All Natural Cat Food - Seven Good Reasons Why Nature is Best!

Feeding your cat an all natural cat food diet will improve her health, boost her immune system and create a happy cat. If you knew what went into most, if not all, commercial pet food, you would never buy it again. Truly, it’s not for the faint hearted.

Most commercial pet food ingredients are cheap, as the better quality food goes for the higher priced human food market. Cheap food can mean anything from high fat content, meat by-products (hair, intestinal contents, chicken feet, rancid fat, dead or diseased animals), to low grade carbohydrates such as sugar, left over fast food or spoilt grain unfit for human consumption to the melamine used to bulk out American pet food imported from China.

None of this is normal or natural cat food and much of it is indigestible, so can you wonder that overall, cats health is on the decline?

What can you do about it?

The first and most important thing to do is change your cat’s diet to a homemade, raw, all natural cat food, for seven good reasons.

1 Cats evolved on raw food over millions of years. They are best able to use this diet over all others.

2 Raw food contains all the essential vitamins, minerals, enzymes, amino acids and other nutrients, in the right amount, in a balanced form. Cooking destroys many essential nutrients.

3 Unlike processed cat food, natural cat food is easy to absorb and the cat utilises it efficiently.

4 An all natural cat food diet ensures your cat has healthy teeth and gums. Despite the claims, no processed cat food does this.

5 Parasites such as worms, fleas and ticks are minimal when you feed your cat this diet, as the environment of your cat’s body is not conducive to them. This is the opposite of processed food which makes your cat’s body a feeding ground for parasites.

6 All natural cat food keeps your cats immune system in good working order, so reducing or preventing many diseases, particularly the serious ones.

7 A hunting domestic cat is usually doing so to address an imbalance in their diet. A natural diet reduces a cat’s desire to hunt.

Whatever the health of your cat is like at the moment, changing her diet to all natural cat food will go a long way to the prognosis of her condition. However, it isn’t just a matter of substituting her processed food for raw meat. There are some important rules to follow and tips to consider.

Is Raw Cat Food Safe?

There is some concern about whether raw cat food is safe. Some feel that raw meat may contain salmonella, toxoplasmosis or another equally troublesome bacteria or parasite. And that the only way to be certain that your cat does not get these potentially fatal diseases is to cook the meat.

At first glance, this line of argument does appear to have some merit. But look a bit deeper.

Wild cats eat nothing else but raw meat and bones. Domestic cats, along with all other cats, have evolved on a diet of raw meat. Their digestive system only knows how to cope with this.

Cats, along with bears, are the only true carnivore. Their teeth show this very clearly. They are spiky for catching prey and powerful to crunch up bones. Their digestive track is short as raw meat is easy and quick to digest.

Humanity is generally under the illusion that they have improved on nature. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Holistic vets, as a body, can tell you that when you feed raw cat food, chronic degenerative disease melts away. Diseases like feline leukaemia, heart problems, sterility and tumours.

As Richard Kearns DVM puts it “I believe all cases of spinal myelopathy are caused by poor nutrition, sometimes going back to the mother’s nutrition during pregnancy”.

Richard Pitcairn DVM brings things into perspective. “Foods are so complex, we still don’t understand them. For example, researchers discovered that cats need taurine, an amino acid only found in animal tissue, which is lost through cooking. Now it is added to cat foods and supplements. Rather than wait for more such discoveries, it is better to provide animals with the diet that most closely resembles their evolutionary history”.

When you consider that cats have been evolving for hundreds of thousands of years, how could it be possible to have improved on their diet in the mere decades that commercial cat food has been available?

Lets look at salmonella. This is basically food poisoning by eating infected food. However, wild cats only eat the prey they have just killed. So the meat is super fresh, still warm in fact. Super fresh food does not carry infections. Infected food come from inadequate storage.

This is one reason why you will find cats are very fussy eaters. It’s because they know bad food when they see it. But because they still need to eat, domestic cats are left with little alternative but to eat the cat food they are given, if they are to survive.

The general guide here is to keep your cat’s raw meat super fresh. Don’t keep it in the refrigerator longer than between two to four days, depending on the temperature of the refrigerator, how many times it is opened, the ambient temperature, etc. Freeze the rest and thaw out each meal as necessary.

