He’s just so greedy. He just scrounges for food like a dog, and when I’ve fed him he’s still hungry. He’ll go through the bins like he’s never been fed in his life. He does it all the time.
This is Greedy Cat, a temporary replacement for Grumpy Cat, RIP. His real name is China and he is 18 months old. The photo shows him with Coco Pops all over his face and looking as if butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth. Chocolate can be lethal for cats. It can cause tremors, seizures and death. This is serious but not for China.
His human companion and guardian, Bea, decided to leave the Coco Pops on his face all night because she liked the look of it. I am not sure about that but he likes to eat Coco Pops and baked beans from a tin.
Bea explains:
“He’s very greedy. He thought he will go into the kids’ cereal. His face was wet from going out and the coco pops just stuck to the fur…I refused to remove them because they were so funny to look at…They just stayed there. Because I didn’t want to take them off his face, the dog Toad ate them off his face in the end.”
Bea is certain that he ate Coco Pops. I don’t expect he ate many. The photo of China’s face covered in Coco Pops attracted thousands of views on social media and it caught my attention for the reason that this is cereal covered in chocolate and chocolate, as mentioned, is meant to be toxic to cats.
It’s the chemical theobromine, formerly known as xantheose, a bitter alkaloid of the cacao plant that is the chemical which is toxic to our feline friends.
So do Coco Pops contain chocolate? They look like they do. Here are the ingredients per Kellogs the manufacturer:
Whole white rice (59%), sugar, cocoa (3%), minerals (calcium carbonate, iron, zinc oxide), salt, flavours, dextrose, barley malt extract, vitamins (vitamin C, niacin, thiamin, riboflavin, folate).
Kellogs
There’s 3% cocoa in there and I’ll presume that there is a small amount of theobromine in it. The conclusion has to be that either (a) China did ingest some of this feline poison but in such as small amount that it had no effect or (b) Coco Pops don’t contain it or contain it in very small quantities perhaps because of the manufacturing process.
My research indicates that the toxic dose of theobromine for cats is 100-200 milligrams per kilogram of body weight. Although a lower amount of 20 milligrams per kg may harm a cat.
Some chocolates are more toxic than others. As theobromine is bitter, if the chocolate is sweeter there is less of it in the chocolate and therefore it is less toxic to cats and dogs. For instance, white chocolate hardly contains any theobromine and is relatively harmless to a cat.
I have come to a conclusion: China probably ate one or two Coco Pops ‘pellets’ containing a very low dosage of theobromine which is why it had no harmful effect. You’re a handsome, naughty boy but the internet loves you. Now, what about those baked beans?! Are they toxic to cats….. 🙂
