I don’t know what it’s like in other countries, but here in The Netherlands, if you join a message board about cats, the subject of proper feeding is bound to come up. And not only will it come up, it will actually lead to heated debates about what kind of food is best for the kitties, with thinly or not at all veiled accusations of animal abuse being made if you happen to be giving the kitties the “wrong” food.
The most vocal are those who believe that cats should only be given raw meat and bones. According to these people, kibble is pure poison and causes all kinds of diseases from diabetes to dental decay. Then there are those who feel that only the grain in kibble is bad, and other brands that use no grain are okay.
What we rarely see in those message boards is actual scientific research. And if there is some, accusations of being paid for by the pet food industry (which is of course inherently teh evil) fly. So is there any independent research out there and what does it say?
I recall a newspaper story on this many years ago about cat food and cat diets and one research veterinarian said “the perfect food for a cat is a mouse” and he was quite serious. The mouse “package” included everything a cat needed for optimum health including the gut contents, bones, meat etc. The closer a cat food comes to that nutritional standard the better it will be for a healthy adult cat.
OTOH, cats that eat only mice and other wild creatures tend to be wild cats, and they have a dramatically shorter life than a pampered domestic cat. Most of this is for other reasons, but the logic that the wild diet is optimal for a very long life isn’t all that good.
Better would be to see what long lived healthy domestic cats tend to be fed.
De-sexing is the single biggest thing that can be done to seriously extend a cat’s life - especially males.
No doubt that cats are built to be carnivores. Mine get fed a premium (no starch) kibble and wet food (again meat only content.) Seems to work. They do catch the odd mouse, rat or even rabbit. For reasons best known to themselves they will often only eat the head. YMMV.
Well, my cats have always eaten kibble, and not a one (I have four) is less than ten years old. So, I’d say that the “kibble is dangerous” argument is unfounded. Not that an anecdote is data, of course, but it would seem to me that if kibble was as dangerous as your sources claim, it would be off the market now, as so many cats would have died at early ages from it.
As I understand things, what is important is taurine, which cats cannot synthesize from other nutrients. We humans need taurine too, but our systems can synthesize it from other materials. Cats cannot. Taurine occurs naturally in meat–birds, mice, cows, pigs, and so on–and so cats are obligate carnivores–they must eat meat, in order to obtain taurine.
A kibble that contains taurine, then, plus other nutrients, must be healthy for cats. Commercial kibbles–Purina Cat Chow, Friskies, Science Diet, Iams–all include taurine as a nutrient. My cats eat Science Diet, and they’re happy and healthy. And have been, for over ten years, as I said.
In addition, kibble (according to my veterinarian anyway) promotes good dental health. The crunching makes for good, strong teeth; and good gum health. Certainly, my experience with cats over the years has borne this out.
Saying kibble is ‘poison’ is a bit much. One thing about it though- It doesn’t contain any moisture and cats don’t have a strong thirst drive. They normally get it from the fresh kills they eat in the wild,. This is why dry food-only cats often get urinary infections (males especially), they simply don’t drink enough water. As far as dry food goes, cheap stuff like Purina or even worse store-brand should be avoided if possible. Iams & Science Diet are premiums, but they’re the entry-level premiums, there is stuff even better. Still, I had two pure-bred Bengals whom I feed dry & canned Iams all their lives and they both lived very healthy, 18 year+ lives. Needless to say they were indoor only (as all cats should be IMO).
I simply don’t buy into the whole ‘raw meat only’ diet thing, It isn’t a bad thing if you want to go to all the trouble & expense, but I don’t think its necessary.
Well, my mom’s cats all lived a good long time (her last three reached ages of 18, 22, and 23), through a combination of all the dry kibble they needed, plus being able to go outside basically whenever they wanted to supplement it as they saw fit. The first two were proud of their hunting prowess and sometimes opted to forgo their kibble entirely in favor of sparrows etc., while the third restricted herself mostly to hunting invisible vermin, with correspondingly invisible nutritional content.
