Can Cats Eat Cookies – What You Should Know!

As humans, we got a sophisticated taste of foods such as desserts ranging from various flavored ice creams to chocolate cookies. These cookies are highly delicious for us, and we love them to eat on any occasion. But should we share these cookies with our best feline friend? Can cats eat cookies?

Cats can eat cookies, however, it can have negative effects on their digestive function. Cookies usually contain chocolates, white and brown sugars, artificial sweeteners, vanilla extract, butter, etc. These all components are harmful to any cat.

In this article, we will be explaining whether your cat can eat cookies or not. We’ll also answer some frequently asked questions from cat owners about giving cookies to their feline friends.

Are Cookies Toxic To Cats

Generally, cookies are not toxic to your cat. But sometimes, they contain some unique ingredients that enhance the flavor and taste of cookies in humans but become toxic for cats. For example, ingredients like raisin, chocolate, grapes, caffeine, xylitol, etc., are toxic for cats.

Xylitol and other artificial sweeteners cause digestive upset, seizures, drop in blood sugar level, and even death in cats. In addition, chocolates are highly toxic to cats. Ingestion of chocolate develops tremors, nervous signs, seizures, increased heartbeat (arrhythmia), vomiting, abdominal pain, pale mucous membrane, and ultimately death in cats.

Raisin and grapes cause kidney problems in your cat, and caffeine produces similar types of symptoms to chocolate in cats. For this reason, you need to avoid cookies on your cat’s diet.

Why Does My Cat Eat Cookies

There might be a few reasons for a cat to like cookies. But don’t assume that they like cookies because of their sweet taste. Cat lacks the receptors to taste sweet. Although cats contain about 470 taste buds, none of these recognized the sweet taste.

Sometimes, they want cookies because you are eating cookies in front of them. As a curious animal, cats always wanted a share of some of your food. Besides this, they love fats and proteins, so some cookies are rich in fat by adding butter. And cats want those tastes, and that’s why they usually take a bite from a cookie.

What Ingredients Are Used In Cookies

Some essential ingredients used in cookie making with their safety level in cats are given below in the table:

Ingredients	Safety Level
Butter	Not safe
Salt	Toxic
Sugar (white and brown)	Not safe
Chocolate	Highly toxic
Eggs	–
Baking soda	–
Vanilla extracts	Toxic
Flour	–
Nuts or fruits	Need to avoid

Can Cats Eat Shortbread Cookies

Though shortbread cookies contain comparatively less sugar than other types of cookies, cats still can’t eat shortbread cookies. As we said earlier, cats are strictly omnivorous, which means they depend on diet from animal origin.

So, excess sugars like cookies aren’t a good idea to give to your cat. Likewise, shortbread cookies containing chocolate chips can be lethal for your cat. Even so, if your shortbread cookies didn’t contain chocolate chips as an ingredient, they will contain a lot of margarine or butter.

For this reason, pet nutritionists don’t suggest this cookie for cats.
Usually, the ingredients of a shortbread cookie include unsalted butter, sugar, extract of vanilla, flour, salts, etc. Butter and vanilla become toxic for cat, and excessive sugar and salt causes several health damages.

In addition, because of the presence of a lot of butter and margarine, these cookies are rich in fat and help your cat to become overweight.

Can Cats Eat Sugar Cookies

Again, no, cats can’t eat sugar cookies. This doesn’t make it special whether the cookies have sugar or not because cats can’t taste sweet. But, like other sugary treats like candy, sugar cookies aren’t healthy for cats.

Sugar itself isn’t toxic for cats, but it isn’t good for them too. A cat needs a minimal amount of sugar to maintain its normal function, which it easily gets from its carnivorous diet.

But the addition of sugar cookies in their diet will make them obese and exposed to several health problems like heart disease, arthritis, etc.
Before giving sugar cookies to your cat, remember these cookies have no nutritional value for your cat.

Also, this might be lethal if these cookies are incorporated with chocolate syrup or chips. Eating these cookies ultimately shortens your cat’s lifespan by one or two years. Right now, almost 60% of domestic cats become overweight, so, as a responsible pet owner, you don’t need to provide extra calories in their diet.

Can Cats Eat Oatmeal Cookies

Unfortunately, no. Though oatmeal is one of the healthiest breakfasts for humans but cats, this will cause problems. These cookies are highly nutritious, with a sweet taste and crunchy texture.

Unfortunately, this is avoidable for cats because these cookies often contain raisins and chocolate, which are highly toxic for cats. Although some cookies are made without these two ingredients, these are still not good for your cat’s health because of having high sugar and calories.

Usually, cats need almost 200-300 calories per day to maintain their normal function. But a single oatmeal cookie usually provides almost 100 calories. So, giving oatmeal cookies will surely exceed the average calorie intake of your cat. If this is happening at once, no problem.

But regular intake of oatmeal cookies will indeed cause trouble to your cat. This sugary treat will help to gain weight and develops several health disorders like diabetes.

What Happens If A Cat Eats Chocolate Chip Cookies

Eating chocolate chip cookies can cause chocolate poisoning in your cat. Cats with chocolate poisoning develop lethargy, nervousness, drowsiness, tremor, seizure, vomiting, diarrhea, nausea, coma, or even death. For humans, chocolate chip cookies are heavenly snacks, and we always want this every evening.

