In the 1950's I remember that we used to feed our pet cat milk or cream (if they were lucky) almost exclusively. That was thought to be what they ate, and we had several cats that lived for years on cow's milk. Now my cat won't touch milk and I read that cat's are generally lactose intolerant and shouldn't be fed milk. What happened?

Hello Lorna,

Feeding cats milk has always been a fallicy created by T.V. Cartoons, and generally bad press.  

Cats that lived on farms or dairies would drink the fresh milk, however, their main staples were probably mice, rabbits, etc .  The owners of these farms saw the cats thriving and probably assumed it was the milk.  I'm sure the farmers never saw the diahrrea or vomiting that milk can sometimes cause in cats.

Cats, unlike dogs, are true carnivores which means they thrive on meat only diets and require no vegetable, grain, or dairy supplementation.

The proteins in cow milk are too large for cats to properly digest which can cause intestinal upset, diahrrea, and vomiting.

Not all cats have this problem however.  Just recently we had a cat board at our clinic.  The owner brought a quart of 2% milk for us to feed her cat as a treat in addition to his regular dry food.  This in itself is not unusual, however, the amount of milk she doled out on a daily basis gave us quite a shock.  The cat got 1/4 to 1/2 cup THREE TIMES A DAY!  This is one of the few times I've ever seen a cat have that much milk with no side effects.

Other milks such as goats milk don't seem to have quite the negative effect as cow milk but can still cause problems for cats that are very sensitive to such things.

I hope this answers your question in a satisfactory manner.

Regards,

Cats shouldn't be given cows milk cos it gives them digestion problems. There's different types of milk for different cat breeds. :)