Cats health is declining. From sneezing to pneumonia, from stomatitis to inflammatory bowel disease, from anemia to leukemia, to cancer in every organ, and everything in between. None of these occur naturally, in the wild, in anything like the proportions they occur in domestic cats, if at all. In fact, most of these disease were rare in cats fifty odd years ago. And cats tended to live longer then, too. Thirty was not uncommon. Now the average life expectancy is around ten.
This means, cats health, or a lack of, is man made. And it’s so easy to see why. Let’s examine one of the biggest changes in cats health in the last fifty years.
Commercial cat food was born. Every brand of commercial cat food extols its virtues, its quality, its ‘natural’ nutrition. But all this is just good advertising. Good advertising is notoriously known for its lack of substance, of truth.
Commercial cat food, like any other big corporation, is driven by profits. Even the laws of the land, such as they are for cat food, don’t worry many corporations, as they employ good lawyers. If profit is the primary goal of any company, the quality of their product must be suspect.
The typical ‘raw’ ingredients of commercial cat food come from the cheapest sources. This is mostly rejects from the more lucrative human market and includes anything that is rotting, infected, too high in chemical residue, market glut, waste from fast food outlets, and others of like ilk.
The ‘meat’ can be euthanised cats and dogs collected from veterinary clinics, euthanised zoo or laboratory animals, road kill, dead and diseased carcasses from farms, rejects from slaughter houses, etc. Typically the excess fat that is unwanted in human meat is added to pet food.
This ‘protein’ source is then bulked out with any cheap filler. This can be spoilt grain, infected grain, sawdust, nut shells, any glut of carbohydrate on the market, and so forth.
Sometimes there is an attempt to add better quality meat or grain in the higher priced commercial cat foods, but this is still substandard food, as the human market is far more lucrative.
Because the result is deficient in essential nutrients, the resulting product is heavily laced with isolated and synthetic ‘nutrients’ which are indigestible at best and harmful at worst. Other chemicals are added to colour, to flavour, to improve the texture and the appearance and to give the product a long shelf life.
Cats need a high quantity of high quality, protein and little, if any, carbohydrate. Think of a mouse. A wild mouse consists of little fat, lots of quality protein and little carbohydrate (stomach contents). This is how cat evolved. And this is the exact opposite of what they are being fed.
Somehow cats adapt to their deficient diet to some extent. But this has a toll on their health. This gradually deteriorates over time, causing all manner of disease and a short life.
Natural cats health is all about helping you to feed your cat a quality diet. This is a simple process to follow, however busy you are. The biggest hurdle you will face is to change the way you think. Don’t you owe that to your cat?
