What is the best cat food? A novel and different answer!

The question has been asked a million times on the Internet and there are a million answers and therefore this page will not be seen when I provide my answer which I think is the best one (!) as there will be too much competition. I'll press on nonetheless.

The answer must be this: a mouse, yes, a live mouse that does not have any worms in their gut! The mouse is the ideal food for a domestic cat. As cats are obligate carnivores, their ideal diet is 40% protein, 50% fat and only 3% carbohydrates. And inside the stomach of the mouse there is some vegetation - a bit of roughage when combined with mouse fur. This is the ideal diet. But the problem is that mice sometimes have worms in their gut and the domestic cat acquires these worms when they eat mice.

It's no big deal as you can administer deworming pills but it is not ideal. However, in terms of a balanced diet a living mouse attacked and eaten by a cat is very healthy. 

Next in line would probably be home-made raw cat food [link to a full page on this] which meets all the requirements of a balanced diet with all the required nutrients added in (you can buy a nice mix online). The problem here is that many people don't know how to make home-made raw cat food and neither are they sure about how to store it to avoid cross contamination. It is a bit tricky and the vets say cat owners should not try. Too risky.

But certainly, a genuine expert who is also a cat owner could make some excellent raw cat food themselves. There are many people who promote this kind of diet particularly some breeders who have acquired the expertise to do it properly.

And then next in line after that, would be the highest quality wet cat food on the market because it should replicate exactly a whole living mouse! And there may be some added nutrients as well which will be of benefit to a domestic cat. It must be balanced and complete.

And then last in line would be poor quality dry cat food because it's just too dry and domestic cats don't compensate for this dryness by drinking enough water. Plus, the carb content is far too high. It is very unnatural albeit convenient for the owner. Some vets think that dry food promotes feline diabetes and obesity.

There is actually another option in respect of dry cat food which is vegan dry cat food. A lot of people will wince at the thought of it because they have this firm belief that domestic cats can't be vegans but commercially made vegan dry cat food contains all the nutrients that a domestic cat requires. The only difference is that the protein is plant protein rather than animal protein. There is little difference between the two in terms of nutrition for the cat.

And there are advocates of this kind of dry cat food who say that their cat's health has improved. I am going to try it out myself and I will report back.

Tip: how to save left over cat food some of the time

We know that a problem with wet cat food is that a lot of it can be left behind, it goes off and it has to be thrown away. The first point to make is that not all wet cat food goes off quickly. Clearly in warm climates and in hot homes it will probably be inedible after about an hour or so because its smell changes and cats assess food on the smell it gives off.

Tip: how to save left over cat food some of the time

However, under many conditions if your cat leaves wet cat food in the bowl you can bring them back to it by adding a good quality dry cat food which can be sprinkled over the wet. You only have to add a small quantity of kibble to turn left over wet cat food or even rejected wet cat food into something which is acceptable to your cat. It is a mind game trick. We should be able to outsmart our cat. Humans are meant to be more intelligent than cats 😇.

Your cat will start eating the dry cat food which she likes and which is different to the wet (obviously) and in doing so progress onto the wet and hopefully finish it off at a second sitting.

I have just done exactly that and it worked a treat. I think we owe it to ourselves to minimise the amount of wet cat food that we throw away. Some people say that you can feed foxes with left over wet cat food in order to make use of it. I tend to disagree with that because in my experience foxes don't really like leftover wet cat food. Perhaps it depends upon the fox and where you live but that's my personal experience.

Also, foxes are essentially dogs in terms of their diet and cat food is unsuitable for dogs because it's too rich. It might cause diarrhoea. I don't have any hard evidence for that but common sense dictates that you should not give cat food to dogs and vice versa. 

It is more problematic, by the way, to give dog food to cats than vice versa because cats are obligate carnivores as we all know by now thanks to the Internet whereas dogs are omnivores despite being described as carnivores 😕.

Domestic cat requests his food by ringing a bell

Domestic cat requests his food by ringing a bell.  Screenshot.

This is neat. I am sure a cat would get the hang of this and start using the bell to ask for food rather than meowing! It might cause some friction in the relationship however. Can you imagine being woken at 4am with the sound of a door bell! :)  Every morning! Until you threw the bloody thing against the wall. But then again cats wake their humans in all kinds of ways - some fairly cruel! My female cat used to stick claw out from the middle toe and pick my nose with it. It invariably worked :) .

From @aikoharada1211: "Ding ding ding ding, mash the bell😼🛎🐾" #catsofinstagram pic.twitter.com/nelLFWhAI5

— Cats of Instagram (@catsofinstagram) October 3, 2021

Note: This is a video from another website. Sometimes they are deleted at source which stops them working on this site. If that has happened, I apologise but I have no control over it.

