sugar is bad, but I don’t think it’s because of teeth brushing.
It’s worth noting that cats are unlikely to be able to perceive sweet tastes. So while sugar is not toxic to cats, there’s not really any benefit to letting them have it, even as a treat.
On a related note, there’s a hypothesis that the mutation that caused them to lose the ability to taste sweet things in cat ancestors is what led to them becoming obligate carnivores, which is kind of interesting.
Then why the hell did one of my cats LOVE cantaloupe?
Heh, I knew a cat that would go through a pan of unseasoned cauliflower if you weren’t careful. Maybe every cat is born knowing something they have no clear way of understanding, like how tasteless things are food or how to move in four dimensions or what electronics are.
More seriously, the article I linked to suggests cats can taste things we can’t, so that’s a possibility.
It could also be she was just a different sort of cat. She had 7 toe beans per foot and was a blue eyed tortois shell. So her liking cantaloupe was probably the least weird thing about her
I heard and read several times now that cats can not taste sweetness and that sugar is bad for cats. At the same time most low to medium priced cat foods have added sugar. I find it confusing and wonder why manufacturers do that.
It’s filler. They can’t taste it, and it’s nutritionally void for them, but it’s still calories, and sugar is cheap.
Edit:spelling
I’d bet it’s because sugar is still calories even if you can’t taste it. So, filler
Because manufacturers only care about making something that’s just not poisonous enough to kill your pets.
Hell some of them don’t even care about that when it comes to flea meds
Good point, fixed my comment.
I don’t think the picture is about proper cat nutrition. I think it’s about giving the cat a treat/letting it taste something you’re eating. You’re right that you should definitely feed your cat meat or proper meat-based cat food.
It appears to be missing the major food groups of random house plants, spiders, and fluff
My cat goes nuts for spider plant leaves. He must eat them every time he sees them.
I have never once not seen him throw up after eating them. But he must always eat them.
I grow a “snackrificial” spider plant (well, 2 of them actually) so that my other plants are left alone. I swap them in/out of cat reach depending on when one needs a break from the chomping.
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Now that gave me a good chuckle 😁
THE SAND
ALL THE SAND.
(it is definitely too sand)
Xylitol, a sugar substitute found in some sugar-free products, including certain brands of peanut butter, is highly toxic to cats (and dogs).
Lol, my cat eats a diet of chicken, prawns, some beef, and organs like liver, heart, kidney, and brain. He is extremely healthy and does not look his age (13). He started on kibble but we transitioned him to meat because of hairball and general health issues. His teeth are clean and strong, his coat is shiny, and his eyes are clear.
Honestly, cats are predators. They eat meat. Feed a cat mice and you are close to what mine eats. It would be really strange if they were ok eating rice, corn, and brocoli.
I do want to add that a lot of predators also eat the stomach of their prey and there for everything they ate and since most of their prey are either herbivores or omnivores they do consume some plant matter.
Most of the better quality cat foods I see that have veggies in it has like 80% - 95% meat and the rest vegetables, which I think tries to simulate the natural consumption of plant matter.
A lot of cats also eat grass on their own since the fiber helps with digestion.
My cat only eats grass when he wants to vomit. He will clean himself, get too much hair in his stomach, then yowl to go outside. He then eats grass, vomits, and is chill. When I am more on top of brushing him this happens less, but if I neglect his brushies he needs to purge the hair.
Yeah, grass can help in both directions. My long haired cat likes to have constant access to grass, it actually makes her puke less. My guess would be that the fiber helps to break up the hair clumps and move them faster down the digestive tract. But I’ve also had cats who only ate grass to make themselves puke.
Probably depends on the individual cat.
My cat never liked meat, fish or chicken. she would eat vegetables and kibble… sometimes watermelon or another juicy fruit.
I really dont know if this was a sign or not, but eventually we discovered she had a renal condition.
My cat is unable to tell the difference between a sparrow and a sparrow hawk and as such as being attacked by at least one sparrow hawk, and is now afraid of all birds.
What she really likes is frogs, although also they can be scary if they move unexpectedly.
I was under the impression that barfing requires adding taurine and minerals, or are those already part of certain organs you feed?
TIL that BARF stands for Bones And Raw Food or Biologically Appropriate Raw Food. Interesting. wiki on BARF
My cat hunts mice and birds, occasionally snakes and lizards, and corn. She’ll murder a whole cob.
My cat absolutely loves popcorn. As soon as he hears the popping in the microwave, he’ll come running and start yelling to get some. Then if you’re sitting on the couch with the bowl/bag, he’ll sit on the arm and try to steal pieces from you.
I don’t think I ever had popcorn around my cats, will give it a try. Don’t have a microwave though, but I’ll just pop some kernels in the pan.
A vet once told us, no fish bones for cats, but chicken and anything bigger was OK. No chicken or fish bones for dogs, bigger than a chicken was OK. It’s about the size of the bones, and whether they can swallow them and get them stuck in their throats.
I trust the vet’s advice over some random internet image.
A few other posts have pointed out cats are obligate carnivores so they need to consume meat to survive, as well as the general lactose intolerance.
One addendum to this is cat saliva lacks enzymes that break down carbohydrates. Cats consuming carbs consistently without proper teeth cleaning tend to have dental issues. Often regular eating and chewing scrapes carb build up, but it is something to keep an eye out for.
Thanks, this is what I came to the comments for, as my cat tries to steal any lemon pastry while I am eating it. Usually a little cat treat snack keeps her away.
Just listen to a vet instead. Cats can eat a lot of things, but they can process only very little. They’re carnivores through and through, and evolved to deal with a diet consisting entirely of small animals they’ve hunted down, but also all of them (not just the selectively removed meat parts we as humans consume).
Im noticing a distinct lack of catfood on this chart…
I give the community cat a slice of ham on occasion, if he’s good
He is good. Give him some ham. I am a human person writing this and not affiliated with the cat.
Okay but can cat have a lil salami? As a treat?
Yes a little(too much salt not that good for cats) but it should not contain garlic as it is toxic for cats
Yippie
I’m not too informed on that, but that table looks sensible as long as you keep in mind that their diet is mostly meat-based, so watch out for amounts. And it fits well what I’ve read across the internet.
The main problem regarding dairy is the lactose; it isn’t poisonous but they don’t digest it well. So dairy in small amounts as a treat is probably fine, just don’t overdo it. Soured milk is probably better than plain milk, as the souring likely consumes some of the lactose. Or yoghurt, one of my cats is crazy for that.
Past that, as a general rule:
- OK: gourds (pumpkin, cucumber, watermelon)
- OK: apple, banana
- never OK: alium (onion, leek, garlic) is outright poisonous
- treat it as “not OK” by default: other botanical fruits, unless you know that it’s OK
- OK, but don’t overdo it: non-meat animal protein (cheese, eggs)
- probably OK in small bits, don’t overdo it: if it has too much sugar, salt, or fat (ice cream, peanut butter)
- not OK: if it could give you food poisoning (raw chicken)
- not OK: if it could mechanically harm you once chewed (chicken bones)