But that does not mean that we may share this food with our cat. As we said, cats differ from a human with their bodily function in any way. Their stomach is not compatible with uptake chocolates, more specifically theobromines.

Chocolate usually contains theobromine and caffeine, which are harmful to cats. Theobromine usually absorbs slowly to the cat’s circulatory system and produces symptoms within an hour.

The darker chocolates your cat ate, the severe symptoms will be expressed. In general, while chocolates contain less theobromine and safe than the backing chocolate powder, which contains a high amount of theobromine.

Can A Chocolate Chip Cookie Kill A Cat

Yes, a chocolate chip cookie can kill your lovely cat. As we said earlier, chocolates are lethal for cats. Even a small amount of chocolate, like one small square of baking chocolate, is enough to kill a ten-pound cat.

The more darker chocolate is used in the cookies, the more lethality will develop. Theobromine is the active component in the chocolate solely responsible for killing a cat.

Eating a chocolate cookie causes a similar effect to chocolate since they are made from chocolate syrup or chips. This requires a veterinary emergency to save your cat since it develops chocolate poisoning.

Additionally, chocolate chip cookies include some other ingredients like butter, salt, vanilla extract, sometimes walnuts, etc., that are also harmful to our lovely cats. So, as a cat owner, you always need to be careful before giving any cookies containing chocolates to your cat.

Can Cats Eat Peanut Butter Cookies

In short, the answer is no. Both peanut butter and cookies are not beneficial for your cat. Cats are strictly carnivorous means they rely on their diet of animal origin.

Therefore, cookies are not the best option to provide to them, and peanut butter contains high fat, high sodium and excessive calorie that puts your cat’s life at risk after some time. In addition, peanut butter cookies usually contain no nutritional value for cats rather than having trans-fatty acids that are bad for cats.

Most of the brand of peanut butter contains excessive sodium salt that isn’t healthy for your pet. Also, because of the presence of high fat and carbohydrate, this recipe contains excessive calories, which can easily make your cat obese.

Since indoor cats get less exposure to performing the exercise and after having these peanut butter cookies, cats are more like to gain weight, leading to a variety of health disorders like diabetes, heart problems, etc.

Can Cats Eat Plain Cookies

Veterinarians suggest not to provide any forms of cookies to your cat. Plain cookies might not include any forms of chocolates, raisin, grapes, fruits, xylitol, etc., but they will contain some dairy like butter and sugar.

These two components negatively impact your cat’s body. Eating plain cookies at once won’t create any problem for your dog. But when both you and your cat solely depend on these cookies for a long time, the problem will arise.

Besides its zero nutritional value, these cookies will add extra calories to your cat’s diet and help them to grow fat in their body. Naturally, cats thrive on a high protein diet, but their stomach will fail and start showing symptoms when we provide them with high carbohydrate things.

Cats who consumed extra sugars are more likely to gain weight and develop diseases like heart problems, diabetes, joint issues, etc.

Can Cats Eat Cookie Dough

No, cats can’t eat cookie dough, more specifically, the raw ones. Whenever you’re baking a cookie in front of your cat, don’t try to feed them. Cats are by-born curious animals.

They always want to be a part of you and rule you. Sometimes when they see you preparing a dough, they might want to try to taste it. You must keep your cat away from the raw dough or cookie dough because ingestion of this dough results in several problems for your lovely cat.

Scientists report that raw dough contains yeast that produces both alcohol and carbon dioxide, which are harmful to any cat. Maximum times cat suffers from diarrhea, vomiting, muscle tremors, abdominal pain, breathing difficulties, or even death.

The raw dough also expands after ingestion inside your cat’s stomach or obstructs the throat, which causes an emergency that requires surgery to remove.

Things To Consider

Finally, by reading all of this, we hope you get the answer to your question, “Can Cats Eat Cookies?”.

In summary, cats and cookies aren’t a good combination. In humans, cookies are a perfect dessert of all time, but this is a tasteless product in the case of cats. Since cats can’t taste sweet, so it’s not essential for them to eat cookies.

Several types of cookies are found in the market, such as plain cookies, chocolate cookies, shortbread cookies, oatmeal cookies, peanut butter cookies, etc. You can easily make these cookies for yourself by seeing several recipes online.

But don’t dare to provide these cookies to your lovely feline friend unless you want trouble. Providing cookies to cats will develop several health problems such as obesity, heart disease, joint problem, toxicity, poisoning, kidney problems, etc. So, you should avoid these cookies.

As a responsible cat lover, learn the signs and symptoms of some poisoning after feeding cookies. Since cookies don’t have any nutritional value to the cat so, don’t take extra hassle by feeding cookies to your cat. Feeding plain cookies at once is okay and acceptable by the veterinarians.

But check the ingredients first whether if they contain raisin and chocolates, which may cause poisoning. In conclusion, there’s no good reason for a cat owner to feed cookies to their cat.

Loaded with refined sugars or carbohydrates, cookies are overpriced and incompatible with a cat to be a part of its diet and must be avoided.
This article helps to give an overview of the effect of cookies on your cat.

From now on, whenever some of your friends or relatives ask your opinion regarding feeding cookies, tell them the facts. Always try to follow the advice of your pet nutritionist and veterinarian. This will help you to avoid specific problems in the future.