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Death toll mounts to 284 for cats suffering from pancytopenia linked to cat food

UNITED KINGDOM-NEWS AND COMMENT: is reported today that some 443 domestic cats have been recently diagnosed with pancytopenia of which 284 have sadly died. You may have heard and indeed you should have heard about the UK pet food recall of a long list of dry cat foods sold at Sainsbury's and Pets at Home. The Pets at Home own brand food AVA is affected. If you've not read about this then please click on this link where you can find further links to the foods that have been recalled.

Sushi died of pancytopenia after eating Pets at Home AVA dry cat food. She was actually euthanized at a vets. Photo: Mrs Kenny.

This is an update and it is a depressing one. Pancytopenia is a killer. It is a disease that causes low blood counts of red cells, white cells and platelets. It appears that the disease affects the bone marrow where the cells are created. Pancytopenia affects people as well and there are many possible causes such as cancer, bone marrow disorders, infections, medicine side effects, environmental toxins and autoimmune disorders. But in this instance, it appears that there is a common thread running through all these cats affected which is the food that they have eaten.

Battersea Dogs and Cats Home, in a tweet, state that the common symptoms include lethargy and unexplained bleeding. In one of the first reports of a cat contracting the disease, the symptom was bleeding from the nose and ears. And in another early report the owner said that her cat went down very quickly from being apparently healthy to dying within one day.

The link between the foods listed and the disease is still being investigated. This is a multi-agency investigation with the following organisations working together: Royal Veterinary College, Animal Plant and Health Agency, other government departments across all nations of the UK, local authorities, the pet food supply chain including the ultimate manufacturers of the food, Fold Hill Foods Limited.

At this stage they say that there is no firm evidence to confirm the link. What's unusual about pancytopenia is that although it appears to be fairly common in humans it is rare enough in cats for the disease not to be listed in the index of my extensive reference book on feline health: Cat Owner's Home Veterinary Handbook third edition which has over 600 pages.

If you own a cat and you live in the UK you really have to check your cat's food and cross-reference it with the list of recalled foods (click on link above and please do your own research in case the list has been extended).

Update: July 24, 2021: this is a rather feeble update. There is still no firm connection between these foods and Pancytopenia. But they've found mycotoxins in the food. The investigation continues.

Cat almost died from pancytopenia after eating cat food linked to urgent recall

This is an example of a cat who fell ill after eating one of a raft of pet food products manufactured by Fold Hill Food and sold at the UK's Pets at Home and Sainsbury's. There has been well publicized recall. If you click on the links below you will be taken to a list of the foods concerned. This may not be a comprehensive list because there may be subsequent products affected. I would ask you, therefore, to please do some follow-up research if you happen to bump into this webpage.

• Pets at Home Recall Fact Sheet June 16, 2021
• Product Recall Sainsbury's Hypoallergenic food
• FOLD HILL FOODS LTD IS RECALLING A NUMBER OF PRODUCTS IT MANUFACTURES ON BEHALF OF SELECTED PARTNER BRANDS.

In this instance, a tabby cat with his own Instagram page called CharlieBoy Stubbs was apparently perfectly healthy one day but he suddenly fell very ill. His owners, Gary and Yasmin, use one of the foods concerned as his regular diet and I think the photograph below from his Instagram page shows the food. I think it is the Pets at Home AVA brand of dry cat food. 

Day 4 in the ICU at the @theralphvetreferralcentre. These guys are doing everything for me right now. I’m fighting my hardest to get better to hopefully get to use my new garden back at home. Photo: Gary and Jasmin. Their cat was provided with the same that was possibly killing him while in the ICU as they were unaware of the issue.

Little did they know that they were potentially poisoning him. I say 'potentially' because at the moment this is an alleged link between these foods and pancytopenia and the matter is still being investigated.

Pancytopenia is a very rare feline disease it appears to me because my reference book does not contain any information about it. It affects the bone marrow where red blood cells are created. It causes a decrease in the cells in the blood including red and white cells and platelets. Platelets are cells which help to clot the blood. Red blood cells transport oxygen through haemoglobin and white blood cells are part of the immune system.

In a previous post I wrote about a cat who started to bleed from the ears and nose who contracted the disease and died sadly. The owner blames the cat food manufacturer because it is too coincidental to believe anything else but, as mentioned, the link is yet to be established.

