You are treating yourself to a few marshmallows after a hard day. You like the sweet taste and spongy consistency of marshmallows. Because of that, you might want to share these confections with your feline best friend. However, can cats eat marshmallows? Or would it be dangerous to share a few marshmallows with your cat?
Can Cats Eat Marshmallows?
Unfortunately for cats, the answer is no, it’s not recommended to let your cat eat marshmallows. While marshmallows are not exactly toxic to cats, there is more than one reason why you shouldn’t feed them to your cat.
Marshmallows Can Be Harmful to Cats
For one, marshmallows are a choking hazard to cats. Marshmallows are not recommended for children under the age of 3, because these sugary treats can squash into the right shape and get stuck in a child’s throat. This could happen to your cat as well. There already are several reported cases of this happening on the Internet. I would not recommend to ever give your cat marshmallows as it could end very badly.
For two, marshmallows contain a ton of sugar. Okay, maybe not a ton, but one regular marshmallow contains 4.1 grams of sugar, which is a lot for a cat. The average house cat eats 200-300 calories a day and one regular marshmallow contains 23 calories. So, if you’d regularly feed your cat marshmallows or other sugary treats, then your cat would start to put on weight.
For three, surprisingly, marshmallows also contain quite a lot of sodium. One regular size marshmallow contains 5.8 mg of sodium, which is a lot considering cats’ low sodium tolerance.
Last but not least, there are no benefits to feeding your cat marshmallows. As there’s nothing in marshmallows that your cat would need, feeding your cat marshmallows would only cause harm.
Conclusion
As marshmallows are not toxic to felines, many cat owners believe that it’s okay to give their cats a marshmallow every now and then, but it’s not. A marshmallow can pose a choking hazard to your cat. This alone is a good enough reason to not share these confections with him, but marshmallows also contain unhealthy amounts of sugar and sodium. On top of that, cats cannot taste sweets, so your feline friend most likely wouldn’t even like marshmallows.
If you want to reward your cat with a treat, then it’s best to use commercial or home made cat treats, sugary treats meant for us humans can be dangerous to cats.
My cat loves marshmallows!! I feed one to her little piece by piece & she keeps wanting more!!
thank u for this info <3
My cat loves marshmallows too! I like to give him a little bit one by one so he doesn’t choke like this article states. I don’t see why they mentioned choking is a possibility ,I mean cats can choke on any food.
the choking hazard is because the marsh mellow cannot be chewed into bite-sized pieces for the cat to swallow.
sometimes I feed my two cats the mini marshmallows as a treat. They always seem to enjoy it but I only ever give up to three in one sitting.
My cat loves marshmallow creme ! I feed her a 1/2 of a small plastic spoon every now and again . When she that container come out she goes nuts !! I never knew about the taste thing , as I would imagine they have taste buds because they know by taste what they like or dislike.
I just found out my cat loves them too, I just held one while she licked it. I think it’s the gelatin which has pork or other animal product in it.