Milk For The Kitty

I have often been asked by new owners of cats and kittens, "Must I feed it milk everyday?"

This is one of those cat questions that confuse not only new cat owners but also the general public at large.

Kittens need to drink their mother's milk while they are nursing. Milk produced by the queen at the beginning of her lactation contains colostrum or what some vets call "first milk." Colostrum is an important source of maternal antibodies that provide a passive resistance towards infectious diseases, until the kitten's immune system is fully developed and functioning. When the kittens suckle, they absorb these antibodies through the gut, a process which is only possible during the first 16 hours of life. Colostrum is also very nutritious, full of the fat and protein that kittens need to support rapid growth and weight gain, especially during the vital early stages of life.

Apart from that, I wonder why and how cats ever became so closely associated with milk, just as mice are supposedly linked to cheese. In fact, scientists have found that mice don't really like cheese very much at all and would prefer foods with higher sugar content such as chocolate! As part of a wider study into animals and food, they found that a mouse's diet is primarily made up of grains and fruit, and that it would generally reject something as strong in smell and rich in taste as cheese.

Milk for the kitty? Perhaps it has been subliminally disseminated into our minds from infancy by Enid Blyton's various accounts of "serving a saucer of warm milk to the cold and wet puss to make it feel better, while it curls itself up to dry on a woolly rug by the fireplace."

Don't get me wrong. Cats and kittens can drink cow's milk occasionally, but they do not need to drink it. A cat can easily live its whole life without ever having cow's milk. Most feral or wild cats never have cow's milk anyway. Ever seen a stray cat milking a cow or drinking out of its udder?!

Kittens, of course, are able to produce ample quantities of an enzyme called lactase, which is necessary to help them digest lactose, a sugar present in their mother's milk. However, similar to humans, many kittens eventually develop lactose intolerance upon weaning or at about 3 months of age. They therefore cannot digest cow's milk properly thence, as their bodies stop producing this enzyme. As undigested lactose passes through the intestinal tract, it draws water along with it. In addition to that, the undigested sugars are fermented by bacteria present in the colon and volatile fatty acids are produced. This almost always results in diarrhoea and gastroenteritis.

If your cat or kitten comes down with diarrhoea as a result of drinking cow's milk, stop giving it milk and it should pass. Some 'milkoholic' cat owners who have lactose-intolerant cats still insist on occasionally giving their cats lactose-free milk, which can be purchased from most pet stores and veterinary clinics. If your cat digests milk without a problem, then you are safe to give it the occasional milk treat.

However, it is important to note that cow's milk should never be given as the primary or basal food source for any cat or kitten since it lacks many essential nutrients required to keep your feline companion healthy. If a cat consumes a nutritionally complete and balanced commercial diet, it will not require any of the nutrients found in milk and therefore, there is no need or reason to give it milk.