Cats are usually notorious for being finicky eaters, but that doesn’t mean they don’t have their own preferences. In fact, there are a few foods and ingredients that cats prefer over others and raw chicken is one of them! If your cat is one who prefers to eat raw chicken over other types of meat—and it may be worth giving it a try. Keep reading as we take a look at what the benefits are of feeding raw chicken to cats, as well as the risks involved with feeding this type of food (or not feeding) your feline friend.
Is Raw Chicken Good For Cats?
At first glance, raw chicken is an appealing food for cats. It’s tasty, and it smells good. However, cats are designed to eat meat that has been cooked at a high temperature; their digestive system can’t handle raw poultry. While most people think of this as an issue with dogs—who can get ill from eating undercooked meat—it’s also true for cats.
If your cat does eat some raw chicken or other uncooked meat on occasion, it’s important to watch him closely afterward to make sure he doesn’t start exhibiting signs of illness such as diarrhea or vomiting (which could indicate salmonella poisoning). If you notice any such symptoms in your pet after he’s eaten raw chicken or another uncooked meal, contact your vet right away so they can examine your cat and prescribe the appropriate treatment
The Benefits of Feeding Raw Chicken to Cats
Feeding your cat raw chicken has several benefits. Raw chicken is a good source of protein, and it also contains vitamins and minerals that are necessary to keep your cat healthy. Taurine, which helps with muscle function and heart health, is found in raw chicken meat. Raw chicken is especially beneficial for cats that are overweight or underweight because it can help them achieve an appropriate weight range. Senior cats may also benefit from feeding them raw chicken due to its high protein content. And active cats will benefit from the extra energy they get from eating raw meat
What are the Risks of Feeding Raw Chicken to Cats?
If you’re considering feeding your cat raw chicken, it’s important to understand the risks.
Many pet food manufacturers will tell you that their products are “complete and balanced,” but that doesn’t mean they’re necessarily safe for your cat. Feeding raw chicken—or any other type of protein—is risky because it can contain bacteria like Salmonella, Campylobacter, and Listeria. In fact, a study from the University of Minnesota showed that 39% of raw meat samples tested positive for Campylobacter and 20% tested positive for Salmonella.
The risk extends beyond these two foods: another study found that Toxoplasmosis was present in over 88% of retail chickens. Toxoplasmosis is a parasite that exists within most mammals and can cause serious illness in humans—especially pregnant women who contract toxoplasmosis through handling infected cat feces or eating undercooked meats containing cysts containing Toxoplasma gondii.
What to Do If Your Cat Accidentally Ate Raw Chicken?
If your cat has eaten raw chicken, it’s important to monitor your cat for signs of illness. When you notice any symptoms such as vomiting or diarrhea, contact your veterinarian immediately.
“If a cat is healthy and the chicken was cooked, I wouldn’t worry about it,” said Dr. Bonnie Beaver, a professor emeritus at Texas A&M University College of Veterinary Medicine & Biomedical Sciences who served as president of the American College of Veterinary Internal Medicine from 2013-14. “But if he got into something raw like meat without being cooked, then we have a lot more trouble.”
How To Safely Prepare Raw Chicken for Cats
If you want to feed your cat raw chicken, here are some tips for safely preparing it:
- Wash your hands before and after handling the raw chicken. This is especially important if you’ve been handling any other meats or raw vegetables. The most common way for cats to get salmonella is by ingesting contaminated foods that they have licked or touched while eating. A simple way to prevent this is by always washing your hands thoroughly after handling the food.
- Wash chicken thoroughly with soap and water before serving it to your cat, because even though the meat may appear clean on the outside, there could still be bacteria present on its surface that can make your pet sick if ingested without proper preparation.
- Rinse chicken under running cold tap water for at least three minutes before cutting it into smaller pieces fit for serving. If possible, use a separate cutting board from those used in preparing other foods since cross-contamination of harmful bacteria between meats can occur fairly easily. You should also wash any utensils used in cutting up the meat with warm soapy water when done using them so as not to risk cross-contamination during storage time later down line either!
