The best cat food for optimal health is really a no-brainer. Forget about all the 'science diets' and fortified diets and the veterinary recommendations. These are all man-made diets. They don't serve your cat. And they often don't serve your wallet.
This may be challenging for some people who are fully convinced the veterinary industry knows best. So I will try to explain, not only what the best diet for cats is, but also my reasoning behind this claim.
Without any doubt, this is the one they evolved on. Cats have been on this planet, doing their thing, for a very long time. A lot longer than we have been messing about with their diets. And a lot longer than we have been honoured by their agreement to live with us.
In contrast, our modern way of caring for cats is only a few decades old.
Which have they best adapted to, do you think?
The modern cat food industry is less than 100 years old. Prior to that, domestic cats fed themselves, for the most part, even while they lived with us. They helped to keep the mice and rat population down around our homes. It was a win-win situation. Nature being at her cooperative best.
Some may have been given table scraps. Which would have been far healthier than the modern table scraps, which often consists of junk food.
After the last world war, things changed dramatically on the domestic front. Women went out to work. There there was more money.
The food industries, amongst others, exploited this, coming up with easy ways to feed everyone. Easy didn’t mean best. It means profit for the industries. Which most often translates as worse for the consumer and worse as far as nutrition goes.
The animal food industry came after it was found that the human food industry was highly profitable.
However, animal food is mainly based on the human food waste. It isn't limited to food industry waste either. Some can come from industrial waste.
Anything cheap that is vaguely recognised as keeping the end user alive, if not healthy, is far game.
Advertising has no limits and is still a very real cause for concern. Adverts persuading you the best diet is the man-made and very poor copy-cat of real and healthy cat food.
The worst one is also the most popular one - the dry kibble. This is highly destructive to your cats health.
The few laws that exist for animals are poorly upheld and expensive to challenge. It seems, sadly, that people still regard animals as lesser, unimportant beings.
No-one seems to understand cats. Especially those who should – the cat food industry and the vets.
Cats are obligate carnivores. That means they MUST have a high meat protein diet. It also means they can’t utilise plant based food. They have no need to. They're not herbivores. Or omnivores.
In addition, cats are fussy eaters for a reason – they only thrive on very fresh meat. In the wild, they kill and eat their prey immediately. They don’t bury their kill, as dogs may. They don’t eat carrion, as dogs do.
Check out the ingredients on the packet of cat food you feed your cat. It will list many ingredients of plant based foods, including isolated foods, which are an additional hazard.
It will probably also list items you have never heard of.
The little, if any, animal products, will be the very cheap animal 'protein' unsuitable to the much more lucrative human food industry. They are waste food, such as feathers. They may be by-products, which is processed anything from road kill to euthanised pets and laboratory animals, to diseased or dead farm animals.
Freshness is never an issue. That's why there are so many recalls due to salmonella.
Add in all the chemicals to fool cats to eat the food, to colour, to preserve, to fortify and you have a real disaster waiting to happen.
This needs to mimic that of their wild cousins – ie, raw meat, bones and organs, very fresh. And very wet.
Both (real) holistic animal practitioners and vets embrace this for the very fact that their charges immensely benefit by this alone. Without doing anything else.
Certainly, the more serious and the more established problems need an extra helping hand. But the diet alone will support optimum health in cats. It raises the immune system back to where it belongs. Problems disappear as if by magic.
However, getting it right, getting it in balance needs knowledgeable help.
Changing your junk fed cat to accept and DEMAND real food can also be a process that needs help and support. It isn’t always straightforward, although it can be.
We cannot outsmart Nature, despite the fraudulent and noisy claims to the contrary. We are not that smart. Without a shadow of a doubt, the best cat food for optimal health is the one they evolved on.
However, mainstream don't like this as three industries suffer. Yes, THREE! The pet food industry, the veterinary industry and the big p-harma industry. No wonder there is so much confusion out there.