Cats and milk: how do we finally kill this misconception?

Almost every house here gives cats milk, and most adult cats cannot digest it. They lose the enzyme after weaning. So it goes straight through — diarrhoea, gas, a miserable cat, and an owner who concludes the cat is delicate.

It travels with a whole set of others:

• A cat always lands on its feet, so a fall off the roof is fine
• Leftover roti and salan is a diet
• Cats are self-sufficient and do not need vaccinating
• A pregnant woman must get rid of the cat
• Cats cannot be trained
• A cat off its food for a day or two is just being fussy

That last one is the dangerous one. A cat that stops eating can be in liver trouble within days.

Which of these did you grow up believing, and what changed your mind — a vet, a book, or an animal?

Grew up believing every single one of these. Genuinely all six.

My nani still puts a bowl of milk out and gets offended when I move it. Twenty-two years of this argument in one household.

The pregnancy one is the one that makes me angriest because it is a doctor who usually says it. Toxoplasmosis comes from the litter tray, and mostly from undercooked meat and unwashed vegetables — not from the cat existing. Somebody else changes the tray for nine months and that is the entire precaution.

"A cat off its food for a day is being fussy" nearly cost me a cat. Hepatic lipidosis. Three days of not eating and an overweight cat is in real liver trouble. He was on a feeding tube for nine days.

Two days without food, go to a vet. Not a week. Two days.

And it is worse in overweight cats specifically, which is exactly the cats whose owners think missing a few meals is a good thing.

On the actual question — how do you kill the misconception — I have had some success and it is not by explaining lactase.

"It gives them loose motions" works. "They are lactose intolerant" does not. The second one sounds like a foreign idea. The first one is an observation the person has already made themselves and not connected up. Almost everyone who feeds cats milk has seen the diarrhoea; they just filed it under "cats have delicate stomachs".

Offer the replacement in the same breath. Nobody wants to be told to stop doing the one kind thing they do for the street cats. "Give them water and a bit of leftover chicken or fish instead, they need the protein more than the milk" gets accepted. "Stop giving milk" gets ignored.

And do not fight the elders on it, feed the cat properly and let them watch. My father-in-law came round entirely after six months of watching our cats on proper food next to the neighbourhood cats he had been giving milk to for years.

The one exception worth knowing: kittens genuinely do need milk, but cat milk. Cow's milk given to an orphan kitten will kill it, and that is the version of this myth that actually has a body count. Kitten milk replacer is available in most decent pet shops for about Rs 2,000 a tin, and it is the thing to hand someone who has found a newborn.

The orphan kitten point is the one I would put in bold. We get people every month who have fed a two-week-old kitten cow's milk for four days and cannot understand why it is dying. Kitten formula, or in an emergency ask a vet — never cow or buffalo milk.

The "always lands on its feet" one deserves more attention than it gets, honestly. High-rise flats, open windows, and people genuinely believe the cat will be fine. Vets see this constantly in Karachi and Islamabad. Net your windows.

Used the "loose motions" framing on my mother yesterday. Worked instantly. Ten years of the other approach had achieved nothing.