How to REALLY feed your cat

David D'Angelo 510 2

Your cat is a carnivore.

This means your cat is biologically designed to source nutrition from animal matter (meat, organs, bones) including moisture.

In this article I will share my many years experience and involvement with the pet food industry, pet food marketing (and the many tricks of marketing) as a certified pet nutritionist.

Keep in mind other websites will not tell you this information as it is, because most of them are written to sell you pet food products, or because the writers behind the content really don’t know what they’re talking about.

Help Me Out! If the information below surprises you or differs greatly from what you’ve read elsewhere, please elaborate in the comment section below!

I will give you simple facts which will truly help you understand what your cat needs in their diet to be healthy, so read on:

Why moisture is so important for your cat

Your cat (Felis catus) is a descendent of a desert animal, specifically the African Wildcat (Felis lybica) which hails from very arid regions of North Africa and the Middle East.

Although this means your cat can efficiently conserve water, it also means moisture is absolutely essential in their diet.

Consider this: A prey animal caught by your cat – either in the desert or back yard – will be roughly 70% moisture. Your kibble on the other hand, around 10%.

Many cats are sadly fed a diet solely of kibble (or biscuits as we like to call them in Australia), so it comes as no surprise kidney failure is the biggest killer of domestic cats.

Many cat owners invest in a kitty water fountain believing it’s the best solution, but as cats aren’t natural drinkers this often results in money down the drain.

Provide your cat with moisture in their diet!

The fallacy of BOTH dry and wet cat food

We forget cat foods are products, designed to make a profit from us as pet owners.

With most cat food formulations it is very clear to me profit has been put as a priority before the health of your cat.

Yes, there are better dry or wet cat foods (you can find better cat food recommendations here). Wet tends to be better quality, with the benefit of moisture, but also works out more expensive than dry cat food.

All dry cat foods contain carbohydrates which your obligate carnivore cat doesn’t really need, so if you choose to feed dry cat food then (1) it is better to opt for a formula which has a higher meat content, and (2) feed your cat other types of moisture-rich foods as well.#

Wet cat foods can also contain a lot of carbohydrates, even if they’re made to appear more meaty than they are.

Budget constraints affect most of us, and the cost of feeding pets seems to go up exponentially year on year, so for most of us a combination of dry and wet cat food is the norm.

Why you must consider dental health

Understand me when I say how important this is. I’ve witnessed first hand how a cat’s teeth and jaws can rot on brands of cat food many would assume is the best option for their cat (because marketing is very good at convincing us of that).

If you don’t consider the dental health of your cat, they won’t live as long as you hope.

Poor dental health means your cat is constantly fighting bad bacteria in their mouth, and this bad bacteria will circulate through their body and attack their organs.

You don’t want that to happen, and it’s very much diet related. Read on, and I’ll tell you exactly how to prevent this happening to your cat. My cat is 14, and his teeth are immaculate.

Both dry cat food and wet cat food are the problem.

We’re often told dry cat food is good for your cat’s teeth because it’s hard, but the reality is it’s far from optimal. You wouldn’t rely on hard processed nuggets of wheat and corn to clean your own teeth, so don’t assume it will benefit your cat either.

Dental treats are mostly a gimmick. Some may contain a token amount of kelp or other additive which science suggests fairly inconclusively may benefit dental health, but most commercial dental treats have small print saying only the texture may benefit your cat.

Read that again, and take note of the word “may“.

Dental treats are often made of grains and substances to make them chewy or appealing to your cat.

Wet food is the worst, because it has no abrasive texture. Dogs fed only wet foods (or “wet mush” as Australian veterinarian Dr Tom Lonsdale prefers to call it) can have teeth rotting while they’re still a puppy, and so can your kitten.

As pet owners we often fail to pick up on the poor dental health, plaque and tartar, of our pets. Veterinarians may pick up on it after a while and recommend a specific brand of dry cat food devoid of moisture from Mars, Nestle, or Colgate-Palmolive, or they may recommend one of the wheat and glycerin based dental treats.

The saddest thing is, our cats can’t verbalise their pain. When it comes to poor dental health, we consider this “silent pain”, which most cat owners mistake for their cat “becoming picky”, or not into their food like they used to be. The truth is the cat doesn’t want to eat their usual hard nuggets of grain, because it hurts to do so.

How can you make sure your cat has good dental health.

The simplest solution – whatever type of cat food you feed – is to give them tasty raw chicken necks or wings to chew on.

I said at the start of this guide how our cats are carnivores. Predator animals. Nature tends to know best, and for our cats the action of chewing on flesh and gnawing on bone is what keeps their teeth free of plaque or tartar.

Don’t believe me?

Find me a carnivore in the wild with bad teeth.

Poor dental health, or periodontal disease, is considered serious for us, and it’s a disease which only tends to affect us and the animals fed by us.

Is grain-free better than dry cat food made of grain?

