How to help your cat live a long and healthy life
The first and probably most intuitive way to improve your cat’s chances of living a long, healthy life is to offer a high level of nutrition in its diet.
1. Water-rich diet
Water is an extremely important nutrient that contributes to overall health in every living creature. Couple this with the fact that cats do not have a very strong thirst drive when compared to other species and that is why it is critical for them to ingest a water-rich diet. Cats’ low water intake sets cats up for low-level chronic dehydration, significant kidney, and bladder diseases, as well as urethral obstructions which are excruciatingly painful, costly to treat, and can be fatal.
We highly recommend introducing canned food, freeze dried food (with water added) or better - fresh/raw food into their diet. Think of water as flushing your cat's urinary tract several times a day. This is very important to keep your cat from developing urinary tract problems including life-threatening urethral blockages, infection, inflammation (cystitis), and possibly chronic kidney disease which is a leading cause of death in cats.
2. Animal-based proteins is NOT equal to plant-based proteins
Cats are obligate (strict) carnivores and are very different from dogs in their nutritional needs. What does it mean to be an obligate carnivore? It means that your cat was built by Mother Nature to get her nutritional needs met by the consumption of a large amount of animal-based proteins (meat/organs) - not plant-based proteins (grains/vegetables).
Cats have no dietary need for carbohydrates and, more worrisome is the fact that a diet that is high in carbohydrates can be detrimental to their health. You would never feed an herbivore a diet of meat, so why feed a carnivore meat-flavored cereals?
Do many cats survive on water-depleted, high-carb, plant-based, harshly-cooked, bacteria-laden dry kibble? Yes, many do. However, we choose to feed a diet to our cats that will promote optimal health - not just survival.
3. “But my cat is healthy/fine on just dry food!”
We always believe in preventative nutrition – not locking door after the horse is gone. We don’t want to end up saying “Oops…I guess my cat is not so fine now!!” when the cat with a medical problem that could have been avoided if he would have been feed a species-appropriate diet to begin with.
4. Taurine deficiency
Taurine is one of the most important nutrients present in meat but it is missing from plants. Taurine deficiency will cause blindness and heart problems in cats.
To summarize:
- All urinary tract systems are much healthier with an appropriate amount of water flowing through them.
- High amount of carbohydrates can wreak havoc on cats’ blood sugar/insulin balance.
- Cats inherently have a low thirst drive and need to consume liquid with their food. (A cat’s normal prey is ~70 – 75% water – not the very low 5-10% found in dry food.)
- Cats are strict carnivores which means they are designed to get their protein from meat/organs – not plants.
Do cats survive on only heavily (synthetically) supplemented plant-based diets AKA dry kibbles? – Yes, many of them do.
But do cats thrive on these diets? – No, they do not.
Please pay special attention to the words ‘survive’ versus ‘thrive’ as there is a significant difference between the two states of health.
’We are what we eat’ is not just a useless cliche. As noted above, diet is the foundation for optimal health of any living being - including our four-legged friends :)