Toxoplasmosis is rarely a serious illness in healthy individuals. It can be a major cause of serious illness in those with a damaged immune system or those on medication which lessens the effectiveness of the immune system. This is true for both cats and humans.

Wild cats can only survive with a very strong immune system. So their diet of raw meat and bones seems to serve them well.

Nino Aloro DVM confirms this to be the case. “Diet seems to be at the base of about 90% of the cases of cystitis that I see. When my clients observe the proper diet after initial treatment, there are rarely any of the normal relapses. If they put the pet back on commercial pet food, then the cystitis comes back.”

Only buy the freshest meat and be as sensible about the handling and storage of your cat’s raw meat as you are about your own. If your cat doesn’t like the food, suspect a problem. This could be meat starting to decompose or a chlorine wash on the meat, a process some butchers use to extend the life of the meat.

All Natural Cat Food - Seven Good Reasons Why Nature is Best!

Feeding your cat an all natural cat food diet will improve her health, boost her immune system and create a happy cat. If you knew what went into most, if not all, commercial pet food, you would never buy it again. Truly, it’s not for the faint hearted.

Most commercial pet food ingredients are cheap, as the better quality food goes for the higher priced human food market. Cheap food can mean anything from high fat content, meat by-products (hair, intestinal contents, chicken feet, rancid fat, dead or diseased animals), to low grade carbohydrates such as sugar, left over fast food or spoilt grain unfit for human consumption to the melamine used to bulk out American pet food imported from China.

None of this is normal or natural cat food and much of it is indigestible, so can you wonder that overall, cats health is on the decline?

What can you do about it?

The first and most important thing to do is change your cat’s diet to a homemade, raw, all natural cat food, for seven good reasons.

1. Cats evolved on raw food over millions of years. They are best able to use this diet over all others.
2. Raw food contains all the essential vitamins, minerals, enzymes, amino acids and other nutrients, in the right amount, in a balanced form. Cooking destroys many essential nutrients.
3. Unlike processed cat food, natural cat food is easy to absorb and the cat utilises it efficiently.
4. An all natural cat food diet ensures your cat has healthy teeth and gums. Despite the claims, no processed cat food does this.
5. Parasites such as worms, fleas and ticks are minimal when you feed your cat this diet, as the environment of your cat’s body is not conducive to them. This is the opposite of processed food which makes your cat’s body a feeding ground for parasites.
6. All natural cat food keeps your cats immune system in good working order, so reducing or preventing many diseases, particularly the serious ones.
7. A hunting domestic cat is usually doing so to address an imbalance in their diet. A natural diet reduces a cat’s desire to hunt.

Whatever the health of your cat is like at the moment, changing her diet to all natural cat food will go a long way to the prognosis of her condition. However, it isn’t just a matter of substituting her processed food for raw meat. There are some important rules to follow and tips to consider.

Diabetic Cat Food - How You Can Reduce the Need for Insulin

It is now generally accepted that human diabetes is an immune disorder. There seems no reason to suppose that feline diabetes is any different. This particular immune disorder has the form of failure of the pancreas to produce insulin.

An immune system brakes down because of the burden put upon it, mostly a chemical burden. When you consider all the chemicals most pets are subject to, there is little wonder their immune systems go on strike. Drugs, vaccinations, pesticides in the garden, harsh cleaners in the house, but perhaps worse of all by virtue of it’s frequent ingestion, are the preservatives in their daily diet.

A typical cat food is processed and comes in a box, packet or can. The dried cat food must contain high levels of preservative to keep it at room temperature, indefinitely, despite what the packet may say. Believe me, there’s no other way to have such a long shelf life.

Cats are particularly sensitive to chemicals, so readily succumb to them. A stay in a cattery may well overload them, as most catteries fastidiously clean their pens with strong disinfectants or bleach, to ensure there’s no cross contamination.

There are several things you can do immediately, to help your cat overcome this serious disease, even if they have had it a while. You never know how much good you can do until you try.