How Much Raw Chicken Can A Cat Eat?
Cats are carnivores, so they need to eat meat to thrive. Cats can eat raw chicken, but not raw bones. Be careful serving your cat raw chicken that has bones in it, as they can easily choke on small pieces or swallow them whole. A dog’s digestive system is better equipped to handle larger chunks of bone, while cats’ systems aren’t able to break down the large amounts of calcium found in bones.
Chicken is one of the most popular meats fed to cats and can be fed daily as part of their diet; however, make sure that you pair it with other foods such as fruits and vegetables for a complete meal plan for your pet. Also, remember that your cat should still get important vitamins and minerals from commercial pet food brands (or at least once per week).
How Often Can You Feed Cat Raw Chicken?
The answer to the question “how often can a cat eat raw chicken?” is that it needs to be done in moderation. There are a few reasons for this.
- The first reason is that cats can’t process large amounts of raw meat easily, so giving them too much will only lead to problems like vomiting or diarrhea.
- The second reason is that not all cats enjoy eating raw chicken, even if they like other types of meat (like canned tuna). If you notice your cat starting to have digestive issues after eating raw chicken over time, consider switching brands and/or types of food until you find one that works better with their stomachs—and don’t be afraid to ask your vet for the advice! For example, some people may recommend feeding their felines canned salmon instead since it contains fewer bones than other kinds of seafood such as tuna (which could cause injury). The important thing is making sure that both humans and pets alike are getting proper nutrition from whatever type of diet they choose so we can all live longer lives together!
Can Pregnant Cats Eat Raw Chicken?
While chicken isn’t necessarily bad for cats, it can be dangerous during pregnancy. Some raw chicken products are contaminated with salmonella, which can lead to serious illness in both you and your cat. So what can you feed your pregnant cat if not raw chicken? Treats like freeze-dried liver or meat-based treats are a great alternative. If you don’t have any on hand, there are some recipes available online that will help meet your pet’s nutritional needs while keeping him safe.
If he does eat raw chicken: If your cat has eaten raw chicken, call the vet right away as soon as possible! You should also monitor his behavior and keep an eye out for any illness symptoms such as diarrhea and vomiting over the next few days or weeks after eating the uncooked meat product from a store or restaurant meal prepared with no regard for health regulations required by law enforcement agencies before being served at public establishments (or home-cooked meals).
Not All Raw Chicken Parts Are Good For Cats
You should never give your cat raw chicken bones. The animal can choke on the bone or develop an obstruction in the digestive tract if it eats one.
The skin of the raw chicken is not good for cats, either. Cats are carnivores and do not have the necessary enzymes to break down proteins in raw meat; this is why they need to eat a diet that includes both meat and vegetables. Chicken skin contains lots of fat, which could upset your cat’s stomach if consumed.
You may want to consider cooking or freezing all raw chicken before feeding it to your cat—especially if you’re feeding him some kind of ground-up recipe that might contain other ingredients he shouldn’t eat (like onions or garlic).
Conclusion
While it’s great that you are thinking about feeding your cat raw chicken, you should be careful with this type of food. While some parts of the chicken are safe for cats to eat, others may not. It’s important to make sure that your pet doesn’t swallow any bones or other pieces of meat that could cause an obstruction in their digestive tract.
This article originally appeared on CatBandit.com and was syndicated by MediaFeed.org.
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The WWII cat that wouldn’t die & other nearly unbelievable historical facts
Every day, weird but true things happen and take the world by storm, like when a raccoon scaled a New York City skyscraper back in 2018. But these fascinating stories aren’t anything new. Throughout history, people (and critters) have done weird stuff, leading to a long list of bizarre, fake-sounding historical events both small and large.
Here, we offer just a sample platter of the weirdest, oddest, most eyebrow-raising historical events we could find around the web.
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Wiki Commons
Vesna Vulović was a flight attendant for the former Yugoslavian airline JAT. On Jan. 26, 1972, when she was 22, she was accidentally scheduled to work after her name got mixed up on the flight roster with another Vesna, and the plane she boarded exploded in the air after a briefcase bomb went off. She was the only survivor of JAT flight 367 bound for Copenhagen, and she was the only person known to have survived a 33,000-foot fall in all of history.
