Dry cat food kills the consumer, the cat, but it’s a slow death. Why and how does this happen?

Dry cat food keeps the cat alive, but it creates a multitude of chronic conditions which eventually kills the cat.

Why do vets promote this food if it is so destructive?

Veterinary school training is largely done by big p-harma and big pet food. Vets are given virtually no training in nutrition. What they are taught is from big pet food reps.

Very often, the students are given free pet food from the local rep, for their own pets. That can become quite persuasive. 

A typical dry cat food list of ingredients may look like the following. They vary a bit from brand to brand.

Chicken, Chicken Meal, Peas, Lentils, Chicken Fat (Preserved with Mixed Tocopherols), Chickpeas, Natural Flavor, Flaxseed, Potassium Chloride, Taurine, Salt, Vitamins (Vitamin A Supplement, Vitamin E Supplement, Niacin Supplement, Thiamine Mononitrate, Pyridoxine Hydrochloride, Calcium Pantothenate, Riboflavin Supplement, Biotin Supplement, Vitamin B12 Supplement, Vitamin D3, Folic Acid), Minerals (Zinc Proteinate, Iron Proteinate, Copper Proteinate, Manganese Proteinate, Sodium Selenite, Calcium Iodate), Choline Chloride, Rosemary Extract.

The first thing to recognise, is the extremely long list. This should raise alarm bells on its own. How much looks like food?

We’ll go through each group.

One thing to appreciate about lists of ingredients is that they are in the order of the amount, with the largest listed first. That doesn’t necessarily mean much as the first ingredient may be 10%, and all others less than than that, or 90%.

Since cats are carnivores, their diet consists of raw meat and bones. It’s a very high protein diet. So the first ingredient in this list is chicken. Which is great. Until you realise that the word ‘chicken’ in pet food can mean any and every part, such as feet, feathers, beak, intestines.

The chicken you might purchase in a supermarket is not going to be added to pet food. It’s too expensive.

Any part of the chicken is not necessarily bad for a cat, as long as they are only a part of the diet. Cats need good quality animal protein. You probably feel that feathers may not be in that category. Yet feathers are used and count as ‘chicken’.

When a wild cat eats a bird, it is normal for them to leave the feathers as they are indigestible.

This comes from a rendering plant. All slaughter waste goes to rendering plants, as well as road kill, dead laboratory animals, euthanised animals from vet clinics and dead farm animals.

Because this ‘raw material’ may be left outside for days before being processed, you may begin to see why so much commercial pet food is recalled due to salmaonella poisoning. The scavengers, such as rats, may not always get away from the processing.

In the above list of ingredients, the chicken meal may be a very close ingredient in terms of quantity to the ‘chicken’. 

Cats are known to need a high protein diet. Animal protein.

Yet animal protein is expensive. Even the waste.

Plant based protein however, is cheap. So the cat food manufacturers top up the protein with high protein plant food, such as legumes.

All cats, except the lions, are lone hunters. They alone are responsible for their food. They need to be agile, fast, quiet, light hunters with super alert senses. So they have lightened their bones, but more importantly, they have lightened their livers.

Livers process the alkaloids, terpenes, and phenols that abound in plants, for self preservation. Cats lack this as it isn’t needed. Their natural diet is raw meat, not legumes.

Plant food can create havoc in their systems. Their poo is soft and highly odourous from the fibre. Yet healthy cat poo is hard, with little odour.

Are you beginning to get a glimpse why dry cat food kills? 

Vitamins and minerals in their natural form is contained in food. Not only that, they are accompanied by all the other supportive nutrients. For example bones contain calcium, phosphorus, magnesium, sodium, zinc, iron, collagen, marrow (fat) and many other nutrients. All in perfect balance for both the owner and the owner’s prey.

A collection of isolated chemical minerals and ‘nutrients’ can’t come close to the natural version. In addition, as they are not natural, the body doesn’t know what to do with them. So they are deposited in parts of the body where they do least harm. However, the accumulation over the years does result in harm.

One can be forgiven for thinking that as humans have isolated the nutrients that are needed for health, the substitutes are just as good. You can compare that with wood and MBF. They both function. However, the wood will outlast the MBF, all things considered, many times over.

The MBF will off-gas the chemicals used in its construction.

Dry cat food ingredients aren’t much different from wet cat food ingredients. The one big difference is that one is dry, the other wet. And that’s a big deal for cats.

Cats evolved from the dry or arid areas of the world where no rain falls or only seasonal rain. So they have devised a strategy of making use of the blood of their prey for their liquid needs. This means they don’t have much of a natural thirst because it comes from their food.

A cat consuming dry food will never make up the short fall. This rapidly leads to kidney disease, kidney failure, kidney or bladder stones, inflammation of the urethra, cystitis, inability to urinate. Conditions that vets have no cure for because they don’t understand the cause. Which is the food they promote and sell. 

To keep a product on the shelf for years, as dry cat food often is, strong preservatives are needed. These are unlikely to be mentioned in the list of ingredients as people will see them.

However, if they are added at another part of the process, such as the product from the rendering plant, by law, they don't have to be listed.

Some of the strong preservatives include formaldehyde (which is used to preserve dead bodies), ethoxyquin (used in the rubber industry and causes organ damage in those who are exposed to it directly).

These are never used in human food because of their toxicity.

Cats are far more sensitive to toxins than we are and succumb to their effect more easily and quickly.

There are other factors of dry cat food which contribute to the poor health of the consumer.

Cats need quality raw meat. All commercial cat food is cooked and normally at very high temperatures and pressures in a vain effort to kill off the pathogens in the ‘raw material’ that is so un-hygienically stored.

Cooking alters what little of the protein there is and kills off essential enzymes, at the very least. 

Highly processed food is very damaged. It lowers the vibration of the consumer, making them less instinctive and more prone to poor health.

It's difficult to comprehend the extent of the damage. However, dry cat food kills and in abundance.