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 😕.

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.

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.