The tomato sauce ones are fine and not harmful at all. Even better are the spring water ones but sometimes harder to find!

The oil ones (apart from possibly making your cats a bit "loose") aren't ideal as apparently a lot of the vitamins from the fish are lost in the oil as they are fat soluble, or something like that! I miss Hobbs.

Mine have sardines in tomato sauce now and then.I mix it with a fish flavour food.I have not had cats before but when the lady from the rescue(who has looked after many many cats) brought mine she brought some goodies to start them off-one of which was a tin of Asda sardines in tomato sauce-so I've continued to get them sometimes as a treat as I figured that lady knew what she was doing.

I've found sardines in tomato sauce to be a great 'tempter' for a cat which needs persuaded to eat after illness or the like. This business of things toxic to cats has to be seen in perspective. Loads of foods contain small amounts of toxins. Potatoes which have been exposed to light contain a chemical which is toxic to humans - it turns potatoes green eventually but it's there long before we have the visual evidence. We still eat potatoes because the amount of the toxin needed to do us harm is huge compared with amount we ingest. Just as we wouldn't eat a couple of kilos of green potatoes for each meal it wouldn't be a good idea to feed a cat an exclusive diet of sardines in tomato sauce but a little does no harm.

Thanks for that - it makes a lot of sense.

The organic cat food which Lily's Kitchen do contains, among other things, nettles. What are your thoughts on feeding organic with herbs etc.?

I don't have the knowledge of herbs to make sensible comment. I do wish these lists of things toxic to cats could be sorted into some sensible classification. I'd far rather see lists of things properly ordered which are truly dangerous and actually likely to cause a problem. Lily pollen and antifreeze are way up at the top as far as I'm concerned as a small amount is fatal and it is quite easy for cats to come into contact with them. Far more important that owners know to avoid these rather than panic over a small amount of tomato sauce.

That's like playing a game of Russian Roulette with your cats life - you may get away with feeding a toxic substance to your cat now and then but then again you may not!

My NFC all like sardines, i get the ones in spring water, and i do take the backbones out, but am not paranoid about bones.

I use them as a treat, guessing the extra fishy oils to be good for the coats.

You feed toxic substances to yourself, your family and your pets every day, you just don't know you're doing it and the amounts are insignificant.
Suggesting that every six times sardines in tomato sauce have been fed to cats one has keeled over and died as a direct result. Hasn't happened.