Is there any reason for a dog not to eat cat food?

Have you tried putting the cats regular food up higher out of his reach either on the counter or top of fridge?

It also gives the kitty some exercise.

It’s not optimal. Too much protein, for one thing, other nutritional imbalances as well. A little bit now and then can’t hurt but if he substitutes it for is own food that could lead to problems.

My dog doesn’t just eat cat food…

@Buttonstc We keep the cat’s food on the stairs, and put a gate at the bottom when we’re gone so he can’t get up, but he usually manages to sneaks some at some point in the day.

A cat food diet Is far too rich for a dog and will likely give Fido diarrhea as well as lead to problems down the road.

@holden ew.

i tried cat food once. It is scratchy and has almost no flavour at all

Cat food is higher calorie than dog food (fat) which I guess is why they like it so much. (To say nothing of how much they like it recycled.) Dogs are gross. :-) If you just use the cat food as training treats, I don’t think it would be bad, you just might need to adjust the amount of his regular food so he doesn’t get fat…if it’s a pup, though, that probably won’t be an issue.

Eating cat food regularly will give a dog a urinary tract infection.

google it

You need to gate off the cat food.

Many dog trainers use turkey or chicken breast cut into little cubes and the dogs just love it.

It’s much healthier an alternative than cat food. If you use cat food to reward him, you are just reinforcing a behavior which you are trying to prevent, namely the eating of cat food.

It’s not as if he’ll keel over dead, but it just sounds rather counter-productive. Reinforce the desirable behaviors.

Hubris.

How about if my cat keeps getting into my dog’s dinner? Is that bad for the cat?

Dog food is less harmful to cats than cat food is to dogs, but again, it is not optimal nutrition.

A long term exclusive diet of cat food would be harmful, but a few bites stolen once in awhile will not hurt him.

I’m surprised your cat has the chance to get any of the dogs food since they usually scarf it down like a Hoover :)

It’s much more difficult to prevent a cat from getting the dogs food unless you put the dog in a room with the door closed. They are such silent little sneaks, aren’t they?

The occasional small amount of each others food is bound to happen occasionally in a multi pet household. As long as it’s not more than that, I wouldn’t stress about it overmuch.

Dogs are omnivores, like people. Cats are carnivores; their food does not provide the necessary nutrients for a dog’s diet. It would be like a human eating nothing but meat. No veggies, no dairy, no grains – just meat. I think everyone can agree that would not be a healthy diet.

Edit: Dogs can be carnivorous, but they can also digest and get nutrition from vegetables and grains, which is not true of cats. Even if a dog just eats other animals, it will get nutrition from any food in the digestive tract of it’s prey. So, if it eats an herbivore, then the strictly carnivorous dog becomes an omnivore. Once removed?

Also, cats should not eat dog food as their regular source of food because it lacks Taurine. A prolonged lack of Taurine can lead to eye, teeth and heart problems.

@ratboy

Oblique much tonight?

Gets REAL expensive! Our cat’s food is way up high…

@Supacase- Dogs are not omnivores, they are carnivores. They just aren’t obligate carnivores as cats are.

@Rachienz Cats only get into dog food as a last resort. Dogs, on the other hand, will choose cat food over their food, everytime.

Our cat only eats the dog food, turns her nose up even at the expensive canned food. I read the ingredients on both bags -just not that different. Maybe its because the cat is bigger than the dog!

@faye I have a pair with that problem too! And the cat isn’t even a big cat!

@Val123 and the vet says they’re both healthy.

IDK what the difference is between cat food and dog food. I just know that we’d go through 2 $5.00 bags of cat food everyday if we fed our dogs cat food! Which they’d prefer, actually….I wonder if we can start feeding our cats dog food? It’s a lot cheaper….

@faye

I’m surprised that your vet did not suggest a Taurine supplement.

I don’t believe it’s contained in dog food. The blindness that a Taurine deficiency can cause in cats is NOT reversible later.

Is the vet aware that the dog food is being the cat’s primary food and not just an occasional snack?

Yes, he never said anything about taurine, I’ll go look it up. This fluthering is teaching me!!!

@Buttonstc clear now-the vet’s not worried because our cat is the neighborhood mouser and I have had to toss out dead birds and some not so dead birds!

Well that was an important little bit of info left out at first.

:)

But that makes sense since, aside from food supplements, the only source of Taurine is raw meat. That’s one of the reasons why cats are termed obligate carnivore. They cannot survive on a vegetarian diet.

A dog could if it was necessary. They wouldn’t be thrilled about it but the would be ok, healthwise. Cats just aren’t designed that way.

Well, I’m happy for both you and your weird pets :D

Gail regularly keeps us here updated on her cat Milo’s hunting exploits with a running tally on the number of mice caught. Do you also keep track or does yours eat them all rather than leave them as gifts for you?

My cat is quite content to look out the windows at her own “Wildlife TV” channel. Squirrels, birds, deer, neighborhood dogs, etc.

I find the best thing to use as training treats is little bits of cheese! Obviously not too much but my dogs will do anything for cheese!

rip in the time-space continuum.

My cats eat the dog’s food too, but I don’ think they eat much of it. One of them eats it more than the others, but she’s not fat and she wolfs down her canned food in the morning and eats plenty of her own dry food. I think she just likes variety. She’ll eat just about anything. Sometimes I think she and the dog had a brain swap.

@Leanne1986 Heck, I use cheerios! I think it’s the concept of a “treat” and praise that gets them, more than the actual food.

@Val123 – “Cats only get into dog food as a last resort. Dogs, on the other hand, will choose cat food over their food, everytime.”

Our cat is just an absolute glutton. He eats his food, then tries to trick my partner into feeding him a second helping and failing that will sneak into the dogs dinner.

He is regularly wormed and is healthy + a healthy weight. He is just a pig. LOL

PS: Can anyone tell me how to write in italics on here?

@Rachienz Use the underscore before and after what you want to italicize. _ like this _ but without the spaces.

@Rachienz We have a self dispensing cat food thing on top of the dryer. Don’t have to worry about feeding them but once every two weeks. It’s so interesting how loving they get when they’re hungry and out of food….

I just read the current dog food and there is taurine added to it.

@faye So it’d be OK for a dog to eat cat food? The main thing was that cat food had taurine in it, because they are total carnivores. They won’t much on carrots and bread like dogs will….