1. The first thing that’s really important to address is their diet. Start giving your cat a good quality, raw, diabetic cat food. Human grade raw meat, from a butcher, will generally not contain any preservatives or colour as most countries have laws against that.
2. It’s better to feed a diabetic cat 3 or 4 small meals a day, rather than 1 or 2 larger meals.
3. Diabetic cat food differs slightly from a normal healthy cat food by the fat content. The food must be low fat (but not no fat), as the pancreas is responsible for the production of enzymes which help break down fat.
4. No healthy cat food should contain any sugar, in particular diabetic cat food. Many, perhaps most, commercial cat food manufacturers use sugar as a filler. It bulks out the meat and is cheap, with a world glut.
5. No cat food should not contain large amounts of carbohydrates, which are a manistay part of almost all processed cat foods, including those for diabetic cats.
6. The mineral chromium assists the body in utilising the insulin more efficiently, so the addition of half to one teaspoon of brewers yeast to the diabetic cat food will help your cat. Chromium is also in liver, beef and spirulina.
7. Including vitamin E in the diabetic cat food reduces the amount of insulin required. Vitamin E occurs naturally in raw meat fat and spirulina. Vitamin E is also in eggs and wheat germ oil, but diabetic cat food should be low in oil and fat, so while these are recommended, they should be in small quantities. You can also supplement it in the d alpha tocopheral (the natural form). Try to avoid the synthetic form, which is more commonly used. Synthetic vitamins are not as well utilised by the cat. Dose 30 IU per day until you see improvement.
8. And play with your cat, so she gets some exercise. Exercise tends to decrease the need for insulin.

A good diabetic cat food, like any good cat food, is as close to that of a wild cats food as possible. Cats have evolved to efficiently use raw food. They can’t use processed and cooked food in the same way, as they lack the nutrients destroyed by cooking.

Once you have your cat regularly eating good quality raw food, she may need less insulin. And if it isn’t too far advanced, there’s no reason why she shouldn’t recover completely. Recovery from serious disease is not uncommon when the cause is addressed. Ensuring your cat only eats a healthy, high quality, raw, diet, at the very least will reduce her need for insulin.

Holistic Cat Food For the Healthiest Cat

Once you’ve started looking around for holistic treatment for your cat, it’s a natural sequel to think about holistic cat food.

There’s a saying that currently people have never been so well fed, but so under nourished. As this is a direct result of poor farming methods as well as bad dietary advice, it’s no less true for your cat as it is for you.

Changing over the diet of your cat to a more natural one, will not only benefit him, but your pocket too. Because your cat is healthier on this diet, you’ll have fewer visits to your preferred cat health professional.

But what exactly am I talking about?

Well, an holistic cat food is one which so closely resembles a wild cat’s diet, as to be in the same league as far as health is concerned.

You’ll probably be relieved to know, I’m not suggesting you go out and catch mice. What I’m asking you to do is to consider the diet of a wild cat and then be mindful in duplicating it as closely as you can, within the framework of readily available food and the constraints on your time.

Actually, I’ve already done that for you, so you don’t have to do all the hard work. I just want you to know the reasons behind feeding your cat an holistic diet to ensure better health and longevity.

It’s worth remembering that cats have evolved on a wild diet over millions of years, and are extremely healthy on it. Otherwise they would have died out.

So trying to duplicate nature’s bounty for your cat is the best way to ensure his good health and longevity.

Providing an holistic cat food isn’t difficult once you’ve opened up your mind to the idea of it. Isn’t that always the biggest hurdle? Once you’re open to the idea the rest, as they say, is easy. With a bit of guidance from someone who has made all the mistakes possible.

A quality, balanced holistic cat food:

• will provide your cat with all his nutritional requirements.
• will make your cat content and much less interested in hunting - hunting domestic cats usually means they are lacking nutrients in their current diet and they’re trying to redress that
• is free from chemical residue, such as preservatives and colour, which cats are so sensitive to
• contains no synthetic vitamins or minerals - which are difficult to absorb and utilise so tend to be excreted
• is raw and so contain all the enzymes and other nutrients lost in cooking

Holistic cat food contains only naturally occurring vitamins and minerals, in a balanced and whole food form. You know, you shouldn’t need to supplement your cat’s food. All the necessary nutrients should come from the food, and in the wild, they do.

But, because modern farming methods cut corners in quality to boost quantity (and so profit), the resulting foods are often poor in nutrients. So supplementing becomes necessary.

