What type of food do you feed your cats and why?
We open feed our cats a holistic dry food. Holistic food has no corn, wheat, or soy which cats are allergic to but carbohydrates count as protein and is cheaper than meat. It also has no meat by-products, which does not have to have any meat at all and can be beaks, feathers, and rotting or cancerous meat. Corn and wheat are often the causes of deadly pet recalls and can cause heart disease, diabetes, dental and kidney disease. It has no business being in pet food except to save money for large pet food companies.
We feed Life’s Abundance dry food which has never been recalled and is only 6-8 weeks old when we receive it instead of 6-18 months old like pet store food, which then has to be full of cancerous preservatives. Holistic food can contain rice, and grain-free dry foods still contain potatoes or peas. Our cats like the taste of rice and avoid potato like the plague. To remove all carbohydrates, you have to go with a freeze dried or frozen raw diet. If you'd like to order Life's Abundance you can use our rep code: 20126357 and calling 1-877-387-4564. After calling in the first order with our rep code we will get credit for future online orders.
Our food of choice is raw food and we use Nature’s Variety Instinct and Darwin’s raw food. We prefer Darwin’s because it is organic, human grade, cage free meat and is cheaper than Instinct, but comes in larger packages, which is great for us but a dilemma for smaller pet households. Instinct comes in single serve 1 oz pucks, Darwin’s in half pound packages. Darwin’s is good if you will feed exclusively or mostly raw as once defrosted it needs to be used within a day. Raw food is almost the only way to cut all carbohydrates out of your pets diet. Raw also comes in freeze dried if frozen raw scares you, but is more expensive and has no moisture.
Our cats also get their favorite can foods several times a day. They love food that has chunks of their meat in it such as Tiki Cat, Fussie Cat, and Almo. Many holistic can foods do not have the minerals cats needs, such as tuarine to prevent loss of vision, so cannot be fed exclusively. We also like to feed Honest Kitchen human grade food, but it is a dehydrated food that you add water to and some of our cats don’t like the texture.
Feeding raw and can food is important for keeping up moisture in cats. Cats were originally desert animals and have a low thirst drive, so they tend to dehydrate themselves with a dry food only diet. A dry food only diet can lead to kidney and bladder problems and then to litter box accidents. We recommend feeding can or raw at least once a day and more during the summer.
We NEVER feed our cats a “prescription” dry diet food. Check this out to learn about a lawsuit against these companies. http://www.petfoodindustry.com/articles/6188-prescription-dog-cat-foods-face-anti-trust-lawsuit
Royal Canin is owned by the same company that owns two vet hospitals. Prescription diets have no drugs in them and are full of corn, wheat, and animal by-products. These ingredients cause heart, liver, kidney disease, cancer, and diabetes. Feeding your cat these diets will not “cure” them and often make their disease worse, which is fine for the pet food company because you will continue to buy their food. Vets are so happy to feed this food and get a kickback that they'll even tell you it's fine to feed to all your cats, not just the sick ones. You have to wonder about the "prescription" part if any cat can eat it.
Often, switching to an all raw diet will fix many of these conditions, especially kidney problems. Corn and dry food mess up a cat internal organs and the pH of their urine, leading to kidney disease, stones and crystals that then lead to litter box problems.
Darwin’s does provide a raw prescription diet that will actually help a pet’s medical condition. If you need help finding a holistic vet that will prescribe it, just send me an e-mail. Most hospitals get huge pet food kickbacks or are owned by pet food companies and refuse to write a raw food prescription. We have seen Dr. Lemmon in Renton.
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See Links for food we've mentioned here.