Posts Tagged ‘fruit’
Photo Hunt Saturday:Fresh
Look what you can do with FRESH fruit:
The fruit is actually balanced there without anything holding it together, thanks to my son Noah who has a knack for this sort of thing (yep, same son who leaves the greasy car parts in the living room). The really amazing thing is that there were no cats on the table waiting to knock it down while I raced to get the camera!
Should Cats Eat Fruit And Veggies?
It seems like most cats like fruits and vegetables to some extent. Since they are carnivores, we have to wonder if they actually need the nutrients in plants, just like the taste, don’t really know what’s good for them, or just eat what they see their humans eating.
First of all, extracting nutrients from plant-based foods requires bacterial fermentation of the cellulose based plant structure. The cat has a very simple digestive tract insufficient for bacterial fermentation. Food entering the cat’s stomach is broken down by acids and enzymes produced by the cat, and the nutrients are absorbed in the small intestine, so it seems that cats don’t require any added nutrition from plants since they can’t digest the plants. That’s why they eat grass, so they can barf it up.
The tongues of cats do not have receptors for sweets, so unlike other mammals, they cannot taste the sweetness of fruits. It’s a mystery why some cats really go for sweet fruits like bananas and cantaloupe if they can’t taste the best part, the sweetness!
Most people know that grapes and raisins can cause renal failure, but eating plant matter of any type also alters the body chemistry and causes urine pH to be alkaline. Naturally occurring minerals in the urine form solids when the urine’s pH is above neutral, causing urinary crystals – an epidemic disease of nutritional origin which causes the cat great pain, and can lead to death.
Fruits and vegetables can putrefy in the cat’s digestive tract due to the cat’s inability to efficiently break down the cellulose in plants. This can cause vomiting, gas, and/or diarrhea.
Plant matter in the cat’s diet can also interfere with the proper absorption of nutrients from animal source, and the overall amount of plant matter in the diet can displace much-needed animal based food. Diets containing plant matter are much less dense in nutritional and caloric value.
How about the food in the digestive tract of the mice and other animals that are a cat’s natural diet?
An adult cat needs to eat an average of five mice or 140g of mouse per day to meet its daily caloric requirement. Dissections of wild mice have revealed that a single mouse stomach – always found to be full - weighs 2 grams. The contents varied seasonally from blackberries, to nuts, to greens. Therefore, the cat would end up eating about 10 grams (or 2 teaspoons) of plant matter as part of her daily meal of mice, but that’s if the cat actually ate the stomach and intestines, which in most cases they don’t.
So, in the long run, it’s probably best not to let your cat eat fruit and vegetables, or only a tiny bit once in a while.
