Why is Raw Feeding Best for ALL Cats?

The pet food industry pays for most research on pet foods; knowing what research to trust can be confusing when what you read is funded by the companies that profit from it – Royal Canin, Science Diet, and Purina. Here is a simple fact: cooking meat degrades the nutrients in the meat.  It reduces vitamins, minerals, and amino acids (Gerber).   Almost all dry and canned pet foods are cooked.  Other ingredients are added back in to supplement what was lost during the cooking, but often, these ingredients are plant-based. The “inability of cats to adapt enzyme activity to increased dietary carbohydrate concentrations” is another proven fact (Verbrugghe). This means the cat’s body cannot adjust to breakdown and utilize ingredients from most non-meat sources.  Any nutrients not coming from animal tissue have very low bioavailability to a cat. Cats get little nutritional value from ingredients other than meat, organs, and bones.  

Another reason we advocate raw feeding is the moisture content.  Raw food maintains a cat’s optimal hydration level. Originating in Africa, cats do not have a high thirst drive. Being forever stoic, cats do not tell us when they are not feeling well until it is too late. Thus, the effects of low-grade dehydration work away at a cat’s body for years before being discovered (“Dehydration in Cats”). Dehydration leads to kidney failure. Because cats do not show signs of kidney failure until 70-75% of their kidney function is lost, young cats fed dry kibble start living normal, healthy lives.  However, a study in Karolinska Hospital in Stockholm, Sweden, shows that upon reaching adulthood, the rate at which kibble-fed cats age and develop degenerative diseases increases abnormally.  In contrast, cats fed a non-processed, natural diet do not age as quickly and, most importantly, did not develop ANY degenerative diseases (Appel). 

Many people are nervous about feeding raw, with good reason.  The worst food you can feed is unbalanced raw food. You can negatively impact your cat’s health if you don’t feed raw correctly.  While the best food is properly balanced raw, the worst food is improperly balanced raw. The easiest way to feed raw is to purchase raw cat food that is pre-made and already nutritionally balanced. We have a list of pre-balanced raw food recommendations at the top right of this page.  Some ship to your door; others must be purchased in a pet store.  You can use the website’s store locator to find your closest distributor. 

Works Cited
Appel, Athena. “What You Can’t See Won’t Hurt Your Pet?” Cats and Dogs Naturally. 4 March 2013. http://catsndogsnaturally.com

“Dehydration in Cats: How Can You Tell If a Cat Is Dehydrated?” CatHealth.com, www.cathealth.com/cat-care/how-to/2233-dehydration-in-cats-how-can-you-tell-if-a-cat-is-dehydrated.

Gerber, N., et al. “The Influence of Cooking and Fat Trimming on the Actual Nutrient Intake from Meat.” Meat Science, vol. 81, no. 1, 2009, pp. 148–154.

Verbrugghe, Adronie, and Myriam Hesta. “Cats and Carbohydrates: The Carnivore Fantasy?” Veterinary Sciences, vol. 4, no. 4, 2017, p. 55.

Many Quality Bengal Kitten families want to continue feeding exactly what we feed.  Our food comes from various sources, and some must be purchased a month in advance.  Do not stress. If you do not have the time to gather food as we do, please choose from our recommended Balanced Raw Food Diets list on the top left of this page. Because raw foods have limited ingredients, switching from one brand to another is straightforward.  We will send our kitten buyers home with food to get started, but you need to have 2-4 weeks’ worth of food before bringing your kitten home.  We suggest everyone starts with Viva Raw and NuVet Supplement and then expand out from there if you want to become more involved in making your cat’s food. Our kittens have eaten all varieties of Viva Raw before leaving our home. 

We feed many cats, so how we feed our cats may not be conducive to how a family will feed one or two cats.  Our basic goal is to feed multiple protein sources as close to species-appropriate as possible for our pocketbook.  If money were not a factor, we would feed rats, mice, rabbits, quail, and Cornish Game Hen – all prey items that a cat could catch.  But the reality is that some of those foods are not affordable. Our number one goal is to offer our cats four or more different protein sources for a variety of nutrients. Our diet includes chicken, duck, turkey, beaver, pork, beef, Cornish Game Hen, and occasional quail and rats. 

We order two foods from Excel Pet Pantry: Special Grind #1: Chicken and Duck and Special Grind #5: Pork and Chicken.  We buy these foods as they are affordable for adding pork and duck to our diet. However, these are NOT balanced foods.  They do not have secreting organs in them; therefore, we use a full dose of NuVet Supplement to help balance these foods. We also order whole ground beaver from Simply Rawsome.   We feed beaver as an affordable way to feed rodent meat.  Rodent meat is the ideal diet for a cat, but it is also expensive. The Beaver is balanced at the 80: 10: 5: 5 ratio. To make it more cost-effective, we order hundreds of pounds at one time and keep it in a chest freezer. 

