Feeding Fish

Hello, my 16 year old cat Amber was recently diagnosed with diabetes, and in addition to starting insulin and home BG testing I'm also switching her from a high carb wet + high carb dry to low carb wet food with no dry. So far she's done okay with the Fancy Feast pate, but she doesn't seem to keen on most of the flavors and I think she just gobbled it up the first time because it was something different.

So last night I was putting together a new food order through Chewy.com using the low carb wet food short list, and settled on a few different variety packs plus some freeze dried treats. However, I noticed in an old thread someone had commented that cats should not be fed fish more than once a week. The Tiki Cat food I ordered is all under 3% carbs, but it's also all fish of some kind. I also got two different Weruva Cats in the Kitchen variety packs, one pouches and one cans that also contain some fish dishes.

So could anyone clarify the concern with fish for me? Really hoping Amber will take to the new foods I ordered; I tried to order things that seemed like real food and not that gross pate because she always liked chunks of meat in gravy but we need to ditch the gravy for the sake of her BG.

Thanks,
Joe

 

This is from Dr Pierson on catinfo.org:

• Fish – I do not feed fish to cats for the following reasons:
  • high allergy potential (manifested as skin allergies or inflammatory bowel disease, and possibly asthma)
  • toxin/mercury contamination
  • PBDEs (fire retardant chemicals) – PBDEs are potent thyroid disruptors
  • often high in phosphorus and magnesium
  • highly addictive – the cat will not eat anything else

If you want to feed a fish-based food as a treat, please limit it to once or twice a week. (I do not feed any fish to my cats.)

 

I chose to limit their fish because I don't support commercial fishing. I will occasionally throw a can of fish in the mix maybe once or twice a month as a special snack. Three of my four don't seem to like fish much anyway. The fourth one has her own bag of salmon treats while everyone else eats chicken.