As the owner of a pet sitting and dog walking service in Milwaukee, I often see what the diets are of most of our cat clients. Frankly, I’m a little disappointed that most cat owners feed dry cat food, and here is my reasoning.
- Cats are obligate carnivores and need blood, guts and gore-also known as meat, and the rest of their body parts to be the healthiest they can be. Why? Because while in the wild, they hunt small animals; birds, rodents and other creatures to sustain their life.
2. If you are feeding dry cat food, you are doing your cat a disservice. First of all, 75% of a cats water in take needs to come from their food source. By consistently giving them dry food, you are depleting their water intake to what they drink from a pet fountain or a faucet, which typically, is not that much. It can lead to serious dehydration and kidney failure.
Due to its nature, commercial dry cat food contains no more than 10% moisture.
3.Cereals make up the composition of most commercial cat foods. I’m not sure, but when was the last time you saw a cat wanting to chow down on a bowl of Cheerio’s? It just doesn’t happen! When a cat ingests the dry food, its absorbed into the stomach, expanding to twice its size. If you were feeding wet food, or a raw, natural prey diet, you would need to feed just half that amount for optimum health. This is the reason why so many cats are obese. They are simply free fed and out of boredom, overeat.
Finding the right food for your cat can be an exercise in futility if you have a picky eater. Oddly enough, cats generally stay away from fish because they don’t fish in the ocean, but are comfortable and fine with with “walking” meat sources such as beef, chicken, turkey, duck, kangaroo, and goat. Some good brands to feed are Fromms, Natural Balance, Precise Holistic and Blue Buffalo.
