Can Cats Eat Eggs? Raw and Cooked Are Different
This page is not veterinary advice. Paw Multiverse is not a veterinary practice. We cannot examine, diagnose or treat your animal. There are no doses here, no portion sizes, no feeding amounts and no treatment steps, on purpose. If your pet has eaten something you are worried about, or has changed in a way you cannot explain, ring your vet or your nearest emergency clinic and let them decide. Full disclaimer.
There are two questions here wearing one coat, and they have different answers.
Cooked egg has no published toxicology for cats that we could find. Raw egg is named on a published avoid list, and the reason is bacteria rather than anything about eggs.
Raw egg: what is published
The ASPCA names raw meat and eggs among people foods to avoid, because they “can contain bacteria such as Salmonella and E. coli”. The FDA ran a two year study of raw pet food between October 2010 and July 2012, testing 196 samples: “15 were positive for Salmonella and 32 were positive for L. monocytogenes”. Sources: ASPCA Animal Poison Control, People Foods to Avoid Feeding Your Pets (read 5 Aug 2026) and US FDA, Get the Facts! Raw Pet Food Diets Can Be Dangerous (read 5 Aug 2026).
Note that the FDA study is about commercial raw pet food rather than about a kitchen egg. It is included because it is the only sampling of that kind we could source, and because it gives a proportion with a denominator attached, which almost nothing in this subject does.
Cooked egg: what is not published
There is no entry for cooked egg in the Merck food hazards chapter and none in the ASPCA list of people foods to avoid. Sources: Merck Veterinary Manual, Food Hazards (read 5 Aug 2026) and ASPCA Animal Poison Control, People Foods to Avoid Feeding Your Pets (read 5 Aug 2026).
Egg does appear in the MSD nutrition material, but as a source rather than a hazard: cats require arachidonic acid, which MSD says “is absent in vegetable oils and fats but found in fat from meat, poultry, and eggs”. Source: MSD Veterinary Manual, Nutritional Requirements of Small Animals (read 5 Aug 2026).
That is a genuinely interesting asymmetry. The same food that is on an avoid list raw is named as a source of a nutrient cats cannot make for themselves when it is cooked into a diet. It is a good illustration of why a yes or no answer to a food question is usually the wrong shape.
The avidin claim
You will read that raw egg white contains avidin, that avidin binds biotin, and that a cat fed raw egg white will become biotin deficient. We could not source that from a veterinary publisher we could reach, so it is not stated here as fact.
What we can state is the bacterial concern, because two publishers put it in writing.
The fact that decides most cat food questions is not about the food. International Cat Care states that “cats are what’s known as obligate carnivores, meaning they are dependent on a meat diet and can’t thrive or survive without it”, and that “as obligate carnivores, cats are less able to digest and use carbohydrates”. MSD gives the biochemistry: cats require dietary taurine, cannot convert beta carotene to vitamin A because they lack the necessary intestinal enzyme, require arachidonic acid which “is absent in vegetable oils and fats but found in fat from meat, poultry, and eggs”, and “cannot synthesize substantial amounts of niacin from tryptophan” the way dogs can. Sources: International Cat Care, Feeding your cat or kitten (read 5 Aug 2026) and MSD Veterinary Manual, Nutritional Requirements of Small Animals (read 5 Aug 2026).
The honest summary
Raw egg is on a published avoid list for bacterial reasons. Cooked egg has no published toxicology and is named by MSD as a source of a fatty acid cats require. Neither of those facts is a portion size, and this page does not give one.
What we could not source for this page
Everything below was attempted on 5 August 2026 and is written here rather than left as a silent gap.
- International Cat Care publishes a page on cats and milk. The address returned 404 on both attempts, so the lactose claim everybody repeats is not sourced on this site.
- No publisher we could reach gives a lactose tolerance figure for adult cats.
- No publisher we could reach publishes a portion, a frequency or a maximum for any human food given to a cat, and neither do we.
- No publisher we could reach discusses avidin, biotin or raw egg white in cats.
Where to go next
The parent reference for every food on this site is Can My Pet Eat It, which carries all 92 food and species pairs with the publisher and the date read. The species hub is can cats eat. If your cat has already eaten something, go to my cat ate something, the poison control directory and pet emergency.
