Expert: Ali - 2/17/2009

Question
I haven't been able to find out if a food called "Cool-Whip" is bad for my Siamese cat. She fell in love with it, but I hesitate to give her any because I don't know and don't want to hurt her. She jumped on our table and licked a bit off our dessert plate, not much - a teaspoon or so. But every time we have it she cries for some. Can you help?

Answer
Anita,

I'm sure that you're aware that Cool Whip isn't exactly a first choice in terms of nutrition for people or cats. I have found an ingredient listing for Cool Whip on Wikipedia and enclosed it below.

Ingredients
Cool Whip is made of water, corn syrup and high fructose corn syrup, hydrogenated coconut and palm kernel oil (CPKO), sodium caseinate (a milk derivative), vanilla extract, xanthan and guar gums, polysorbate 60 (glycosperse), and beta carotene. In some markets, such as Canada and the United States, Cool Whip is available in an aerosol can using nitrous oxide as a propellant. In Jewish dietary traditions, Cool Whip is considered parve (neither meat nor dairy).

Given that Cool Whip is a highly artificial food I wouldn't recommend that your cat gets this on any regular basis. I know that cats have a way of getting things that they want so in this case I think that minimizing the unhealthy choices would be best. In this situation I would try giving her vanilla flavored yogurt, you might be surprised at how well she takes to it, but if she doesn't you could always try giving her whipped cream flavored with a bit of vanilla extract. If your girl won't take the yogurt then whipped cream with a touch of vanilla added to it might satisfy her craving for whipped cream as this would be more a more natural choice than Cool Whip. The main reason I'd recommend choosing yogurt over whipped cream or Cool Whip is because the yogurt will be less likely to upset her digestive system, in fact she would be getting beneficial bacteria (acidophilus, lactobacillus, etc) commonly found in the digestive tract of mammals. Yogurt is also far lower in fat than any whipped cream type dessert and since obesity and the associated health concerns are becoming more of a concern in people and their cats low fat is an important consideration. Obviously if your cat just won't bother with the healthier choices then you could probably give her a tiny serving of 1/2 - 1 teaspoon very infrequently to minimize the amount of artificial stuff in her diet.

I haven't heard of too many cats with a penchant for Cool Whip, but cats are all unique individuals with their own preferences. I'm kind of wondering if the fascination that your kitty is showing towards Cool Whip is an indicator of something she's not getting nutritionally. Depending upon the type of food that you feed her there could be some nutrition that just isn't accessible to her in the food that you have chosen to feed. Unfortunately the pet food industry doesn't have to prove that certain nutrients are accessible and useable for the cat, they just have to be there. I recommend feeding a well balanced homemade diet or feeding a high quality holistic food made from human grade ingredients. You may want to check out a website that my vet recommended to me when I expressed concerns about commercially prepared foods after the Menu Foods scare almost took my eldest cat's life. The website is written by a veterinarian and the address is www.catinfo.org.

If you aren't comfortable feeding the diet described in this website you can opt to feed foods like Wellness or Spot's Stew made by Halo. Wellness is formulated with the expectation that you will feed a combination of canned and dry food so while this is nutritionally sound and helps to provide some extra water in your cat's diet it can work out to be quite expensive. I feed Spot's Stew Sensitive Cat and supplement with a few raw foods (high quality, fresh raw meat, the occasional raw egg, etc) and things like minced, steamed veggies and low fat yogurt with active bacterial cultures. If you opt to research the foods that I recommended don't be put off by the price. A 6 lb bag of Spot's Stew Sensitive Cat is roughly $25 CAN and lasts my 3 resident cats a full month, this means that you could expect the same bag of food to last a single cat around 3 months. Although pet food prices vary greatly the bottom line is that price doesn't indicate quality and when you do find a high quality food it's better to pay the bit of extra money for food than eventual vet care that your cat may need if she eats a lower quality food and has nutritional deficiencies that cause illness over time. Given the choice I'd rather spend the money on a high quality food than ongoing vet bills!