(I’ve included affiliate links for your convenience. I earn a small percentage from a purchase using these links. There is no additional cost to you, and I appreciate any support. You can read more about affiliate links here)
The Best Food For Cats is Raw Cat Food
It is what is know as a species appropriate Raw Cat 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, and that is small prey animals. This page discussed the best food for cats in detail.
It can be difficult for cat owners to provide the very best in this area, but if you search around you can find much better food for your cat than is available for sale over the counter at pet shops and veterinarian surgeries.
Feeding your cat food that is appropriate for her and supplies quality nutrition is so very important for the long-term health and for the lifespan of your cat.
Cats are 100% obligate carnivores, which means that all of a cat’s nutritional requirements MUST come from meat sources. They are not designed to digest grains and can’t utilize them properly, cooked or otherwise, and they have no use for vegetables at all.
Raw Cat Food – It’s the Best Food For Cats
Raw Cat Food – 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 raw cat food diet over the course of time.
What About Dry Cat Food?
Dry cat food, despite what your vet may tell you, is the very worst thing you can feed your cat long term, for a number of reasons, not all of which will be looked at on this page.
One reason is that dry cat food is only about 10% moisture whereas raw cat food has around 70-80%, and cats never drink enough to make up the deficit. As a result of that, most dry-fed cats are chronically dehydrated. This is a major cause of most urinary and kidney problems in cat, which you may have noticed have become extremely common in recent years..
Also, a high proportion of the ingredients in processed cat food is grain, which is extremely inappropriate for carnivores. If you must for convenience occasionally feed processed food, make sure you read the label!
The first item in the ingredients list should be a meat type, not a by-product, and preferably chicken. There should be no additives like herbs or flax seed oil etc, which sound great for humans but are not appropriate for our feline carnivores. Cat’s systems are entirely different and they lack the ability to process vegetable matter.
Raw Meaty Bones
Raw meaty bones and by products are chock-full of nutritional elements that cannot ever be duplicated in the dried and canned cat foods that are massively promoted by the Pet Food Industry.
Ragdoll Kitten
We humans, ourselves, would never consider trying to survive on processed meal replacement & junk food our whole lives, yet this is what we are feeding our cats, by giving them dry biscuits and canned cat food.
By feeding your cat what she is designed to eat naturally, you will have a much healthier, happier and longer lived animal, save on veterinary bills and often even make quite a saving by feeding your cat raw food.
“If a Diet Is Unnatural, Disease Will Keep Company With Those Subject To It” Juliette de Bairacli Levy.
If you decide to feed a raw cat food diet, you may meet a lot of opposition from other owners and quite likely also 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 cat. There are a lot of internet sites related to Raw Cat Feeding, some of my favorite links are provided below.
An Easy Raw Food Stand-By
There is now a fantastic range of RAW cat food on the market – and you can get it in either frozen or freeze dried. How is that for convenience! Now you can get the best food for cats easily. Fresh is always best, so the frozen raw food is an excellent choice here. But with the freeze-dried food – it is very handy to have something in the cupboard for when you run out – or for times when you just don’t have …. well time!
These products also makes the handling part of feeding a raw diet to your cat easy to start off with – especially the organ part! Take a look at some of the product line here – I think they are pretty awesome and hope to see a lot more of this type of raw food product available as healthy food choices for our cats.
Click on the photos for more information. This company also offers free advice and diet plans – the make raw feeding easy!
Frozen Raw Pet FoodComplete Ground TurkeyRaw Chicken HeartsFreeze Dried Green Beef Tripe ChunksFreeze Dried Complete Beef Pet FoodFreeze Dried Complete Chicken Pet FoodFreeze Dried Chicken TreatsFreeze Dried Beef Liver Treats
Links – Raw Cat Food Information:
- Photos of my own Ragdoll Cats eating their raw food
- RawFedCats.org and CatNutrition.org 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 basic principles of the best food for cats and tips on how to actually feed your cat raw food.
- I also suggest you to join the Raw Cats Yahoo group, which has many experienced and in-experienced raw cat food enthusiasts. You can ask questions here and will get helpful, informed and experienced support, lots of people changing cats over to a raw cat food diet: Yahoo Raw Cat Food discussion group
- Raw Learning
- Blakkatz – a great website
Hey there, I love the top photo of the cat licking it’s lips. It looks like it really loves the raw food.
This is really good information. I did not realize that kittens so young would be able to eat raw food.
LOL … But when I think about it – it is obviously exactly what their mother would be feeding them in the wild!
Heya I came across this site by accident and I am finding It truly helpful.