When I was a teen, we had a cat that loved to eat salads. He'd prefer a bowl of romaine lettuce, kale and spinach over eating tuna or beef any day. However, while many types of lettuce are healthy for your cat, if you have a cat who loves the greens as much as ours did you may want to take a pause and consider the risks. Many lettuces are safe for feline ingestion, but cats can get a condition called Heinz Body Anemia or HzB from eating certain foods.
Spinach and kale fall into that category, as well as garlic and onions. The problem happens in the red blood cells and the oxidization process. When oxidative damage occurs the toxic compounds in these foods can cause serious disability in your cat, and even death if left untreated and you keep feeding them the foods. We found out the hard way that the kale and spinach needed to be skipped in our cat’s salad and our cat became very ill. HzB is hard to treat, but can be recovered from. But if you love your cat as much as we loved ours, you may want to just skip the salad and stick to traditional cat foods.