CharlieBoy Stubbs was rushed to a veterinarian where he was first given antibiotics. This was a waste of time because he did not have a bacterial infection but clearly the veterinarian was scratching his/her head. They went home and then returned to the vets when he showed signs of serious illness again and the veterinarian recommended a blood transfusion. Perhaps at this time they had discovered through blood tests a very low level of cells in his blood. They had to go to an animal hospital for the transfusion which was half an hour away by car.

Gary and Jasmine were concerned that they had caused illness and in a way they had because they had inadvertently fed their cat what appears to be a food causing severe illness. And an illness which can be fatal as you can see by this story.

At the moment, the latest update is that Charlie Boy Stubbs is 'hanging in there' but is not yet out of the woods. Ironically, and sadly, while he was being diagnosed they were still feeding him with the same food. It was only I suspect during the investigation process that the veterinarians learnt via the Internet, as other people have, that the food could be the culprit.

Gary said that "The hospital had no idea, we had no idea, we were worried it was something we had done as we had just moved and thought it might have been something in our new home that had affected him. We were so stressed, we really thought we were going to lose him and we were worried that it was our fault."

The Royal Veterinary College and the Animal Plant and Health Agency together with authorities across Britain and the manufacturer have launched an urgent investigation to find out whether there is indeed a link between these food products and feline pancytopenia.

Food freshness is important to a domestic cat

 I ran a little tests today to see how critically important food freshness is to a domestic cat. My cat likes king prawns. I treat him with them from time to time. I have one packet which has three days left on its sell by date so they are perfectly fresh and edible.

Food freshness is important to a domestic cat. Image: MikB based on image from Pixabay.

Today I bought a fresh packet, straight off the shelves of Sainsbury's. I gave him some prawns from the older packet and he rejected them. I gave him some prawns from the fresh packet and he gobbled them up.

Both were highly edible but he entirely rejected one and loved the other. And of course he checked them out with his nose. The first thing that a domestic cat does when eating food is to smell it. The cat's nose is the arbiter of whether food is good or bad, edible or inedible.

This is why they will pick up the smell of a pill inside food and reject all the food or just the pill. I don't think humans have yet fully grasped the importance of smell to the domestic cat. It's like an extra pair of eyes in the human world.

I wonder sometimes whether they rely more on their sense of smell than they do on their sight. As I dictate this my cat has discovered some dry cat food inside a toy. The toy is designed to make getting at the food difficult. It's meant to simulate hunting. The food has been there for about a year. He is eating it with gusto.

That is another story. Dry cat food can smell perfectly edible and attractive to a domestic cat even though it is quite old and beyond its sell by date. Does dry cat food go off? They say it does and it does have a sell by date but I'm sure that 99.9% of purchasers ignore the sell by date. It is as good as meaningless because the lifespan of dry cat food is so long in practice.

The point of this post is that cats rely on their sense of smell to decide whether the food is edible or not. It's appearance is probably neither here nor there.

Do hungry domestic cats hunt more than well fed ones?

There is or was a belief that a domestic cat's desire to hunt is divorced from his hunger or lack of it. In other words whether a cat is well fed or not does not affect his desire to hunt prey animals as the desire or motivation to hunt in innate. It is instinctive and the feline will always do it when the prey is available.

This article refers to a study on cat food ingredients and hunting desire but before you read that it has to be common sense that a hungry cat will be a more committed hunter for the simple reason they need to eat to survive. They will kill and eat what they need to survive.

And on the other side of the coin a well-fed cat is less likely to hunt provided the food is balanced and contains all the nutrients but a fed cat will still hunt instinctively with the caveat that each cat has their own desire to hunt. Some cats just don't want to do it. I lived with a female cat who was disinterested for instance.

High quality wet cat food which is grain-free plus play will curb your cat's desire to hunt. Graphic provided by the scientist conducting the study. 

There is no doubt that there is some truth in this but a recent study  might be considered to undermine the theory or perhaps it supports the theory? The scientists found that complete diet cat food as described i.e. wet cat food which is considered by the manufacturers to totally complete, might not be quite so complete as expected as it might be omitting some micronutrients (unspecified). Domestic cats instinctively sense this and hunt mice to make up the deficit.

The scientists decided this because when they fed cats grain-free wet cat food their hunting behaviour diminished by 36 percent. Playing with your cat can reduce hunting by 25 percent.

Martina Cecchetti, a PhD student also of Exeter University who conducted the trial said: 

"Some cat foods contain protein from plant sources and it is possible these foods leave some cats deficient in one or more micronutrients, prompting them to hunt."