Ask yourself this – Is it better for your pet carnivore to consume a high-carbohydrate diet of grains, or a high-carbohydrate diet of potatoes or other “grain-free” alternatives?

Or, is it better to minimise all those ingredients and feed your cat what they really should be eating – proteins and fats from animal ingredients?

Most veterinarians, most websites, and pretty much all social media groups believing they’re giving good advice completely miss the point. Painfully so.

Many veterinarians continue to advise against grain-free cat foods due to an absolute farce of an investigation by the Federal Drug Administration (FDA) in America which named and shamed numerous smaller grain-free pet food manufacturers before quietly being dropped due to lack of any substantial evidence.

The market for grain-based cat foods is controlled by companies who make billions from these products. Cat foods made of grain are cheap to produce, and we live in a world where many veterinarians blindly endorse and sell them for very high markups considering what they’re made from. With most of these brands you will hear words like “scientific”, “premium”, “best in health”, and all manner of marketing words, but the truth is they’re pretty much all grains for your pet carnivore.

That said, grain-free cat foods tend to be better. They tend to be slightly higher protein and lower carbohydrates, but will likely cost you a bit more too.

Some vegetable matter in a cat food can be beneficial, and when it comes to grains we can expect your cat will struggle a little less to consume oats than they would a bargain-basement mix of wheat and other cheap cereal grains which will more likely take a toll on their digestive system than provide any benefit whatsoever.

Find your cat a food with higher protein and fat from animal ingredients rather than focus on whether they are grain or grain-free – neither of which is much use nutritionally to your cat.

The “meat first” trick

While researching what to cover in this guide to feeding your cat I was reading a veterinarian website which recommended you find cat foods which are “meat first”, where the first ingredient is meat.

Don’t fall for such a trick.

A cat food can be meat first and still contain barely any meat at all.

It works like this – the first ingredient is chicken, and the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and 5th ingredients are grain or plant matter.

The “meat first” trick also works with another old hat trick used on many cat foods (and many human food products as well), and that’s ingredient splitting.

Ingredient splitting is a way to make a meat ingredient look more prominent than a non-meat ingredient.

Consider this: Chicken is the first ingredient, then you have Brown Rice, and then Rice Bran. As the consumer your first impression is a cat food made mostly of meat, but the reality from only those three ingredients is rice can be double the amount of chicken.

Grain-free cat foods also use ingredient splitting, such as Beef, Peas, Pea Protein.

In this case, you may consider the cat food to be good based on high protein, but the reality is it’s made of sub-optimal pea protein rather than animal protein.

Why feeding a variety helps!

If you’re feeding your cat dry food, there are obvious reasons feeding them a wet food as well can help (namely to add moisture).

The pet food industry convinces us to only feed their product for the lifespan of your cat, but all that serves is locking you in to fueling their profits for the next decade or so.

We consume a wide variety of foods, and tend to have a good balance as a result (although less and less so these days).

Most cat foods are complete and balanced, which means they should contain all nutrients your cat needs to survive in every single meal.

Rotating commercial cat foods, whether dry, wet, or made with different meats and fats (and grains and legumes) should be considered more beneficial than feeding your cat the same dry cat food every single day.

Commercial cat foods aren’t the only answer

A balanced diet does matter for a cat, which means feeding them chicken mince all the time will eventually lead to health problems. But feeding them all the nutrients they need is easier than we think.

With dry cat food, these nutrients comprise mostly of protein + fat + vitamins and minerals + fibre.

Or to word it another way, when you buy a kibble which has some animal protein/fat content, 50%+ grains, then dusted with a vitamin/mineral premix powder, the only purpose that 50% grain content has is to make profit at the expense of your cat’s health.

If you put on your science hat and investigate all the vitamins and minerals listed individually on a cat food ingredients panel, you will discover they would all be sourced naturally in the wild from prey animals.

That’s right folks, that’s the reality of “complete and balanced” and standards such as AAFCO which a veterinarian may advise is essential. A cat food product will tick those boxes, then fill the remainder of the formula with whatever they can get away with to make the biggest profit.

Hypoallergenic diets for sensitive cats

Many cats are diagnosed with dietary allergies or intolerances, then prescribed by the vet an expensive dry food which you will happily pay for believing it’s the best food for your cat.

The reality is – most of the time – much simpler when we think about it:

You adopt a kitten, and begin to feed him whatever cat food looks the best on the supermarket shelves.

The reality is that cat food is mostly grains, and cheap grains at that.

After a while you notice your cat’s hair falling out, skin rashes, scratching, yeasty ears, diarrhea or constipation, and general poor health. You take them to the vet, and the vet tells you it’s a dietary allergy.

It’s not an allergy, because your cat shouldn’t be eating those grains in the first place. Or whatever additives and food colours are also in that supermarket food.

It’s a dietary sensitivity, because carnivores struggle to digest foods they’re not biologically designed to consume.

Your veterinarian will prescribe a “solution” – Royal Canin (Mars brand), Hill’s Science or Prescription Diet (Colgative-Palmolive brand), or sometimes Purina (Nestle) brand, and the condition of your cat improves – success!