My cat only likes one specific kind of dry food (Meow Mix, tender centers). She does have dental problems, but we adopted her when she was 8 and she already had them. We’ve tried Science Diet and a few other kinds of dry food, she didn’t care for them. She doesn’t like canned food, whether it’s the cheap stuff or the expensive stuff. I wish she would eat it, because it’s better for her kidneys. But she’s eating and happy and that’s what’s important.
Several years ago our tabby cat Andy started having small fur-free spots develop on his belly. I asked the vet what caused these, and she said that they were probably caused by a food allergy of some kind.
We had been feeding him primarily on canned food, so in investigating this allergy bit I started reading the labels on the cans. I was somewhat impressed that they all read like something from a chemistry textbook - most of the stuff in the food I couldn’t even pronounce.
I then read the label on a can of tuna - its ingredients were limited to tuna and water. We started feeding Andy on this (he thought it was a great idea, too) and within several months the spots cleared up. And luckily our local supermarket regularly runs sales of canned tuna, which puts them in the same price range as canned cat food.
The pet-food companies, however, actual do scientific research on pet nutrition, and hire the appropriately educated people to do it.
Cite: I knew a grad student, who subsequently became a Ph.D., who was tangentially in the business. (She was a behavioral researcher, but worked a while for one of the biggie pet food companies, where her work sometimes intersected with the nutritional researchers.)
I have a 16 y/o cat. We adopted him when he was 3 or 4, and they told us he wouldn’t live but another couple of years due to this urinary disease.
Up until recently, he ate the Prescription Diet CD kibble and soft food as he was prone to developing crystals in his urine, which caused blockages and frequent vet trips when he was younger. He’s been on the same diet for more than 12 years, and it’s been 10 since his last blockage. Early this year, he started leaving soft food in his bowl at feeding time, and wasn’t going thru the kibble at the normal rate. So I started doing some research…
What cats have a problem with is grains. Grains are carbs and carbs are not part of a cats natural diet. For some cats, the more grain they digest, the more acidic their urine becomes and that’s when the crystals can form more easily and cause blockages.
I ended up going with kibble and soft food that is grain free. I weaned him off the CD diet and onto the new stuff and its made a difference for him. He’s not exactly a kitten again, but his appetite is back and he’s not having any issues using the cat box.
I also learned that there are folks out there who are rabid (sorry, couldn’t resist) in their beliefs over what a cat should and shouldn’t eat. I don’t subscribe to any one theory, but I found something that my cat’s happy with, so I’m sticking with that.
A question I’ve often had is the difference between human and feline nutrition, especially in canned food. I know that many of the flavors bear little resemblance to what’s inside, but they’re at least of some relevance to what’s inside. So bearing that in mind: If fish and poultry are better for humans than beef and lamb, are they also better for cats? Should I put them on a diet of exclusively fish and poultry, or am I needlessly anthropomorphizing their nutritional needs?
Cats have a much shorter digestive tract than a herbivore. This is part of what makes them an obligate carnivore. Thus they aren’t affected by some of the issues with red meat that afflict humans.
Can’t say I’ve ever cooked up a mouse or rat, but I don’t think they count as white meat.
Same thing here, we adopted The Boy when he was two and he has just had his 9th “birthday”. He came with a bag of dry food, and he has never eaten anything other than that one brand of dry food despite many attempts to wean him off. Oh, he loves to see what we’re eating, is eager to smell it (which he does, carefully, then licks his lips and backs away). I suppose if they stopped making his brand of kibble, he would just starve to death. (and his teeth are in terrible shape, too.) I dread the day if - when - he shows symptoms of urinary tract disease. Every cat we’ve had has suffered this. One recovered (and we got him to eat a better kind of food), the others had extensive surgery/had to be euthanized. Poor guys.
Cats are carnivores first and foremost, they’ll eat a little grass and they get vegetable matter from the intestines of the small critters they eat, but their systems were not evolved to eat vegetable matter in high concentrations. Housebound domestic cats CAN do well on commercially prepared kibble diets, and probably most do fine. Heaven knows I’ve had numerous cats who did well for a long time (multiple cats into late teen years) on Friskies, the ultimate crap food.
