Health Complications When Cat Eats Dog Food

• Food Formulation: Cat and dog food may look the same to you, but they are formulated with very different nutritional requirements in mind. They are not just the same product packaged differently!
• Amino Acid: Dog food does not contain added taurine, an essential amino acid for cats. Cats cannot synthesize enough triune from other amino acids, while dogs and humans can.
• Health Issues: Without taurine added to its diet, a cat can suffer reproductive disorders, eye lesions leading to total blindness and potentially fatal hear enlargement.
• Taurine: Commercial cat food has all the taurine cats needs.
• Supplementation: If you prepare your cat’s meal instead of buying commercial cat food, add taurine supplements to its diet no matter how much meat you feed it, because taurine is destroyed by cooking while raw meat poses health risks for domestic cats.

Dog food is not dangerous in itself of course. So if kitty gets the occasional can of dog food or steals from your dog’s dinner bowl, don’t panic—it won’t harm the cat just make sure it’s eating enough of its own cat food.

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The stereotypical picture of a dog happily gnawing on a bone is a dangerous one. Believing it could put your dog’s well-being at risk.

Most bones are bad for dogs, especially those that splinter easily, like chicken bones. These are carelessly tossed to strays, and may be devoured happily by dogs, but wreak internal havoc. I know of dogs that suffered and had to be put down because their stomachs and intestines were pierced by chicken bone splinters.

One sometimes hears people insisting that they have fed their dogs chicken bones for years and they remain healthy. This may be true for some lucky (and very hardy) pets, but it takes only one splinter to slowly kill. So don’t take the risk to know if your dog is the hardy ones.

Wolves may devour a carcass—bones and all—without harm, but your average domestic dog is hardly a wolf. Furthermore, those bones that the wolves devour are raw ones and usually larger than chicken bones.

Larger bones like those from cattle rarely splinter and could be safer. However, cattle bones carry their own health risks, and anyway, chewing on something as hard as bone over the long term could damage your pet’s teeth.

Never throw hard and heavy objects like large cattle bones, stones, metal bowls and so non to your dog to catch. A dog will eagerly leap up to catch the heavy item, only to crack its teeth or break its jaw. Throw that bouncy rubber ball instead!

Related Topics

• What Are The Health Complications When Cat Eats Dog Food