Most supplements on the market today are isolated nutrients. In nature, nutrients are always found with other nutrients that they co-depend on. For example, calcium, phosphorus and magnesium must be in the natural balanced ratio and need vitamin A and D to be properly utilised. Iron, copper and cobalt co-depend on each other. And so on.

In addition to the isolation, most modern supplements are synthetic. Synthetic nutrients aren’t easily absorbed or utilised by the body. And you can overdose on synthetic nutrients more easily than on natural ones, which the body knows how to deal with.

Holistic cat food, on the other hand, is easily absorbed and utilised by your cat. The supplements are a whole food, and are nutrient dense. This means all that is needed is readily absorbed.

It is not time consuming to provide this diet, if you follow my easy feline dietary advice, It’s simply a question of being aware of certain pitfalls. It may take you and your cat a while to work things out, but it’s well worth it for the huge benefits which follow.

Wellness Cat Food - Seven Reasons Your Cat Needs it Now

Unless you have become increasingly concerned about the health of your cat, in particular the quality of her food, you could be forgiven for wondering what on earth wellness cat food is.

Year by year we see more and more distressing media reports that pets are dying in their droves from one commercial pet food or another.

One brand may be using melamine as a filler in their cat food.

Another brand may be having trouble keeping their commercial premises free from salmonella.

There are as many problems with all commercial pet food as there are brand names.

Lets have a look at some of them:

• a filler is something all brands use to bulk out the meat (by-products) to increase their profit
• all brands use cheap meat (by-products), as the expensive cuts go for human consumption
• the quality of the meat (by-products) varies with different brands, but many contain hair, hooves, beaks, entrails (and contents), laboratory animals (who may be highly toxic from new drug tests), euthanased pets (including toxic flea collars, tags, etc), zoo animals and horses (still containing the lethal chemical), road kill, dead or diseased farm animals
• cheap meat (by-products) have a very high fat content, as there is little human market for fat
• the food is cooked for a prolonged time period at high temperatures - cooking kills off enzymes and vitamins and can chemically alter food
• to try to address this imbalance of nutrients, synthetic nutrients are added later, which are difficult to digest and have limited use as they are all in isolation
• to ensure the cat ‘food’ has a long shelf life (which is in everyone’s interest except your cat’s), preservatives MUST be added (the manufacturer may not have added them, but they will have been added somewhere along the line) and these are typically preservatives that would never be allowed in human food, due to their high toxicity

Horrifying as the above may be, you don’t need to go searching to find a brand of wellness cat food that doesn’t have any of the above. I’m sure some are emerging from the murk, but even these you may find difficult to be 100% sure they are consistent. We all have bad days, when we can’t get the ingredients we want. What happens then? Are their ethics compromised in order not to let their customers down? What happens if the business is sold? Will the new owner or manager have the same high standards?

To have consistently high value wellness cat food, it’s best to start from scratch yourself.

I hear you cry “I don’t know how”, “how do I ensure it’s balanced?”, “it sounds too complicated”, “I don’t have the time”, “it sounds expensive”, my cat won’t eat anything except one brand”.

Wellness cat food means going back to nature. It means working out what wild cats eat (who are naturally healthy and disease free). It means taking a bit of time to work through your perceptions about what you think the best wellness cat food is. Don’t forget you’ve been programmed (another word could be brainwashed) by those who benefit by spreading this mis-information.

Natural Cat Food - Do it Yourself Easily and Quickly

In the last decades of the 20th century, people were generally hoodwinked into believing that processed and prepared food was better for your health and that of your pets.

Happily, people are now realising that this isn’t the case. More and more people are looking for a healthy diet for themselves and their pets.

When you search for a healthy diet for your cat, you really can’t go past natural cat food. Nature does know best, despite the clamouring of the pet food manufacturers. Of course they clamour - it’s big business.

But it doesn’t mean that the clamouring is based on fact.

So how do you set about finding a natural cat food? You probably have certain criteria, such as:

• it must be easy as you’re busy
• it must be nutritionally complete
• it must satisfy your cat mentally as well as physically
• it must be realistically priced

As the demand increases, businesses will spring up everywhere that offer natural pet food. Some will indeed do their utmost to fulfil this honestly, but sadly, there will always be others who will cut corners on quality and truly natural cat food.

