can cats eat bananas

Someone online has a cat that loves banana, and now you are peeling one and wondering whether to share. The answer is that a tiny piece of banana will not harm a healthy cat, but it is a poor treat that most cats will sniff and reject anyway. Here is why banana is safe but pointless, and the one thing to keep an eye on.

Bananas are not toxic to cats. A small piece of ripe banana, offered occasionally, is not going to poison a healthy adult cat, so if yours has stolen a bite there is no need to panic. But not toxic is a low standard, and banana clears it without ever becoming a good idea. It sits firmly in the category of things a cat can technically have and has no reason to.

why banana is a poor treat

The core problem is that a cat's body is built for meat, not fruit. Cats are obligate carnivores, which means they get what they need from animal protein and have little use for the sugars and fibre in a banana. Banana offers a cat almost nothing nutritionally, and what it does offer is mostly sugar, which a cat does not need and which, in any real quantity, can upset the stomach or contribute to weight gain and other problems over time.

There is also the matter of taste, which settles the question for most cats before you do. Cats cannot taste sweetness at all; they simply lack the receptors for it, so the very quality that makes a banana appealing to you is invisible to your cat. Faced with a piece of banana, the average cat gives it a single unimpressed sniff and walks away, its indifference total. The cats that do eat banana are the exception, and they are usually more interested in the novelty or the texture than any flavour.

Curiously, some cats have the opposite reaction and are actively startled or repelled by bananas, much as they can be by a cucumber, possibly reacting to the smell of the peel. If your cat flees the room at the sight of one, that is not unheard of, and there is no need to keep testing it. Frightening a cat with fruit for a video is, as with the cucumber trick, unkind and best avoided.

the verdict

If your cat is one of the rare ones that enjoys banana, a very small piece now and then will not hurt it, kept as an occasional novelty rather than a regular treat and never allowed to displace proper food. For everyone else, there is no reason to offer it at all, and better treats exist that a cat's body actually wants. If you want to give your cat something it will genuinely value, a scrap of plain cooked chicken beats a banana every time, because a cat is a small predator and a banana is, to a small predator, simply confusing. Keep the banana for your smoothie. The cat did not want it anyway.

Related reading from my desk: can cats eat chicken, a treat cats actually want, and can cats eat cheese, another human food they are better off without.

This is general guidance, not veterinary advice. Introduce any new food in a tiny amount and watch for stomach upset, and check with your vet if your cat has a health condition. I am a cat with opinions, not a veterinarian.