But when commercial diets disagree they tend do so in a drastic way, and cats being cats, they hide their ills until it’s on the verge of being too late. A cat prone to urinary stones or allergies is going to be miserable (or dead) on a cheap dry diet. Those cats need fewer ingredients, and a much higher water content. Most of the ‘crystal’ cats need a diet lower in magnesium and phosphorus - which is something that’s rarely printed on the bags, much to my irritation.
In general I think quality protein from any meat source is fine. In the ‘real world’ of cats, fish is probably a rare thing for them. But then again, when was the last time you saw a house cat take down a steer? I don’t now how similar rodent meat is to bovine, porcine, or ovine meat, or, for that matter, how different large poultry meat is from songbirds. In truth, the meat that goes into pet foods is so far removed from their “natural” diet that I think worrying over light vs dark is not worth the mental energy. If you were making your own raw diet, then yes, perhaps, but all the necessary vitamins and minerals are added in to a prepared diet anyway.
The best thing is to know your own animals, watch them carefully, and feed the best food you can afford. If your budget only runs to generic brands, then you can make up the difference by feeding meat scraps from your own meals, trading out dry for canned, soaking the dry to get extra water into them, buying the really good stuff when you can and adding it in small quantities to their regular diet. Personally I would rather see a well loved cat in a happy and secure home fed a less than optimal diet than that same cat stuck in a shelter or abandoned on the streets.
Compared to a diet of 100% human-grade muscle meat tuna, low-grade kibble is like some kind of miracle health food. Taken as the only food, a diet of only tuna will result in malnutrition. Tuna, like all predatory fish, is also full of mercury. Humans should limit tuna intake, and they are 10x+ the size of a cat.
Perhaps your post is misleading, and your cat hunts to supplement its diet or receives tuna in addition to dry food. But some of those scary chemistry sounding names are necessary vitamins your cat needs in the long term.
To continue Hello Again’s message -
Some of the truly frightening chemistry textbook ingredients from a can of Friskies:
Ferrous sulfate: generally pronounceable and maybe scary until you google it and it’s what? Iron
Pyridoxine hydrochloride: Ooh, a little harder to pronounce, must be scary. Or it’s vitamin B6
Calcium pantothenate: Has “calcium” in it, can’t be that scary. Right, because it’s vitamin B5
Manganese sulfate: Sort of pronouncable, and an essential mineral
Yes, indeed, really frightening stuff there. I would never want a pet to ingest any of those. (That’s sarcasm, just to be clear, and because the new rolleyes smiley is stupid.)
When I adopted Tiger (obligatory photos) at 3 years old, she came with a bag of C/D prescription kibble since one of her littermates had a urine crystal issue, and it was easier for Tiger’s previous human to feed all of the kittens the same thing.
I brought her a piece of Thanksgiving turkey that first year, and she sniffed it and gave me the “Smells interesting, but what does this have to do with me?” look. I had to track down her previous human to find out what kind of cat treats she liked, because I got the same reaction from the brands I’d tried.
Tiger is now 10+ and still going strong (though both Tiger and I are a bit more rotund than we should be). Every time she gets a checkup at the vet, they marvel at how good her teeth are.
Have you tried feeding her Iams dry? Although it does contain some grain they coat it with some kind of aromatic, flavorful chicken spray that almost all cats can’t resist. I’ve never had a cat that wouldn’t eat it.
I wouldn’t feed a cat only tuna fish. Even if they love it (and not all cats do) it doesn’t contain all the nutrients cats need and it contains too much sodium.
I don’t know how a cat can thrive on Meow Mix. The first couple of ingredients must be meat, fish, or fowl based. Others have posted good advice on the proper nutrition of a cat, an obligate carnivore, who, nonetheless, needs the vitamins and minerals we do, which in nature is obtained from the livers and other organs of animals. Some grain is necessary. If your cat goes outside, note that he or she will nibble on grass. It is good for their digestion. Those cat foods that boast no grains use other fillers, such as potato starch. That’s no improvement. I feed my cats wet food twice a day and let them nibble on dry food during the day. That, BTW, is what Pet Helpers feeds their cats. Science Diet provides them with food so the dry food is that, and it is a good one.
