Can I Give My Cat Couscous?

Can I give my cat couscous?

Can I give my cat couscous?Couscous is a form of pasta in little tiny balls, and finds its way into many different recipes. Since it is so small it is often thought of as a treat to give your cat, but is it something that they should have?

Cats can do quite well on an all meat diet, as much as us humans wouldn’t be able to sustain it. This is because they’re what’s known as an obligate carnivore. Some people eat meat because it tastes good, and many eat it because they think humans are supposed to eat it, but if you look at the digestive system you see that it contains plenty of large and small intestines that are designed to break down fruits and vegetables.

A cat on the other hand has a different digestive path, and they don’t have yards of intestines, they are set up to quickly consume meat and have it pass from their bodies after they pull all of the nutrients form it. Their physiology is also set up so that they convert meat into energy better than humans.

Can I Give My Cat Couscous? Answer: Not Recommended

Couscous is a grain and cats don’t need to eat grains in any way, shape or form. The sad thing is that many cat foods out there use grains as filler, so unless you are feeding your cat a premium diet they may already be quite used to eating grain products. In this regard, if you are out of cat food and need to supplement with couscous, it may be able to hold them over until their next real meal. But ideally you would not want to give your cats couscous if you can help it.

Not Really Special
Although couscous has an exotic name and looks as though it’s made from special ingredients, it simply boils down to pasta, and because of this it is not good nor necessarily bad for your cat to have. It’s not the best thing they could be eating, but because of its small size you can give your cat a few bits to see how they like it and there will be little consequence. Filling up their dish with a pile of couscous would not be a good idea.

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Keep Kitty Healthy
Keeping your furry friend healthy requires giving them what they really need, which is protein derived from animals. They are carnivores and their digestive system is set up accordingly. They are not meant to process things like couscous, and if you think about it for a bit you will realize that there is not way they would ever find couscous in the wild. It’s been heavily processed and cooked by man and therefore represents something a wild cat would never eat. They also would not eat the grains that come from it, or the plants that the grains come from. Lions run through the fields to chase animals, they don’t nibble on the grass like the prey they eat.

Little Has Changed
Some owners make the case that cats have been domesticated for quite some time now and have adapted to human foods. But digestively speaking they still resemble their big cat cousins that are thriving in the wild by eating meat as their sole source of nourishment. In the bigger picture cats have been wild for far longer than they’ve been domesticated, and they still retain much of their animal nature. Many domesticated kittens and cats love to stalk their cat toys and pounce on them. That wouldn’t be an instinct still if they had gotten used to domesticated living, since their food is presented to them daily.

Choosing Good Foods
If you are giving your cat premium cat food that has meat as the main ingredient, there’s really no need to supplement their diet with anything else, especially things like couscous. This only acts to disrupt their system and leave it wondering what is going on. Pets thrive on consistency, and as much as we wouldn’t like to eat the same foods day in and day out, they thrive on the regularity of knowing what their next meal is going to be like.

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