So there is some potential deficiency in 'complete cat food' which contains grain. Perhaps the presence of the grain in some of these foods triggers a message in the brain of cats to tell them that the food is not quite up to scratch and drives them to hunt for the real thing: a small rodent, their preferred prey animal.

Play also helps to deter feline hunting. This indicates that when a cat has hunted he pauses because he has satisfied his desire to hunt. This is the likely conclusion because playing with a domestic cat is a hunting substitute for the cat. All cat play is play-hunting.

Most cat owners who allow their cats free access to the outside would wish to curb their cat's hunting. Some find it disgusting, others accept it but dislike it. Here are two things that can be done to curb it. Select grain-free wet cat food and play with your cat a lot more.

Click here to read the study.

Why do cats eat grass?

I am referring to the domestic cat. Although, it should be said, that wild cat species do eat vegetation as well such as the snow leopard which in particular likes to eat a certain bush! So why do domestic cats eat grass? There have been many theories for this and perhaps the most prevalent is that domestic cats want to make themselves sick, to sick up hairballs. Or, a slight alternative to this theory is that grass helps to push hairballs out of their digestive system so that they are defecated i.e. it is roughage. Another theory is that when cats are ill they want to make themselves sick so the grass is eaten to achieve this. And a further theory is that they like eating grass because it tastes nice.

The best theory is that the juice of grass contains folic acid, a vitamin which is not available to them within the flesh of animals. Folic acid is a naturally occurring B vitamin, specifically vitamin B-9. It is also called folate and is important in prenatal health in people. It is especially important to pregnant cats and dogs and it plays an important role in the production of haemoglobin. It is part of the cell multiplication process and helps to synthesise DNA. 

Domestic cats can also eat grass which is in the belly of prey animals such as rabbits. So cats eat vegetation or plant matter via their prey animals in any case. It is not something which is bizarre or out of the ordinary. What is out of the ordinary is that 50% of dry cat food is plant-based! How about that for a carnivore? People say that you should never feed a domestic cat a plant-based diet but we're doing it all the time anyway seems to me.

New Zealand: Cat Food Manufacturers In Catfight!

Nestlé, which sells Purina and Friskies cat food products is fighting with Mars, which makes Whiskas cat food products.  They are doing this fighting in the New Zealand High Court.

Firstly, it is rather ironic that pet food manufacturers are fighting over the quality of their products because it is far more commonplace for consumers to be criticising petfood manufacturers about the quality of their products particularly dry cat food, over which the current argument is taking place.

Whiskas dry cat food is stated by Mars to have the highest protein levels of all the dry cat food that is sold in New Zealand.  Nestlé states that the claim is misleading because this cat food product has only above average levels of protein which is in fact stated in small print on the packaging. That is their claim and allegation. Mars stands by their promotion.

Both of these multinational companies miss the point altogether namely that the dry cat food products which they manufacture are far too high in carbohydrates which makes the food inherently unsuitable for the domestic cat.  This product is claimed to lead to feline diabetes, urinary tract infections and a permanent state of mild dehydration.

These companies should not be bickering about how much protein is in their dry cat food.  They should be focusing all their energies on dramatically improving their product.  It is outrageous and negligent for these multinational companies to consistently manufacture products used by millions of cat owners which are inherently unsuited to cats but which are highly suited, by reason of convenience, for the owners.

Domestic Cat and Mouse Picture

This photograph by Jo and Paul on Flickr, shows us very graphically the difference in size between the predator, the domestic cat and the prey, the little mouse.

It is not always the case that the predator is so dominant in terms of size. Think about the large wildcats, especially. Both the lion and tiger can and do take on prey that is many times larger than them. Lions will tackle Cape buffalo weighing 600 - 900 kilograms, while the average weight of tiger kills in Nagarahole National Park in India was 401 kilograms¹. That is heavier than the heaviest tiger. However from the standpoint of survival the wildcat will prey on animals that offer the least resistance and chance of being injured during the attack. The serval is much like the domestic cat in preying on rodents in long grass using hearing as a major form of prey detection (servals have notably large ears).

The domestic cat has it easy. The mouse is the perfect meal for the domestic cat. Sometimes cats play with a mouse they are attacking, even when it has been killed. This is seen as cruel by people.

Large black calico cat and tiny mouse - Photo by Jo and Paul's pics

Cats don't think it terms of cruelty.  There are good and reasonable reasons why both the domestic cat and the smaller wildcats play with prey before and after it has been killed.

You can read about it on this page: Domestic cat hunting.

Associated: Lion prey Kruger NP.

Note: 1 Wild Cats Of The World by the Sunquists

Propylene Glycol and Cats

There are two strange aspects in respect of the use of propylene glycol that concerns the domestic cat.

