this post was submitted on 04 Mar 2024
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I'm not sure the sugar argument holds, plenty of animals naturally eat foods with sugar, and do not brush their teeth. Of course they don't eat nearly as much sugar as a typical human, but that doesn't mean that sugar should always be avoided.
For cats specifically though I am not sure, maybe all sugar is bad, but I don't think it's because of teeth brushing.
It's worth noting that cats are unlikely to be able to perceive sweet tastes. So while sugar is not toxic to cats, there's not really any benefit to letting them have it, even as a treat.
On a related note, there's a hypothesis that the mutation that caused them to lose the ability to taste sweet things in cat ancestors is what led to them becoming obligate carnivores, which is kind of interesting.
Then why the hell did one of my cats LOVE cantaloupe?
Heh, I knew a cat that would go through a pan of unseasoned cauliflower if you weren't careful. Maybe every cat is born knowing something they have no clear way of understanding, like how tasteless things are food or how to move in four dimensions or what electronics are.
More seriously, the article I linked to suggests cats can taste things we can't, so that's a possibility.
It could also be she was just a different sort of cat. She had 7 toe beans per foot and was a blue eyed tortois shell. So her liking cantaloupe was probably the least weird thing about her