the milk and the cat thing

so, in his lessons andrew mentioned the fakt that milk kann couse diarrhoe with cats.
that is true, if you like to know the details, read on.


in the milk there is some milksugar (lactose). all mammals have lactose in their milk, and only the mammals-babys have an enzyme (lactase) to spilt this sugar so the body can adsorbe it. adults do not have this enzyme so the milksugar stays in the colon and by the laws of osmosis it draws water out of the colontissue or it doesnt allow water to get in the colontissue.

so the water is held kept by the sugar and it coms out.... (yeakk)

so what you can do, if you want to feed your cat some milk, is to buy milk that doesnt have lactose in it (catmilk usualy doesnt, and there are human-milk that are with reduces lactose), or you could give the cat some enzyme that you could buy in a drugstore (but i actually do not have in mind what dosis to giv a random heavy cat)
other option is to give your cat a little milk with water mixed. the cat gets more water so the lost netto is less, and the lacose-quantaty is less than in pure milk. so you can try it out. as long as the cat doesnt really have diarrhoe or abdominal pain, there is no problem. so you can give your cat some milk in one of the above ways.

one thing to mention. human are mammals to, so why the heck do we as adults have the enzyme?
that is a good question. we actually shouldnt. most asian people dont for example.
the guess is that we started giving babys cowmilk and somehow we got used to it so over the decades that our bodys still are able to be nourished by milk. but is actually not very natueraly. and more and more humans in europ and north amerika are haven problems with milk.... in germany about 8%

Oh! cool! Thats the reason!

Allthough my cats do sometimes get cowmilk and the male doesnt even like it but the female does and she NEVER gets diarrhoe. But I also never giver her that much anyway...

aendym wrote:Oh! cool! Thats the reason!

Allthough my cats do sometimes get cowmilk and the male doesnt even like it but the female does and she NEVER gets diarrhoe. But I also never giver her that much anyway...

then there is no reason not to give it, if she tolerates it and likes it.