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Wiki Commons
On Aug. 27, 1896, Britain went to war with Zanzibar … for a whopping 38 minutes. The war was fought over the ascension of Zanzibar’s next Sultan. The Anglo-Zanzibar War ended when the new sultan, Sultan Khalid, who was anti-British, lost about 500 men, while only one British sailor died. Khalid sought asylum in Germany, and the British placed Sultan Hamoud in his stead.
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Think your alarm clock is annoying? Until the 1970s, people called knocker-uppers used to go around waking people up for work by knocking on people’s windows. They used sticks, hammers, rattles, and pea shooters to wake up their clients.
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Khutulun, a Genghis Khan descendant, told every suitor that they had to beat her in wrestling or she wouldn’t accept their marriage proposal. If they won, she’d marry them, and if she won, she’d get some of their horses. She ended up with thousands of horses and zero husbands.
Maître de la Mazarine / Gallica Digital Library / Wiki Commons
Tablecloths were actually designed to be one big, long, communal napkin. While that may sound unthinkable todays, back before 1465, tablecloths were meant to be shared as guests to wipe their hands and faces during dinner parties.
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Robert Liston, a surgeon in the 1800s, was known to be one of the fastest alive at the time. However, sometimes speed isn’t a great thing, as he never saved a patient and actually killed three people. During a leg amputation, he cut off two of his assistant’s fingers, and both the patient and assistant died of gangrene since the saw he used wasn’t clean. His third victim was a fellow doctor. Liston was performing surgery when he ended up swiping a blade through the doctor’s suit coat. The doctor thought he had been cut through, went into shock, and died of a heart attack even though he wasn’t the one on the operating table.
Samuel John Stump / Art UK / Wiki Commons
In 1959, the vice president of PepsiCo tried convincing the former Soviet Union of the benefits of capitalism during an American exhibit in Russia. While The Soviet Union loved Pepsi’s product, Soviet money wasn’t accepted around the world, so they bought billions of dollars’ worth of Pepsi by giving Pepsi military ships, submarines and vodka in exchange for the soda. So, for a while, Pepsi had the world’s sixth largest military. It later sold the ships and subs as scrap recycling.
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Believe it or not, Swedish parliament member Erik Gottfrid Christian Brandt nominated Adolf Hitler for a Nobel Peace Prize in 1939. The nomination was ultimately canceled, but it caused such a huge controversy that no one was awarded a peace prize that year.
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“Father of Tragedy” Aeschylus died from a comical, strange death after an eagle dropped a tortoise on his head. The eagle was trying to break the shell so it could get the tortoise meat. Aeschylus didn’t survive, and his death is still the only documented case of a human death occurring because of a tortoise falling from the sky.
Zde / Wiki Commons
In 1929, a group of women took to the streets, smoking and carrying signs equating smoking with women’s emancipation. Their “torches of freedom” campaign was considered the first wave of feminism in the U.S.
Stanford University / Wiki Commons
“Unsinkable Sam,” who was actually named Oscar, was a WWII cat who found himself on a Nazi navy ship. He later was taken on to a ship owned by the British Royal Navy. During the war, he survived three sinking ships: the Nazi ship Bismarck in 1941, which he was rescued from by British crews who took them onto their own ship; the British ship called Cossack, which killed 159 crew members; and the HMS Ark Royal, which was torpedoed by a Nazi U-boat. He retired in 1955, 14 years after the Bismark sank.
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Palisade invented “The Wild West” by staging gunfights, bank robberies, and other cliches that became staples in dime-store novels of the 1800s. In reality, the town was so peaceful that it didn’t even have a sheriff.
Wiki Commons
Roman Emperor Gaius, commonly known as Caligula, allegedly loved horses more than humans. In fact, he dressed his noble steed Incitatus in a jeweled collar, gave it an ivory manger, and may have even tried to make Incitatus a consul.
