Sharing foods with cats is common practice among owners, and some people even think cats can eat everything that a human can eat and vice versa. However, it is not as safe as you imagine. In fact, the human digestive system is different from the cat – which means some of our healthy foods are poisonous to them, and ingestion of misidentified foodstuffs can damage cats’ health or even life-threatening. Therefore, it is necessary for you to know what foods are safe for cats to eat and what should be kept away from them.
What foods should cats avoid?
1. Dog food
Many people just purchase one type of animal food when they are adopting both cats and dogs in order to save money. Actually, your cat can sometimes eat a small amount of dog food, even though it does not like the taste of that thing so much. However, because cats and dogs have divergent digestive systems and nutritious diet requirements, excessive consumption of dog food is not a good idea.
In essence, cats are carnivores like other felines, which means their body needs to be offered determined proteins and animal fats. Besides, it is important for them to be fully provided with vitamin A, Taurine, and acid arachidonic. On the other hand, dogs are a type of omnivore that have a flexible and diverse diet, and especially, they have the ability to synthesize those cats’ substantial nutrients on their own. Therefore, dog food can not meet enough of your cat’s nutrient needs which negatively affects its health and physical well-being.
The Association of American Feed Control Officials (AAFCO) has worked with the Food and Drug Administration to enact the food standards for each type of pet and their life stages. Therefore, besides getting specifically designed food for your cat, you should buy the products which have the AAFCO seal and notice the information about your cat’s life stage at the present.
2. Caffeine and Chocolate
Caffeine and theobromine are two similar chemical compounds that are found in chocolate, tea, and a cup of coffee. Although cats are not really interested in sweet foods, accidentally tasting a piece of chocolate can put their lives at risk.
After being tolerated, Theobromine releases Epinephrine and affects the digestive, nervous, and cardiovascular systems of the cat. The symptoms when your cat is intoxicated with chocolate will emerge after a few hours or days and can be summarized as accelerated heart rate, vomiting, diarrhea, thirst, convulsion, and coma. Besides, the darker the chocolate, the more dangerous it is for cats. In other words, the fineness of chocolate in one bar is proportional to the toxic it can be for a cat. One piece of dark chocolate can kill the cat and weighs up to 4 and 5 kilograms, but the white chocolate is evidently innocuous to them due to its nature.
If one day you detect your cat unwittingly swallowing a bit of chocolate or relative foods, you must bring them to meet the veterinarian as soon as possible. In addition, you can also give your cat some first aid in order to minimize the risk of fatality, such as helping them to vomit the food, and refill their body with water
3. Raw meats, eggs, fish, and bones
Maybe you think that your cat can consume undercooked meat when seeing they are chasing a mouse. However, it is just one of the cats’ instinctive behaviors of their wild relatives, which still exist up to now. According to research, all raw foods potentially contain many pathogenic bacterias and parasites, which cause vomiting and diarrhea, such as salmonella, E. coli, Clostridium, Toxoplasmosis Gondii, and Trichinosis. Even though the cats’ digestive system can effectively process raw meats, they are possibly food poisoning, and even cause disease in humans. Moreover, feeding your cat meat without eliminating bones can probably break its teeth, cause choking, or worse, breach the gastrointestinal tract.
Raw eggs also encompass similar bacteria to raw meats and especially avidin, which is contained in egg whites and prevents vitamin B absorption in cats. In order to ensure the safety of both, better fill your cat with cooked meats without bones and boiled egg
4. Grapes, raisins
Although there is not any correct explanation for grapes being poisonous to cats, we can make sure that they should stay away from this fruit and its relatives. Grapes and raisins are similar to each other, causing your cat to have typical kidney problems like dehydration, drinking water and urinating constantly. After 24 hours, there are some extra symptoms such as diarrhea, loss of appetite, and becoming ill. Even if not every cat can be allergic to this fruit, it is potentially trapped inside the throat and smothering your cat due to its shape.
You should avoid feeding grapes and also raisins to cats and keep those fruits discreetly, for preventing the cat’s curiosity
-> Read more: What Fruits Are Good For Cats?
