FELINE LIKE A COFFEE

No we didn’t let a typo slip through – the title of this blog is very much intentional. Cats and coffee is the theme.

Let us also get another thing straight, caffeine is not good for felines or for that matter dogs. A small amount won’t kill them but caffeine poisoning will affect their heart, liver, kidneys and nervous systems severely. The reason we humans are not affected by caffeine is that we are herbivores in addition to being carnivores like cats and dogs. Unlike our furry friends we, over millennia have built up natural resistance to the alkaloids that plants produce to defend against insects that will eat them. Cats and dogs have no natural resistance so do not feed your cats and dogs anything containing caffeine.

Okay, now with that said, here are some unusual facts about cats and coffee.

Did you know for example that the world’s most expensive brand of coffee ‘Kopi Luwak’ is made with help from our little cute friends help? The coffee beans of this Indonesian speciality have been digested by a local cat like creature called a palm civet or also known as a civet cat. This Sumatran wild cat eats the coffee berries and enjoys the flesh but its digestive system cannot process the seed inside. Inside the cat the seeds ferment and eventually they are excreted in its poo.

The poo is then harvested, not a job many would willingly take up, and processed. Kopi Luwak has, we are told, a unique rich flavour as is its price tag. Kopi Luwak will easily set you back around £75 for a single cup of coffee, not too surprising when one considers the effort that has gone into tracking down wild cat poo, processing it and then packaging it for human consumption.

Despite what we said earlier about not feeding cats caffeine, someone did, and with surprising results. The oldest cat in the world may have owed its longevity to its owners feeding it with a rich diet of bacon and eggs, asparagus, broccoli and coffee with cream. The cat with the frankly embarrassing name of Crème Puff reached the ripe old age of 38 when he died in 2005.