Cat Health - Food
"If a Diet Is Unnatural, Disease Will Keep Company With Those Subject To It" Juliette de Bairacli Levy.
I maintain the health of my Ragdoll Cats as holistically as possible. My cats are fed on a natural, species appropriate based Raw Food diet. What this means is providing (as close as possible in our modern world) what the animal would eat if it was living in a natural environment, which is small prey animals. Cats are obligate carnivores, which means that all the nutrition MUST come from meat sources- they cannot digest grains or utilize them properly - cooked or otherwise, and simply have no use for vegetables.
Raw Feeding Recommended ratios - these proportions are relatively the same in almost every prey animal that carnivores are designed to consume, and the percentages are, approximately:
5 - 10% organs (with half that amount being liver)
10 – 15% edible bone
80 – 85% meat, fat, skin, sinew, connective tissue etc.
These percentages, although approximate, should serve as the basic guidelines for a cat’s (or dog's) diet. These exact proportions do not need to be fed at each and every meal, but rather should combine to comprise the overall diet over the course of time.
Dry food, despite what your vet (and Dr Harry) will tell you - it is the very worst thing you can feed your cat long term. Dry food is only about 10% moisture whereas raw meat has around 70-80%, and cats never drink enough to make up the deficit. Therefore most dry-fed cats are chronically de-hydrated. This is a major cause of most urinary and kidney problems. And a high percentage of the ingredients in processed food is grains, which are very inappropriate for carnivores. If you must for convenience occasionally feed processed food - read the label! First item in the ingredients list should be a meat (and not a by-product), preferably chicken, and there should not be additives like herbs or flax seed oil etc, which sound great for humans but are not appropriate for our little carnivores.
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Raw meaty bones and by products are chock-full of nutritional elements that cannot ever be duplicated in the dried and canned pet foods that are massively promoted by the Pet Food Industry. We humans, ourselves, would never consider trying to survive on processed meal replacement & junk food our whole lives, yet we expect our animals to, by giving them biscuits and canned food. By feeding your pets what they are designed to eat naturally, you will have a much healthier, happier and longer lived animal, save on vets bills and often make a saving on feed.
If you decide to feed a raw diet, you will probably meet a lot of opposition from other owners and most likely from your vet! Please be aware that most vets are not trained in animal nutrition, they get most of their knowledge from pet food companies, and a large part of their income comes from selling processed pet foods from their clinics. You need to stand back and think for yourself, and cut thru all the advertising nonsense and scare tactics, and you will realise that your cat is absolutely not designed to eat grain - which is the major part of most cat foods.
I recommend that you do some research, and then make up your own mind what is the best for you and your animals. There are a lot of internet sites related to Raw Feeding, some of my favourite links are provided below.
Links - Raw Food Information:
Highly recommended - these two sites are well worth spending a bit of time looking around. Both are very well written and make it easy to understand the basics of raw-feeding.
I suggest you to join the Raw Cats Yahoo group, which has many experienced and in-experienced members. You can ask questions here and will get helpful, informed and experienced support, lots of people changing cats over to raw food:
More links:
catinfo.org Feeding Your Cat: Know the basics of Feline Nutrition
Blakkatz - a great website
The Carnivore Connection to Nutrition in Cats - by Debra L. Zoran JAVMA