Posts Tagged ‘nutrition’

When it comes to our cat’s diets, all cat owners should be aware of the high levels of salt in human food.  Of course we all want to treat our little feline companions from time to time, but the deli counter at the supermarket simply isn’t the right place to buy your treats!  We humans already eat too much salt; it’s in almost all of our food!  If a cat consumes too much salt, by being fed human food for example, it can cause all kinds of nasty problems – urinary tract infections expecially!  If you want to treat your cat and insist on doing it with human food, consider organic meat shops instead.

Do try to get food without grain and always avoid milk.  Despite the fact that cats and milk seem to go hand in hand, dairy products aren’t good for them and they’ll put on a lot of weight pretty fast!  I this respect cats are like humans; they might foods that are bad for them!

Otherwise, don’t treat your cat’s diet like you would a human – be specific with your treats!  For the real cat-lover, I can highly recommend Paws, Applause or Thrive Cat Treats – especially the freeze-dried chicken and prawns!  My cats can’t get enough of them!

Of course, when humans and cats live side by side, sometimes things do go a bit wrong with their diet- they do have  a knack of getting into the rubbish don’t they?  For this reason, I always advise cat owners to get pet insurance; it means you can whisk them off to the vet at the first sign of trouble, without worrying about the charges!

Even less safe than alcohol for cats, is chocolate. Shocking, isn’t it? It contains a substance called theobromine; which raises their heart rate and makes them urinate more often – causing hyperactivity, an irregular heart beat and thirst. Before too many hours have elapsed it can also cause to vomiting and diarrhoea; eventually even leading to heart attacks before the day is done.

This is the only way cats and chocolate should mix.

The most dangerous kinds of chocolate to give you cat are those containing high amounts of cocoa; cooking chocolate, gourmet chocolate and cocoa powder. Milk chocolate is the least dangerous type of chocolate to give your cat, but is still dangerous to their health. Chocolate may be a treat for you, but there are a huge range of cat-treats available that your pet will like a lot more! Give you pet and your cat insurance a real treat next time and put some effort into finding a truly delicious treat.

We may turn to alcohol in good times and bad, but it’s very unsafe to give to your cat.

What with the war on drugs, it’s easy to forget that alcohol is as much of a drug as any other – more so than cannabis so say. The fact that it is legal is not to do with it being safer for us to consume, but more because it’s too dangerous for us no ban it! With regards to cats, let us never forget that alcohol is “poisonous”; human beings have been consuming it in some form or another since prehistoric times and have literally evolved to handle it better than animals. Cats, on the other hand, have not. Their livers help handle the vast amounts of protein they require; not to detoxify substances like alcohol.

Repeated consumption of alcohol will cause liver damage, gastrointestinal irritation and breathing difficulties, as well as potentially comas and death. Granted this is also true in human beings, but we’re a lot bigger than cats and have evolution on our side! It may seem like a funny idea at the time, but don’t give alcohol to your cat; it’ll hurt your pet and your cat insurance policy.