Food for Thought: Feeding your Cat 

Cats are strictly carnivores. This means that your cat was built by Mother Nature to meet her nutritional needs by eating other animals! In the wild, your cat would be eating a high-protein, high-moisture, moderate-fat diet with few carbohydrates. Dry foods contain somewhere around 35 to 50 percent carbohydrates. This is far more than her body can process and the excess usually ends up as stored fat.

Putting a little thought into your decision about what you feed your cat can pay off over her lifetime and very possibly help her avoid serious, painful, and costly illnesses such as kidney disease, bladder stones, cystitis, diabetes, obesity, inflammatory bowel disease, and fatty liver disease.

Since your cat is a meat eater, her biology has evolved in such a way that certain proteins are more digestible and usable. She has a better shot at good health by consuming animal-based proteins (meat) instead of plant-based proteins (grains). Never feed your cat a vegetarian diet! A cat cannot survive without the necessary proteins only found in meat, so look for a cat food that contains real meat as the first ingredient(s).

It is generally best to avoid pet food that you will find in the grocery store. These products are low-end, low protein foods and are the equivalent of "kitty junk food". If you must get your pet food from a grocery store, stick to canned food for its higher protein content.

Aside from protein, the other most important ingredient in your cat’s diet should be water. Water is vital to your cat’s health and cats on an all-dry food diet are often chronically dehydrated. Since cats do not have a high thirst drive compared to other mammals, it is important that they get plenty of moisture in their food.

A cat’s natural prey food consists of between 65 and 75 percent water. Dry food averages 10 percent and canned food averages 78 percent— you can see that a diet including some canned food will be better at meeting your cat’s hydration needs. You should still have fresh water available to your cat, even if you feed an all-canned food diet.

How much to feed your cat depends on the food you are feeding and your cat’s individual needs. The average healthy adult cat should do well on a diet consisting of some canned food and some dry. How you decide to present the food to your cat is up to you as long as canned food isn’t left out and allowed to spoil.

It is generally a good idea to start with slightly less food than the food manufacturer recommends on the packaging. You can always increase the food in small increments if your cat needs more calories.

Feed your cat two meals a day and measure the portions so you know how much you are feeding your cat. You will be able to tell if her appetite increases or decreases due to illness or stress. If you allow your new cat to free-feed, there is a good chance they will eat too much and become overweight. It is a lot easier for a cat to maintain a healthy weight than it is to lose extra pounds.

We do not recommend a specific cat food. Research high-quality commercial cat foods made by companies that have gone the extra mile to either use no grains or minimize them and other plant-based fillers and use meat as the primary ingredient.