Feline Nutrition 101
This was the beginning of a new life for my then 7-year old cat “Al” who had been on insulin for 3 years and was fading fast eating dry Science Diet w/d–high fiber, low-fat, but full of carbohydrates. Once I switched him to canned, grain-free food, his blood sugars leveled off and his pancreas could start making its own insulin again! He started playing again and his coat went from dull and flaky to soft and glossy again. He is seventeen years old now, can still jump a fence, and has not had a drop of insulin in 10 years, AND he still eats grain-free canned food.
Cats are true carnivores; they cannot convert the amino acids in plant proteins to the protein that their bodies were designed to use. Starch is even worse; all the carbohydrates that are in dry food like corn, wheat, rice and potato, are foreign to the cat’s diet–you will never see a cat grazing in a wheat field! Rodents are the most common prey for domestic cats. A mouse body is about 40% protein and 40% fat. Kitties are the original Atkins (Catkins) diet eaters; the fat is perfectly digestible, but the carbs are not burned up. This leads to more fecal matter or worse; the calories that cannot be burned are stored as fat. Even an extra pound on a cat is a risk factor for diabetes, which is becoming an epidemic now in our feline patients. The extra weight also makes it difficult for cats to groom properly and many suffer from painful skin infections around their rear ends. Cancer cells love carbohydrates too, so our chubby kitties are more prone to tumors as well. Dry food diets also produce borderline dehydration in cats since they are not thirst driven like dogs. This marginal dehydration increases the risk of bladder stones/sand and also premature kidney failure.
Kittens should be fed a well-balanced canned food or dehydrated mix like Wild Kitty mixed with real meat. If these little ones are fed all dry food, they often will refuse to eat canned food as adults. This leaves our hands tied as veterinarians to help them with diabetes, which means a lifetime (shortened life too) on injections. Cats should ideally eat only wet food, but if a new owner feels that they have to feed dry for convenience, make it once a day only, and not free-feed it. Just this basic change produces the most dramatic increase in health and longevity for our kitty companions.
13900 Santa Fe Trail Drive
Lenexa, Kansas 66215
913-825-3330
