It's okay Firefox I don't mind you giving advice. My aim is to feed my cats a variety of foods for health and pleasure because I care about them and I would rather someone give me advice to improve my cats well being than not say anything if they feel the cats are not getting the right foods. So no worries. I do wonder though why human grade cooked chicken and turkey is adequate for humans and not cats? Is it because of the taurine alone?
My indoor cat will only eat Applaws chicken and ostrich cat food and raw chicken breast which I often get with the skin on as I know this is good for her. She used to eat Hi Life when she was a kitten but wont touch it now along with any other commercial cat food apart from Applaws. I have tried to get her to eat other raw organ meats and chicken wings on very many occasions but she has never shown any interest. I don't like feeding her too much dry food as I don't think dry food is good for cats. She does love Whiskas Fish sticks with Omega 3 and Nature's menus salmon and trout which she has every day.
Could you please give me the name of a supplement I can use and where I could get this as I think this would be a good idea for her.
My outdoor cat gets Hi Life Poultry collection or Bozita which I believed were complete foods. Is this not the case? I mix this in with a few cubes of cooked chicken (skin on legs, breast or thigh - lots of brown meat which I believe has more taurine in order to get his jaws stronger for raw food.) I was only saying about skinless cooked chicken as it may contain less salt.
The reason I started making the chicken gravy with ground bones was because I wanted to get some of the nutrition from the bones into the cats. I know it's not as good as raw food but I thought it would be better than nothing and higher quality than commercial cat food. (?)
Neither cat will eat fish apart from Whiskas fish sticks or Nature's menu salmon treats.
I am completely with you on a variety of foods and can easily see how much you care
- Noah has raw meat (inc. bone and offal), high meat and high oily fish wets, grain-free in winter, nutrient-enriched cat milk and raw eggs!! I believe there is a supplement called Instincts and another called Felini: try VetUK, Zooplus, a Bengal forum (many breeders raw feed) or the Pet Forums nutrition message board as it's not something I have needed to research.
If I had to grade different cat diets by how healthy they are? The worst I ever heard of was someone preparing their own vegan diet (!), next someone only feeding their cat canned tuna, next someone only feeding cooked meat (no bone). All these diets can be lethal or at the very least cause medical problems. If you don't want to be scared don't read about cats going blind without taurine or painful steatitis from lack of saturated fat. Despite my scathing description of foods such as Go Cat (meat-flavoured cornflakes
) a cat can
survive on it if not
thrive.
Cooked chicken will provide amino acids (building blocks of protein) and very little else, plain meat is no more a complete diet for a human than a feline. Cooking meat denatures it and destroys enzymes - changes the chemical structure like cooking egg white - and for cats this means the amino acids are less bioavailable (usable). No idea if that is the same for humans as we don't eat raw meat as we don't have the digestive system designed to destroy bacteria. Arguably bioavailability in itself is not a big deal.
Each animal has the need for a different range of amino acids, some must be eaten and others can be manufactured in the body. Cats cannot make taurine and it is destroyed by cooking (see above) so a cooked commercial diet will always be supplemented. By far the richest source in the feline diet is raw heart, but there is also more in the dark meat than the white meat but this MUST be raw. Humans can manufacture taurine from several other amino acids.
Chicken breast contains little fat and cats need far more fat than humans as they have no nutritional requirement for the carbohydrates (from plants) we use for energy. Felines also have a clear dietary requirement for saturated fat whereas humans is very small; again cooked fat does not have the same nutritional profile as raw and usually roasting a bird means a lot of the subcutaneous (under skin) fat escapes. Skin itself is protein.
Protein alone can be used to supply energy, but can put a strain on human kidneys (Atkins diet can be lethal) and I believe this is the same for cats. Cats need a balance between phosphate from meat and calcium from bone - it is the ratio which is key to renal health. This is why I advised you not to supplement a complete diet (HiLife and Bozita) with meat on a regular basis.
Just like humans cats need a whole raft of vitamins and minerals - few of which are found in meat. Water soluble vitamins are largely destroyed by cooking, fat soluble vitamins are concentrated in the fatty tissue and offal and minerals in the bone. Humans cannot digest bone, so we source most of our vitamins and minerals from fruits, vegetables and wholegrains (or fortified refined flour). Plant foods are something cats do not need to eat, so they must get their vitamins and minerals from the meat part of their diet (or from fortified complete pet foods).
With my human clients I try to look at what each food is adding to the diet, as well as what each food is robbing from the body. I look carefully at the balance of wholefoods to treats - for humans the government recommendations are no more than 5% of daily calories should come from sugary or fatty foods (i.e. treats)!
If you have a picky cat IMO this needs addressing urgently, I am sure there is a wealth of knowledge in this area on Purrs.
For a cat, I see meat without bone or raw heart as a treat, complementary foods such as Applaws as a treat. Will your indoor cat eat offal and bone when it is ground into a mince with the raw chicken?
Can you switch her Royal Canin to any of the grain-free dry foods I mentioned in an earlier post? Does she refuse Bozita pate/ chunks in jelly?
Here endeth the longest post EVER in the history of Purrs!!
Bet you wish you had not asked about the difference between cooked chicken for cats and humans!