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Before becoming an actor or the president, Ronald Reagan was a lifeguard for six summers in Lowell Park in Dixon, Illinois. Research has since shown that he saved 77 drowning people from the notoriously treacherous Rock River.
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Leicester Hemingway, Ernests’s younger brother, decided to found his own country on a raft in international waters close to Jamaica. He called it New Atlantis, which was about 8-by-30 feet and was half independent and half part of the U.S. under the Guano Islands Act of 1856. This was all a publicity stunt to raise money for an oceanographic research facility, which he hoped the raft would serve as, but the raft was destroyed during a tropical storm in 1866.
GoodReads.com
Joseph Stalin “retouched” photos of himself with photos of people who had died or, uh, been “removed” from office under suspicious and, often, violent circumstances.
Public Domain
Harriet the tortoise became Charles Darwin’s pet after he found her in the Galápagos Islands 50 years before his death in 1882. Harriet died in 2006 at the ripe old age of 175 at the Queensland-based Australia Zoo, which was owned by notable zookeeper and conservationist Steve Irwin. He died just a few months after Harriet.
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Charlie Chaplin, the comedy king and silent-film era giant, died in 1977, the same year Apple was founded. Chaplin’s death could therefore be said to have marked the end of one tech era and the beginning of another.
National Portrait Gallery
Very good girl Juliana the Great Dane won herself the Blue Cross Medal during WWII. Her accomplishment? She extinguished an incendiary bomb … by peeing on it!
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Alexander the Great was accidentally buried alive … well, at least, mummified alive. It’s believed that he had a neurological disorder called Guillain-Barré Syndrome, which left him physically paralyzed but still mentally aware when he was pronounced dead and mummified.
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Avengers, assemble … to poison 2,283 German prisoners of war! Before they were box-office heroes, the Avengers, originally called Nakam, or Vengeance, in Hebrew, was actually a Jewish assassin group dedicated to hunting Nazi war criminals after WWII. Throughout their time of operation, it’s believed they poisoned German prisoners of war.
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Throughout the Salem Witch Trials, accused witches weren’t actually burned at the stake. Of the 2,000 or so accused witches, most of them were jailed, a few were hanged, and zero were burned alive.
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Zachary Taylor died after a July 4 party in 1850. Many reports claim a combination of cherry acid and milk caused him to eventually die on July 9, after suffering from cramps, diarrhea, nausea, and dehydration. His official cause of death was cholera morbus, a bacterial infection found in the small intestine.
Library of Congress
Napoleon Bonaparte once had a rabbit hunt arranged for himself and his men. About 3,000 rabbits were rounded up, and once they were let out of their cages, they charged right toward Napoleon and his men. Luckily, he lived to tell the tale.
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Tug of War was actually a summer Olympic sport between 1900 and 1920. Teams competed in it during five summer Olympics. Britain took home the most medals in tug of war, five, followed by America with three.
Washington University / Wiki Commons
The University of Oxford is actually older than the Aztec Empire. The university opened back in 1096, while the Aztec Empire began in 1325.
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Russians celebrated the end of WWII with vodka, and lots of it. In fact, they ran out of vodka, emptying the nation’s entire vodka reserve in just 22 hours.
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Miss Unsinkable,” Violet Jessop, was a nurse and stewardess. She survived three sinking ships: the Titanic, the Britannic, and the Olympic, the last of which collided with a British warship back in 1911.
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Think your last party was a disaster? At the 1904 Olympics in St. Louis, the first place finisher actually ‘ran’ part of the race in a car; the second place finisher nearly died from eating rat poison; and the fourth place finisher ran in dress pants and took a nap during the race.
Washington University / Wiki Commons
Before athletes appeared on cereal boxes, energy drinks and shoes, Roman gladiators often endorsed products like oils and skincare. These gladiators were even made into clay “action figures” for kids. Women thought gladiator sweat was an aphrodisiac, so they would mix it into their skincare products to entice lovers.
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This article was produced and syndicated by MediaFeed.org.
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