Firstly, this chemical is an alternative to ethylene glycol antifreeze, which is highly toxic to cats and which causes the death of thousands of cats every year. Almost 90% of animals that consume anti-freeze die. Propylene is less toxic.

So why hasn't propylene glycol replaced ethylene glycol many years ago? It must be about cost and a disregard for companion animals by the manufacturers combined with a lack of knowledge with respect to pet owners. It seems extraordinary to me that anti-freeze for cars cannot be made non-toxic to cats while keeping the price the same. There is just a lack of will to do it.

There is another very odd feature of propylene glycol. Apparently it is a common pet food ingredient! Yes, the manufacturers put it in pet food as a moistening agent. It is found in semi-moist pet food. Apparently it is approved for use in dog food ("generally recognized as safe" (GRAS) in the USA). Approval will be country specific, meaning in certain countries it will be approved while in others it might not be. Propylene glycol is said to destroy red blood cells. Apparently veterinary research indicates that it is toxic to dogs. There seems to be a conflict in respect of scientific information. How is it approved for dog food and toxic at the same time?

However, propylene glycol is not allowed to be used in cat food. I presume this means in the USA. It is deemed unsafe for a cat to ingest the chemical when an ingredient in cat food. So how is it safe for cats as an anti-freeze where it would be in larger quantities?

It looks chaotic to me. One thing is clear. Big business cares more about profit than the long term health of cats or dogs.

Cat Carbon Pawprint

Yup, we can reduce our cat's carbon pawprint if we feed our little treasures In Clover cat food supplements and I am not getting any commission for this, no sir. I just read a PR announcement that In Clover, an American pet food supplement manufacturer, have chosen to use wind power to power some (or all) of its machinery and plant. Great stuff. I found out about this because I also read that preparing meat products for humans creates a massive carbon footprint. For instance, if everyone in the United States had one vegetarian meal a week instead of chicken it would be the equivalent of getting rid of 500,000 cars. Big numbers so I thought if we, humans, can do something to help the planet then why not our little cat companions. And yes, they can. A cat carbon pawprint can be reduced if we buy supplements from In Clover. Now where is my 10%?

Cat Eating Grass

Why? Looks strange. Maybe cats just like it. I always wondered why my cat likes to pop out and almost one of the first things she does is to chew on grass.

Sometimes (thankfully rarely, it seems) a cat will chew on the next available thing, a house plant, and some of them are poisonous. You can see a list here.

I actually thought it was something to do with the digestive system of cat and a means to improve it - a bit like eating roughage for humans!

Some experts though it was a means to making themselves sick to throw up hairballs.

It seems that the jury is still out on this but the likely explanation is that the cat is chewing on (normally long grass) to extract the sap or juice in the grass as it contains a substance that is not normally obtainable in her diet and which is vital to her.

The chemical that the cat needs is folic acid, a substance that aids the body's production of hemoglobin. Hemoglobin is a substance in the red blood cells of the body that contains iron and which transports oxygen around the body in the blood.

Cats are not becoming vegetarian though. They are confirmed carnivores and the diet should reflect that.

Source: Cat Watching - Desmond Morris
Photo: reproduced under creative commons copyright Irregular Shed (Flickr)

From Cat Eating Grass to Black cat in grass

Cat Food

There are three types of food for your cat, dry cat food, wet cat food and raw (they catch this sometimes).

What is the best? One of the points that some people make about dry cat food is that cats tend not to drink enough to compensate. If this is the case they don't urinate enough and that can lead to kidney infection. It is good to urinate a lot to flush out bacteria. Cystitis in a cat can result from eating dry food in my opinion as, by the way, can stress. My cat Binnie can get Cystitis as a result of stress. That is why I never leave her alone for more than several hours (comfort zone for her).

That said, dry food is very convenient and cats like it a lot of the time. The obvious answer is to provide a mixed diet by alternating, for example, fish with dry food. If you add some water to the fish (I use frozen fish) before micro-waving then the fish meal has more liquid in it resulting in the cat drinking while eating.

Wet cat food in the UK is coated in jelly which cats like more than the solid bits leading to waste and perhaps less nuitrition. I think dry food is beneficial for the cat's teeth or at least better than wet food in this regard.

Then we have raw. This kind of food may suite wild cat/domestic cat hybrids as the wild in them should make them more suited to the kind of food that their wild ancestors would eat in the wild.

Finally do you provide whole animal raw meat or prepared raw meat. Hell, if it's going to be raw give 'em it whole I say.