We also make our own raw food, but what we make changes by what we can purchase. We recommend that people who want to make their own follow the recipe on the Feline Nutrition website. Rotating four or more proteins is important, so we recommend you follow recipes like those in So You Want to Raw Feed Your Cat. 

With all of our foods, we add NuVet Supplement.  We chose NuVet for the same reasons we chose our foods: the nutrients are bioavailable. NuVet contains very few plant-based ingredients, and those it does have are added due to high levels of antioxidants that help support the immune system. When feeding a complete and balanced mix with secreting organs, such as the Viva Raw, we give a half dose of NuVet to ensure the cats receive antioxidants, a good profile of B vitamins, and taurine. As stated above, when feeding Excel Pet Pantry’s Special Grinds, we use a full dose of NuVet per cat. The NuVet is added just before feeding; we do not add it before freezing any foods as the freezing process degrades the nutrients.

When offering foods other than Viva Raw with NuVet, we provide additional taurine to the cats’ diet.  It is unknown how much natural taurine is lost in the freezing process. Cats cannot make their own taurine, and it is essential to their health. Taurine is water-soluble. The fluid that runs off from fresh or defrosted meats often contains taurine from that meat. After being frozen, much of the remaining taurine is fragmented and less bioavailable. We have found that some of our cats have a higher taurine requirement than others, so we like to ensure plenty in the food. Excess taurine is passed in their urine, so it does not risk their health if given slightly more than required.

If kittens or cats have a stool that is not just perfect, or if anyone has been on an antibiotic, we also use a probiotic to help restore the balance of healthy gut flora. We use Pure Digestion Premium Probiotic. We like this product as it contains 14 different species of good gut bacteria. Many pet probiotics only contain two or three strains. The strains found in Pure Digestion Premium Probiotic are strains that can survive the high acidity of a cat’s gut – not something that all probiotic strains can handle. This product also includes digestive enzymes to keep enzyme levels working at full force.  These enzymes help the cat absorb the maximum amount of nutrition while reducing the stress on their digestive system.

Ground raw diets are a healthy, convenient way to feed your cat, but one more step is needed to maintain dental health.  Ground raw food does not give the cat the dental benefits of ripping and shredding the meat and crunching through small, flexible bones. 

To maintain good dental health, your cat needs to eat meat off the bone at least once a week.  The easiest way to do this is to buy Cornish Game Hens in the grocery store and give a Cornish Game snack once a week.  You can cut the bird into four segments and allow the cat to eat it.  Adult cats can eat the whole thing, bone and all.  Kittens will not eat the larger bones until they are nearing adulthood but have fun working around them and testing their jaw strength. This also helps kittens grow their adult teeth, giving them something firm and satisfying to work on.  We do Dental Wednesdays and offer the cats meat on the bone each Wednesday.

If you are up to expanding your shopping beyond the average grocery store, other great foods to feed are quail, pigeon, rabbit, duck, rats, mice, gerbils – anything a cat might naturally eat.  They must eat meat and bone to keep the teeth in top condition. You can buy some of the foods in butcher shops or specialty markets, or you can order online.  When we order online, we use Rodent Pro. Their shipping quality is excellent. Our order always arrives completely frozen.  When one order was going to arrive late, they called us in advance to tell us and offered – in advance – to replace anything that was not 100% frozen upon arrival.

If you discover any plaque building up on your cat’s teeth, even with the weekly routine of feeding meaty bones, please read our article on Dental Health.  

One last recommendation we can offer raw feeders is on the grinder.  If you want to get a grinder, we can share our experience with the two we have used.  We started with the Tasin Grinder.  If you have a few animals to feed and you do not think you will ever grind any larger than a chicken drumstick, then the Tasin is your best bang for your buck.  However, it is a waste of time and money if you will be doing some serious grinding as if the bones are too big, you’ll spend a lot of time cutting them up and/or unclogging the grinder.  Sometimes whole chicken or chicken hindquarters are less expensive than individual parts, but the Tasin can’t handle some of the larger bones, so you are limited in what bones you can put in a Tasin.

After struggling with the Tasin, we bought a Weston 32.  With the Weston 32, very little time is spend grinding as it takes chicken hindquarters all in one.  It grinds turkey leg bones, no problem.  With the low price of turkey during the holiday season, it is nice to have this option.  There a considerable price difference between the Tasin and the Weston 32, so you have to decide what you will be doing with the grinder to make the right choice for you.  Many of our breeder friends use the Weston 22 and claim it is wonderful as well.  We decided to go with the 32 because for the price difference of a 22 and a 32, we figured the 32 would be worth it – and it definitely is!