A proper diet and nutrition is the foundation towards a better life. This holds true for any animal found around the planet. Therefore, becoming well-informed on proper nutrition will help you know what you should and should not eat. The same principle holds true when feeding your pet. It can become easy to feed your cat strictly dry food since it’s less messy and doesn’t require much work. However, after going over some cat nutrition tips, you will see that this may not be the best course of action if you want to provide your cat with the best quality of life.
Your Cats Need Plenty Of Water
An increasing number of veterinarians around the country are suggesting that cat owners should feed their pets canned food rather than bagged dry food. There are a few problems regarding a regular dry food diet that pose a problem to your feline friend. The first of our cat nutrition tips deals with water content. Dry food, as you might have guessed, has very little water content present in the food. A consistent dry food diet can predispose your cat to serious and life-threatening urinary tract diseases and various urethral obstructions. Cats need plenty of water with their food in order to avoid these complications. Our feline companions don’t have much a thirst drive, to begin with. They are designed to obtain most of their water from their diet since their normal prey is about 70 percent water. The dry food that we feed them contains only 5-10 percent water, where canned food contains approximately 77 percent water. While a cat that predominantly eats dry food does drink more water than a cat consuming canned food, the cat on dry food only consumes half of the water compared to its canned food counterpart.
Animal-Based Proteins
Cats are strictly carnivores, meaning that they only meat in order to survive. Therefore, cat foods high in protein are absolutely essential for your pet. The second of our cat nutrition tips is a reminder that all proteins are not created equal. In fact, proteins derived from animal tissues have a complete amino acid profile. Plant-based proteins, on the other hand, do not contain the complete profile. The quality and comparison of both of these are referred to as the biological value. While humans and dogs can take pieces of the amino acid profile and fill in the missing pieces with their omnivore diet, cats cannot.
The protein which is found in dry food is often heavily plant-based and harshly cooked. The quality of protein is not equal to the one found in canned food. Therefore, the protein in dry food has a lower biological value. For cat food companies, plant proteins are less expensive than meat proteins and help them drive up a better profit margin.
Eliminate Carbohydrates From Your Cat’s Diet
In the wild, a cat would never consume the high amount of carbohydrates that they normally do in captivity. Therefore, the final bullet point for our cat nutrition tips deals with eliminating carb-heavy foods from your cat’s diet. In the wild, your cat’s normal prey (rodents, birds, etc.) provide it with a high protein and high-moisture meat-based diet. Calories from carbohydrates would account for less than two percent of this diet. However, dry food contains almost 50 percent carbohydrate calories! This drastic shift in caloric content can severely affect certain blood levels within your cat. Your cat has no dietary need to eat carbohydrates. Therefore, give them a food that doesn’t have much of them. You wouldn’t feed a herbivore a diet where meat is almost half of the caloric intake.
Hopefully, our cat nutrition tips have provided you with an idea of what your cat should and should not be eating. Our website delves deeper into this information by providing reviews on each cat food brand and whether or not your cat should be eating it. Please visit us today and figure out what cat food is the best for your feline friend!
