Cat Health

Home-made cat food is one of the healthiest ways you can choose to feed your cat, but only if you do it exactly right. Making nutritionally complete cat food requires a great deal of information relating to what a cat's dietary needs are and how you can best provide for them.

Providing your cat with proper nutrition goes a long, LONG way in preventing so many of today's commonly seen feline diseases. There are many inappropriate "cat diets" available on the pet food market, including veterinary feline diets, and these inappropriate diets are largely responsible for creating a myriad of the health problems that exist in our feline friends.

Cats are obligate carnivores: they are NOT meant to eat dehydrated diets, they are NOT meant to be eating grains, they are NOT meant to be eating significant amounts of carbohydrates, they are NOT meant to eat fruits & vegetables, they are NOT meant to eat significant amounts of seafood, and they are NOT meant to obtain their protein from soy! These unnatural ingredients in dry cat foods (and some wet foods too!) are inflammation inducing and result in a myriad of gastrointestinal disorders, skin reactions, and other health problems in our pet cats.

Also, the dehydrated nature of dry cat food is responsible for the production of highly concentrated urine formation in cats that eat dry diets; studies have proven that cats who eat dry food do NOT drink the equivalent in their daily water intake to cats who eat canned food and hydrate themselves via their diets (canned foods are approximately 75% water content). Chronically highly concentrated urine causes bladder inflammation (idiopathic feline cystitis), kidney, ureteral, and bladder stones, urinary crystals, and predisposes to urinary tract infections. Urinary crystal and stone formation can cause sudden urinary tract obstruction which can be acutely fatal.

As mentioned at the beginning of this page, making your cat a nutritionally complete homemade diet is the best way that you can feed your cat. However, this is a somewhat time-consuming endeavor, and I recognize that not every owner is able to provide their cat with this type of feeding regimen (including myself at this point in time!). As such, I have decided to provide you with a summary (below) of various cat-feeding scenarios from best to worst. If you are unable to provide your cat with a homemade diet, as so many of us are, then scenarios 2 and then 3 are the best ways to feed your cat(s):

FIRST - THE IDEAL CAT DIET