Notice on can of Evanger's cat food.

[allisa]

This is an older post but I am curious about this comment, that in the wild cats don't eat fish. I have assumed that wild cats would eat fish in the streams and rivers (in the jungle for instance) and that is also why they are so facinated with water and so interested when they smell fish. Also the association traditionally of cats with fish. I have thought before about cats that would have had to drink from streams, etc.  Is this something documented or common knowledge? I"ve been out of the loop the last few years and haven't heard this before. I am not feeding my cat fish based on reccomendations from this site. So my cat wont be getting any fish either way, but I am really suprised to hear that they would  not have eaten fish in the wild. I'd love to hear any insight on this.

 

[momto3cats]

 
This is an older post but I am curious about this comment, that in the wild cats don't eat fish. I have assumed that wild cats would eat fish in the streams and rivers (in the jungle for instance) and that is also why they are so facinated with water and so interested when they smell fish. Also the association traditionally of cats with fish. I have thought before about cats that would have had to drink from streams, etc.  Is this something documented or common knowledge? I"ve been out of the loop the last few years and haven't heard this before. I am not feeding my cat fish based on reccomendations from this site. So my cat wont be getting any fish either way, but I am really suprised to hear that they would  not have eaten fish in the wild. I'd love to hear any insight on this.

I was curious about this too, so I did some reading about small wildcats that are related to our housecats. Some of them apparently DO eat fish, but I did not find anything that suggested fish was a major part of their diet. It seems to be about what prey is most available - most cats don't spend a lot of time in or near water, so they don't have much opportunity to catch fish (or much reason to learn how). Everything I read says that small rodents are the most common prey, but cats will eat just about any prey that's available and small enough for them to catch.

 

[raintyger]

Well, if the cat ancestry is from the desert, it would make sense that there wouldn't be a whole lot of fish for them to catch. So maybe the "cats don't eat fish" statement is something general meaning that they didn't evolve that way and don't go on fishing expeditions?