During one of the many conversations at the New Year’s party I went to this year, we were discussing cat food and pet health. Another guest mentioned this claim, which she got from the owner of an “alternative” pet food store:
Cats that live to be 20 are exceptional now, but that used to be midlife for the average cat. Back in the 1800s, when most cats lived on farms and didn’t eat processed pet food, the average lifespan was 40 years old. That’s why you should avoid the cheap Purina-style cat foods and use food with higher-quality ingredients.
Now, I don’t doubt the moral of the story: we buy expensive cat food for our cats, and they’re healthy and have better looking coats and neater poops than they did on mass market food. But I’m not buying the 40-year-old average lifespan claim for a minute. At the very least, cats that died due to predators and the accidents of life in the rough would bring the average down. But I don’t buy that 40-year-old cats were remotely common, let alone an average occurrence.
Has anyone else heard the 40-year-old cat claim? Does anyone know where the idea came from? And, unlikely as it seems to me, is it remotely possible that it was true?
Dude, I grew up on a farm, surrounded by cats that never saw commercial cat food, let alone ate it, and I never observed or heard of a cat that lived for 40 years. I doubt if I saw one that made 10, but I wasn’t keeping records.
From what I know (SIL is a plant manager for Ralston-Purina) the more expensive brands of Purina contain very good quality ingredients. Purina continually tests their ingredients and still continue to perform studies on what indgredients are best for a particular animal.
My friend swears by Science Diet, and I’ve been using Purina and my cats are quite healthy as any cat on an alternative, more expensive cat food. Not to mention their coats are nice & shiny.
This friend also mentions that her cats feces do not have an odor because she feed 'em Science Diet. Hmmmmm. I remember watching one of her kitties and I could easily tell when the kitty did her “doo-doo”. Yep. Smells like feces.
I haven’t heard of a cat living for 40 years. Gosh, that must have been one cranky kitty.
As for the more expensive food vs. Purina, etc…my vet did say the cats’ feces will be more compact. But I haven’t noticed that my cat’s feces weren’t compact. Hmmmmmm. Am I missing something?
Hmmm…my cat on ‘regular’ store bought chow had a problem with ‘compact’. Actually, compacted might be more accurate as her digestive system didn’t like the filler and she got all blocked-up. I have a neat x-ray of my entire cat where you can see her backed up pooper system. The end result was a shaved ass and an enema for my cat and was she PISSED about that! Even in her carrier the orderly bringing her out to us held the carrier at arm’s length (kidjanot)!
Kitty is now eating Colon-Blow 2000[sup]tm[/sup] to avoid this problem.
I did ask my vet if that meant that store pet foods were bad. She said absolutely not. My dog as a puppy ate her own poo (coraphagia?). The vet said the deal was that there was so MUCH nutrition in her food that one pass through the system didn’t get it all and her doggy mind still identified her own poo as a reasonable source of food. Thankfully it was just a short phase of puppyhood. She also mentioned that wild dogs are MUCH shorter lived than their domesticated bretheren and usually live around 5-7 years versus an average of around 12 years for most house dogs. The dogs I grew-up with lived on Purina regular chow and/or Alpo…they all lived to a ripe 13 years.
Well, since someone already dragged dogs into it … My parent’s dog will be seventeen this year, and she’s fed all her life on commercial dog foods. And occaisional table scraps, of course. And she’s still going strong! Well, OK, she’s going deaf and senile, but everything else seems to be working OK.
Sounds like it but perhaps “Absolute Maximum Lifespan” is more theoretical. As in, “Creature X will never, ever surpass Y years in age.”
“Longest Life” might just mean to look at the record and see what the longest lived animal of a particular species is. Our cat who lived 34 years may hold the record but it may not be the actual maximum limit for a house tabby (although it sure seems that way).
