Printed by: Ingrid King. Final Up to date on: October 23, 2022 by Crystal Uys
Quite a lot of cats love fish, however feeding it as greater than a really occasional deal with may just isn’t a good suggestion and might be dangerous to your cat’s well being. The first fish utilized in cat meals are salmon, tilefish (normally identifed as ocean whitefish on the label) and tuna. Every of them presents well being points, as a result of fish can include poisonous doses of frequent water pollution, heavy metals, and different contaminants. Mercury is taken into account one of many prime ten chemical substances of main public well being concern by the World Well being Group.
Mercury in fish
Mercury leads to the air from energy plant emissions. When it rains, the mercury within the air falls into lakes, rivers and oceans. Micro organism in these our bodies of water convert the mercury into methylmercury, a extremely poisonous type that will get simply absorbed into small organisms. Small fish ingest it after they eat these tiny organisms, and greater fish eat the smaller fish. Due to this, bigger fish, who’re on the prime of the predatory meals chain, include greater ranges of mercury.
Mercury poisoning in cats
Persistent publicity to mercury causes main issues in cats and people. Indicators of mercury poisoning in cats embody neurological injury which manifests as a lack of coordination and steadiness, or issue strolling. Since these signs can mimic different sicknesses, together with thiamine (a B vitamin) deficiency, mercury toxicity is probably not the very first thing a veterinarian suspects, so it might stay undiagnosed.
Kidney illness and mercury
Mercury has been linked to kidney injury in human drugs, starting from elevated protein within the urine to kidney failure. Kidney illness in cats has reached epidemic proportions, and whereas there is no such thing as a definitive hyperlink to the excessive fish content material in lots of cat meals, it’s not a lot of a leap to contemplate that there could also be a correlation.
Hold your cat protected from mercury
For those who should feed fish-based meals, look at cat meals labels fastidiously. Many industrial meals have small quantities of fish even in varieties labeled as poultry, beef or different proteins. Sadly, well being rules for meat and fish utilized in pet meals are much more lax than they’re for human meals. The Pure Sources Protection Council maintains a Client Information to Mercury in Fish that lists fish from least to highest mercury content material. Use the listing as a information whenever you test cat meals labels.