5. Dairy products
Realistically, cats find it hard to absorb the Lacoste in milk, especially kittens. The weak digestive system of baby cats is not good enough to process the large amount of Lacoste that we are drinking every day. Consequently, kittens will suffer an attack of diarrhea, indigestion, and loss of appetite, which negatively affects their health and physical growth in the future. This simultaneously happens to mature and older cats because of the loss of Lacoste digestion ability after they had been weaned. Therefore, you should let your cats drink their mother’s milk or specifically designed milk for cats in the pet shops, instead of your daily milk.
Cats may also meet similar symptoms if they eat ice cream because of the large quantities of the Lacoste in frozen desserts. Besides, there is a fact that ice cream can freeze cats’ brains. This phenomenon can be explained by the instant change in brain aneurysm diameter. Although it can not kill cats but leaves them suffering the pain that they never want
6. Onions and garlic
Your cat is very sensitive to onions and garlic. As evidence of that, if cats are just exposed to a small number of onions or garlic, like onion soup mix or powder, they still can be vomiting, break down, and have diarrhea. Moreover, generally consuming onions and garlic will direct sulfoxides and disunphua into the cats’ bodies, which damage red blood cells and lead to anemia, or even worse, death. Therefore, you must be careful with foods that are processed with onion and garlic before sharing your dish with your cat.
The optimal ways are sorting out those spices away or avoiding feeding them. Promptly carry your cat to the nearest veterinarian in time when you find or think it accidentally eats onions or garlic. The potential side effects come after 5 days, so bringing your cat to professionals will be better than trying to make it vomit
7. Wines and alcoholic beverages
Not only wines or beers, soft drinks and other beverages also have negative impacts on cats. It is a fact that they can be drunk like humans, but the consequences they have to suffer are harder than ours.
Alcohol badly affects cats’ liver and brain, causing vomiting, diarrhea, or even worse, coma and death – depending on the amount of alcohol intake. One soup spoon of beer drank a cat into critical condition, and two coffee spoons of Whisky caused serious poisoning of a cat. Therefore, bottles of alcoholic drinks should be put away from cats’ eyesights.
What foods should we feed them?
1. Seafood
Obviously, fish is their favorite seafood. It contains a lot of omega-3 which is very necessary for improving their eyesight, joints, brain, and cursing heart hurt problems. There are plenty of types of fish that will supply full nutrients for your cats such as tuna, salmon, mackerel,...
Besides, marine products like squid, scallops, shrimp, crab, ... are also interested in by cats. Those foodstuffs include minerals that help produce red blood cells for the body. However, make sure that your cat is served cooked foods because raw seafood potentially contains dangerous bacteria and parasites that cause disease for your pet.
2. Meat
Meat is the important foodstuff for cats, which provides protein, acid amin, vitamins, and energy to maintain their normal life. Your cat can eat diverse types of meats that you do not need to worry about when shopping such as beef, pork, chicken, ... and require simple cooking techniques, especially boiled foods.
One note is you should select the leanest part of each meat because it is not a good idea if you let your cat consume too much fat. Besides, frozen meats and cold hams are not healthy and may intoxicate your cat due to a large amount of salt in there.
3. Vegetable
A carnivore like your cat does not mean it does not need vegetables in its nutrient diet. Feeding your cat plant products helps it be supplied fiber and necessary vitamins for improving its digestive system.
Remember, do not give cats carrots, spinach, green bean, grapes, and Maccas products, due to including too much acid oxalic and some can make cats become ill. Instead, you can try cucumber, broccoli, and asparagus, limiting your cat’s vegetable consumption, below 15 grams a day.
4. Pate and dry cat food.
If your cat is too lazy to drink water regularly, pate is the most suitable food that is not only easy to make but also very effective. This food can be eaten at every stage of life because of its easy digestion. The main ingredients in this food are meat, fish, and animal liver. Some people add other types of veggies into pate in order to make nutrients complementary for their cats. Anyway, you can easily find quality canned pate with attractive smells in supermarkets, groceries, or pet shops in the local town. However, excessive use of pate for your cat is not really good at all. High levels of vitamin A inside can affect its muscles and frames, cause your cat to be lacking nutrients, or even have a stomach. Therefore, you should supplement your cat’s ration with dry cat food for extra nutrients supplementation and avoid giving it more than 3 bowls of pate a week.
Dry cat food is also a good solution for your cat. Different products from different brands have their own distinct flavors and tastes but enthrall your cat like a pate. Dry food can cause an addiction to the cats; thus, you should handle the number of foods they devour and make sure your cat drinks enough water
