There are lots of smart, wonderful, and yes - sane - people out there feeding raw meat-based diets to their cats. Some are vets. I learned from many of them, vets and lay people alike, and continue to benefit from feedback on raw feeding from site visitors and from those I've come to trust on the issue. 

I strongly encourage you to think twice about any recipe that contains grains or vegetables or relies on plant-based sources to supply vitamins, minerals, amino acids, or other essentials. 

The range of passionate opinions on whether to feed raw -- and how to feed it if you do -- is vast. It's also sometimes snarky, personal, and downright weird. But ultimately, any civil and informed debate about how to properly feed a cat is one I welcome. 

Check them out, do your own reading, make up your own mind. My suggestion is to remember the scientific facts concerning nutrition for carnivores and consider the wisdom of using any recipe that contains grains or vegetables or that relies on plant-based sources to supply vitamins, minerals, amino acids, or other essentials.

A great scientific source to learn the fundamentals about a cat's carnivore status is Dr. Debra Zoran's JAVMA article.



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It's wise to think twice about any homemade cat food recipe that contains grains or vegetables - or relies on plant-based sources to supply vitamins, minerals, amino acids, or other essentials. 

My invitation to you is to embrace the key scientific principles (http://bit.ly/19jF9OY) concerning nutrition for carnivores - specifically a cat's biology and inability to derive meaningful nutrition from plant matter - and consider the wisdom of using any recipe that contains grains or vegetables or that relies on plant-based sources to supply vitamins, minerals, amino acids, or other essentials.



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Cats and their ancestors have been eating raw food for tens of millions of years.

Cooking is the enemy of the nutrients and living enzymes that cats need to thrive. Small cats? They're designed to eat to other animals. And they're built to eat those animals raw. No, the cats living under our roof are hardly living in the wild, but biologically, they remain true carnivores. And their ideal diet would consist, for example, of freshly killed mice and small birds. 


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Cats are different.

Plant based proteins lack all the individual building blocks of the amino acid profile required by carnivores. For example, we know Taurine is a key amino acid nutrient for cats - and it simply doesn't exist in plant matter. 

Humans can take the different pieces of the protein puzzle from plants get what's required to live. 

Dry food (kibble) is almost invariably based on plant proteins - so while the AMOUNT of protein listed on the label might look plenty high, most of it is not biologically AVAILABLE to a carnivore.




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I love reprising this gem - and making sure folks know about it.  

It's an article in the premier veterinary journal, JAVMA, about cats as carnivores. Having this on hand can really help bridge the gap that often happens in conversations with veterinarians about why you don't want to buy any bags of kibble for your cat. 

Put simply, it's harder for a vet to argue with the science that's been published by their own professional association - sometimes sharing this article with your vet, and explaining that it's hard to reconcile the findings in this work with the ingredient list on a bag of kibble can open the lines of communication in a friendly way.  

There are lots of smart, wonderful, and yes--sane--people out there feeding raw food to their cats. Some are vets. I learned from, and continue to learn from, many of them.  Vets and lay people alike!  I continue to benefit from feedback on raw feeding from website visitors and from those I've come to trust on the issue. 

You can run an Internet search for "BARF" (an acronym for "biologically appropriate raw food" or "bones and raw food") and you may bebe overwhelmed with the sites, chat rooms, and egroups out there. Some are terrific. Some are not. 

Each person or group or company has, understandably, their own unique reference point and strong opinion of what's good and what's bad. I'm certainly no exception!  The opinions and emphasis each person, company, or group has is based on their own past experience (their 'baggage,' if you will). 

Me?  I strongly encourage folks to think twice about any recipe that contains grains or vegetables or relies on plant-based sources to supply vitamins, minerals, amino acids, Essential Fatty Acids, or other nutrients. 

The range of passionate opinions on whether to feed raw -- and how to feed it if you do -- is vast.  

I'm still learning as I go.  Over the years, I've made some adjustments to the recipe I use as new information has come to light or something I simply had not thought about before suddenly rises to center stage.  A perfect example is the iodine source for homemade food.  For many years, I relied on kelp as the source - until it became clearer to me that different brands and types of kelp have widely varying amounts and ranges of iodine content listed on their labels.  Since iodine is such a critical nutrient to get right for a cat - and even that is an imperfect science since the data on how much is too much or too little is a bit fuzzy - I was persuaded to start using iodized salt as the source, since there was consistency and specificity in the amount of iodine in it.  The salt is there for iodine - and for sodium and potassium.  The blood of prey food contains sodium and potassium and most of us are feeding relatively "bloodless meats." 

All of this, for me, goes to show that try as we might - we have still not fully deciphered Mother Nature.  Those of us who feed raw to cats using ingredients and sources from something other than what a small cat would kill and eat on her own are wise to never assume we have Mother Nature all figured out.  Keeping an open mind to continuous learning is a really good idea!  


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You know how when we humans chew there's a back-and-forth and side-to-side action happening with the teeth? The movement that makes it possible for you to jut your lower row of teeth out in front of your upper row of teeth? Or that lets you move the lower jaw left and right? Not so with our cat carnivores. 

For them, the lower jaw cannot move forward and has very limited side-to-side motion. The jaw on a cat is a simple hinge joint that lies on the same plane of the teeth; the hinge pivots. It's a lot like your knee joint. 

When the jaw of a carnivore closes, the blade-shaped teeth at the cheek slide past each other and that's what allows them to shear meat off of bone. As the jaw moves, the temporarilis muscle triggers the movement of the jaw. 

For herbivores, conversely, the chewing action involving forward and backward and side-to-side movement of the lower jaw pushes food back and forth into the grinding teeth - with the help from tongue and cheek muscles. This is a brilliant design that lets herbivores mechanically break down the cell walls of plants. 

Meanwhile, a carbohydrate-digesting enzyme - sailvary amylase kicks into action and breaks down starchy carbohydrates. Cats don't produce salivary amylase. 

So as we travel along the path of food making its way through a cat - before we even GET to the stomach and intestines - already our cat's physical makeup and biology is telling us about their carnivore status. 

Cooking is the enemy of the nutrients and living enzymes that cats need to thrive. Small cats? They're designed to eat to other animals. And they're built to eat those animals raw. No, the cats living under our roof are hardly living in the wild, but biologically, they remain true carnivores. And their ideal diet would consist, for example, of freshly killed mice and small birds. Cats and their ancestors have been eating raw food for tens of millions of years.

The introduction of dry cereals (kibble) and processed canned foods into the diet of domestic small cats is, evolutionarily speaking, a very recent event. 

Three Questions to Ask About Cat Food: 

When selecting what to feed your cat, start by getting answers to three questions:

▶ Does it have enough moisture?

▶ Is the carbohydrate level low? 

▶ Is the primary protein derived from animals?

If you can answer "yes" to all three of these questions, you're on the right track. 



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What does "species-appropriate feeding" really mean? 

To enjoy the best shot at health, all animals do best when they eat food that's most appropriate to their species. 

• Squirrels, for example, eat nuts, seeds, grains, and fruit. That's what they were built to eat. 
  

• Humpback whales are built to eat small shrimp-like organisms, plankton, and small fish. That's what mother designed whales to derive nutrition from.
  

Small cats? They're designed to eat to OTHER animals. And they're built to eat those animals raw. No, the cats living under our roof are hardly living in the wild, but biologically, they remain true carnivores. Their ideal diet would consist, for example, of freshly killed mice and small birds. Cats and their ancestors have been eating raw food for tens of millions of years.



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