You’re now hooked on buying that expensive brand of cat food, and although it’s expensive you’ll do what’s best for the cat you love.

Think this over for a few seconds and you’ll have the real answer.

You fed your cat a terrible food they couldn’t digest.

Now you’re feeding one slightly better (but a lot more costly), and surprise surprise – there’s been some improvement.

Hypoallergenic cat foods work on this principle, and it’s not as scientific as you think. A hypoallergenic diet simply doesn’t contain the problematic grains and additives found in most supermarket or cheaper brands of cat food.

There is one small caveat, and that’s some cats – on rare occasions – suffer intolerances to specific meat proteins, such as chicken. This might be from birth, or from a disrupted microbiome (gut) triggered from being weened or fed a poor quality cat food, or antibiotics, a vaccine, or medication.

An advisory on senior cat foods

We’ve covered above how our cats are carnivores who thrive off a diet of animal ingredients, and this remains the case for senior cats.

I would argue senior cats need quality animal proteins and fats even more so to retain weight, muscle mass, and healthy joints, so you may be surprised most senior cat foods contain less of these ingredients in favour of more carbohydrates.

As consumers we assume our old cat is simply slowing down and less active, or consequentially doesn’t need to eat as much, but you should consider senior diets counterproductive.

Older cats may need more fat in the diet, and can benefit from some fibre from vegetable matter or other non-animal fibre, but they still benefit largely from a diet with quality animal proteins and fats.

If your senior cat is used to dry cat food, you can continue this but add some wet, BARF, or raw.

Is raw feeding safe?

This question crops up a lot given the amount of fear mongering when feeding your cat what they would naturally eat in the wild.

Yes, there are risks of bacteria and hygiene concerns which will more likely affect you than your cat – that’s why we don’t eat raw chicken and we wash our hands after handling raw meat.

If you choose to feed your cat a raw diet, make sure you cover all nutritional bases of raw meat, organs, and raw meaty bones (such as the 80/10/10 rule with liver in moderation).

If you’re concerned about feeding your cat raw, or getting a balance right, start with BARF patties (Biologically Appropriate Raw Food) like Big Dog (for Cats), or Proudi which you can find in most pet stores in Australia.

Easier options of raw cat food products are Frontier Pets, Ziwi Peak, Feline Natural, and Raw Meow. All of which are very good, and you will find reviews on this website for more information.

If you’re currently feeding kibble and don’t want to make a radical switch, start by introducing raw chicken necks or wings from the supermarket, which is a great start in both raw and maintaining healthy teeth and gums.

How much should you feed your cat?

Cats only eat to satiate on animal proteins, fats, and vitamins and minerals from animal sources.

That means, if you feed your cat a natural diet, they shouldn’t overeat and get fat.

So why are there so many fat cats in the world?

Well, if you give your cat a food made mostly of grains with lackluster animal content, you’re forcing them to consume a lot of redundant calories to satiate on the scant animal content.

These are the reasons I pay little attention to feeding guides on pet food packets. They’re usually misleading, and sometimes designed to make you think a bag of food will last longer than it will.

If you feed your cat right you will quickly learn whether you’re feeding them too little or too much. They’ll very likely meow if they’re hungry (or unsatiated).

Keep in mind a cat should be fed every single day, or twice a day. Science has shown dogs can benefit from fast days, but not cats.

How to avoid the worst cat foods

If you’ve picked up on the theme in most of this article, find a food for your cat which is high in animal protein, animal fat, AND moisture will put you on a much better path than most.

Cat food varies widely in price, but generally speaking the more you spend on a cat food the better it is.

Avoid cheap cat foods made with “wheat”, “cereal grains”, ambiguous ingredients and additives like “antioxidants” or food colours and dyes. Pay attention to the percentage of protein and fat, and consider how appropriate the first several ingredients are for your pet carnivore cat.

If budget is an issue, look to add variety to your cat’s diet by adding in fresh meats, fish, or meaty table scraps. Chicken necks or wings are usually cheap per kilo at the supermarket.

Final thoughts on feeding your cat

Hopefully this guide has helped you realise how most commercial cat food isn’t fit for purpose for a carnivorous cat.

Simple facts and science tell us what a carnivore should have in their diet, so the truth is very simple to see when we read the ingredients of most commercial cat foods.

Understanding this simple fact puts you in good stead to feed your cat a healthier diet which they will truly benefit from.

In reality, most pet owners feed either dry cat food or wet, but the more animal content in those foods the healthier your cat should be.

All kibbles contain some carbohydrates, but some are much better than others.

Make sure you feed your cat moisture, whether from a wet cat food, or from a raw food like BARF, air or freeze dried raw, or homemade raw.

Even if you wish to feed your cat kibble, at least add in some raw chicken necks, wings, or drumsticks to help add nutrition and ward off dental disease.

Whatever food you feed, keep reminding yourself your cat is a carnivore.