Who do you trust?

The only person you can really trust, when it comes down to it, is you!

But I don’t have the expertise, I hear you say.

No, you may not now. But you can learn. And learn quite fast. All you need to do is to follow natural laws.

Lets look at a wild cats diet first, as that’s the most natural cat food there is.

A cat will kill and immediately eat small animals up to about their own size. This can tell you five important facts:

• the food is very fresh
• the food is raw
• the food is warm
• the food contains bones
• the food is mostly muscle meat and bones, but there are small amounts of offal

I can hear questions forming in your mind - can you really feed cats raw meat? Doesn’t that contain harmful bacteria or parasites? Won’t the bones splinter and pierce the intestinal tract?

You know, nature doesn’t get things wrong. It’s had a long time to perfect things. If the raw meat and bones in natural cat food created health problems, cats would have died out long ago. But we all know, that given the right conditions, wild or feral cat populations can grow very large.

So yes, raw meat is the healthiest and best natural cat food you can give your cat.

And no, raw bones won’t create problems. It’s cooked bones which can splinter and create all sorts of health issues. But cooked bones aren’t natural, so it’s logical that they have the potential to create mayhem.

And no, bacteria and worms are not a problem for cats.

So nature has got it right. Raw food is best!

Of course, it’s not that simple - nothing ever is, is it? You need to know the right balance, what to supplement and why, how many meals a day, what sort and size of bones are suitable, how to feed growing kittens and pregnant queens, how much offal and what kind, because you can get it wrong and then your cat can suffer the consequences.

And the big question on how to convert an adult cat to raw food - this can be quite a challenge. It’s not dissimilar to the concept of raising your kids on fast food, then telling them it’s all raw fruit and veggies from now on. You’re likely to have a riot on your hands!

However, once you get the hang of doing it yourself, it’s a doddle. And the best thing about it, is that the health of your cat will steadily improve to the best it’s ever been. And the spin off from that is much lower health professional fees.

Don’t you just love a win-win situation?

Raw Cat Food - Turning the Health of Your Cat Around

A friend’s daughter, Susan, was house and cat sitting, something she enjoys and which gives her an additional income. She was concerned for the cat though, as he was dirty, smelt, looked ragged and thin.

Now, healthy cats NEVER smell, are dirty or look ragged. Or are thin, for that matter, although neither is an obese cat healthy.

So I asked her what the diet was, knowing full well what the reply would be.

And it was.

Dried food, out of a box.

OK, so it wasn’t up to Susan what the cat was fed, but she takes her responsibilities seriously and was concerned the cat wouldn’t last til the people returned from their long holiday.

And the cat is very affectionate and wants to sleep with her. She’d prefer not to share her bed with a smelly, dirty cat and feels bad about it.

What could she do?

So I suggested she feed the cat raw cat food.

I told her what food to buy and how to manage the change over.

Older cats converting to raw cat food are likely to experience a toxin purge. Unless you’re prepared for it, it can look as if your cat’s health is rapidly deteriorating. It isn’t, it’s just having a good spring clean.

Young cats don’t have such a toxin build up, so when their diet is changed to raw cat food, they don’t experience the same purge.

Sure enough, once the raw food was started, Susan saw signs of a toxin purge. She was glad I’d prepared her, as it did look a bit alarming for a couple of days.

By the fourth day, she told me, the cat just seemed more content.

On day six, Susan reported that the cat was washing himself.

On day nine, she said the cat was eagerly looking forward to his meal, and ate it with gusto, consuming every scrap.

By day twelve, she told me the cat was almost like a normal cat - clean, smelt sweet, was filling out, was content and gave her no concern whatsoever for his chances of survival.

And she was happily sharing her bed with him by now, too.

It’s great to report that the cat’s people were amazed at the different cat they came home to. One can only hope that they retained the raw cat food diet Susan had had the courage to implement.

This cat was in his middle years, so the purging period at the start of his new diet was a bit shorter than an older cat might experience.

It’s worth every minute of the disdain your cat will treat you with in the early days, while they acclimatise to raw cat food. They may look at you accusingly, refuse the food, paw the food as if to bury it, turn their back at you, the works.

Keep your eye on the long term health gain.