Homemade diet
In some people, feeding your cat with raw meat can trigger an uncontrollable "repulsion".
Some think it's not hygienic, proving to treat the feline as a human. This is a rather gross underestimation (which the animal would not like).
It is better to specify immediately that the cat is both a natural predator and a forced carnivore. Like many living things, even the domestic feline can survive on an inadequate diet. However, this can promote the onset of certain diseases and reduce life expectancy.
Apart from personal motivations, forcing a feline to follow the wrong diet is as irresponsible as it is biologically incorrect.
Moist Food for Cats - Homemade Jelly Meat
X Problems with video playback? Reload from YouTube Go to Video Page Go to Video Recipes Section Watch the video on youtubeHygiene
Cats do not suffer from bacterial contamination of food as much as humans do.
After killing, wild cats eat only part of their prey and tend to keep the rest for the future. This means that the contamination of the meat is a perfectly natural factor and easily counteractable by the animal organism.
Cats are biologically and physiologically very different from humans. They have a very short intestinal transit time (around 12-16 hours), during which the bacteria do not have the time to multiply, spread and produce sufficient toxins.
That being said, raw meats are not all the same.
Choice
In choosing the foods to be included in the cat's homemade diet, it is better to prefer whole cuts of poultry and rabbit.
If you recover from prolonged storage, it is advisable to rinse them or cook them superficially.
To facilitate feeding the feline it is advisable to grind the whole. The cat is instinctively led to hide its prey or to withdraw to eat it comfortably. Chopping food is a useful way to prevent the cat from walking around the house with a carcass between its teeth (most of the time, they hide under a bed or under a table). Moreover, if more individuals cohabit, this warning limits the fray a lot.
It is better to avoid buying the ready-to-use minced meats, which abound in fat, probably contain more toxins than micro-organisms and have a lower conservation.
For those who consider the cat's home diet a too demanding system, we specify that it is sufficient to invest a couple of hours every 3 months to work a good quantity of meat and then freeze it all (even blocks of 6 portions).
It is useless and counterproductive to remove the bones from the meat. These are a primary food source of calcium and phosphorus (mineral salts). On the contrary, if they are not part of the ingredient already purchased, better to add a small part.
Unfortunately, the cases in which traders use only carcasses or too many vegetables or raw vegetables are not rare. At the time of purchase, better investigate the quality level.
Commercial Diet
Commercial pet foods are not all the same.
As far as the cat is concerned, it is better to exclude all dry food and focus on canned meat.
It is advisable to prefer chicken and rabbit based foods, leaving the fish a marginal role.
Food labels for cat food are not accurate at all and it is not always easy to assess their quality. It may be necessary to contact the company in question to verify the chemical composition of the food.
Attention should be paid above all to the content of:
- Carbohydrates, which should be almost absent or <10% of total calories (better if 1-2%).
- If the amount of carbohydrates is not clear, make sure that the percentage of fruit and vegetables is <5% of the total.
- Lipids: moderate.
- Proteins: dominant among energy macronutrients.
- Water: abundant (> 70%).
- Calcium: 2.5% on the dry substance.
- Phosphorus: 1.5% on the dry substance
- Calcium-phosphorus ratio = 1.8: 1.0.
