Don't want to fan the flames but I have to say
Schmetterling , when I saw your cats' menu (oats, veggies, tinned fish!), my reaction was very
. Okay, I can see you thought the response from
Epona was antagonistic, but really, it's coming from concern about the cats' welfare.
Breeze is "my" first cat since I was a kid (back then I knew jack shit and wasn't a responsible pet owner.) Being a "responsible" grown up, I thought I'd better find out stuff about cat health and nutrition, as I'd done with guinea pigs. I want my pets to be healthy, content and live as long and well as possible, mostly for their benefit, but also I don't want them to get sick, have expensive vet bills, be in pain or die early.
Epona & others here were really helping me learn stuff and where to get good, not so expensive food. There's also good info on the internet (but also of course whackdoodle, far out stuff of course.)
Cats, dogs and small children will eat all sorts of things that aren't good for them, even are harmful to them, if you give it to them. Just because they eat it and "look" healthy enough doesn't mean it's okay to feed it to them. A lot of the food marketed at children is really unhealthy crap. Same goes for pet food but hey, it's up to us "responsible adult types," to make the choices here
Breeze, trying to eat a Pop Tart - definitely NOT a good idea!
A human's intestine is about 6 times it's body length, designed to digest a mixed diet including vegetation and cereals. A cat's is only 3 times it's body length so food passes through the system quickly. It's not set up to digest complex carbohydrates like grains or vegetable matter. If you give cereals & plant matter (or food mostly made up of it), most of it will just pass through undigested without much in the way of nutrients being absorbed. The stuff will also irritate the intestinal lining, can cause constipation, vomiting and chronic painful bowel problems. You'll also be raking alot more and smellier shit out of the litterbox, (Breeze craps only every 2nd or 3rd day - not a bouquet of roses, but not as bad as any other cat's I've known!)
One of my neighbour's cat's was diagnosed with diabetes and the vet pretty well just told her it's daily injections for life, that's it. She looked into the diet thing, changed her to grain free/high meat and within a few months, she regained weight and hasn't needed insulin. (I've discovered alot of vets know very little about animal nutrition and/or care more about the hefty fees they get from Royal Canin and Hills to tout their products in surgeries
. I knew most were crap on care of guinea pigs, but I didn't know this about cats and dogs . . . )
So, Breeze is on a grain free, high meat diet. She likes dry food (which actually makes no difference to the teeth, despite what alot of people think!) so she gets Thrive Complete dry (90% meat) or one of the other 70% plus meat dry foods. Being a Maine Coon, she likes to play in and drink water. Not all high meat wet foods are that expensive - HiLife and Feline Fayre are middling (about 50-60% meat) and often around 4 for a quid at Asda or B & M. It's important to check they are "complete" (with taurine & other nutrients added) rather than complementary (like Applaws/Encore.) Some of the really high meat ones are cheap online from ZooPlus or Pets at Home online, like Bozita and Natures Menu.
Right, I'll step off the soap box now.
Yes, that's me you see in the pet food aisle, clutching a tin, scrutinising the label and tutting loudly!
)
