The most important myth surrounding cat ownership is that cats are worry free, self-contained and self-providing pets that require little or no maintenance. Cats are so good at giving people the impression of independence and self-reliance that folks imagine they haven’t got to supply the highly focused attention to cats that, say, dogs require. The very fact of the matter is that cats do require the identical attention to detail that any dog does, and possibly even just a little more, in some cases. This is very true in the case of probing the controversy regarding whether raw cat food is healthier that canned cat food or kibbles on your feline ward.
It is a sad thing to go searching our country today and see so many individuals who’ve allowed themselves to develop into obese after which should take care of the consequential suffering and ill-health effects of obesity. Diabetes, shortness of breath, constant exhaustion from lugging around so many extra kilos and lowered self-esteem. In fact, the garment industry is singing pleased tunes with all the additional thread they should put together. There is no shortage of explanations for why this example has come about, but I believe when it comes right down to it we are able to only blame ourselves at the person level for allowing such a condition to take root. In spite of everything, what number of kilos obese does one should get before they realize that something’s not right and becoming an issue? 10, 20… 50 lbs? And the way long does it take to understand that the magic pills, diets, elixirs and effortless, lose-weight-with-no-work-out machines are products being marketed to your ego, to separate you out of your checking account, and never to unravel your problem? No… the one strategy to find a great normality is with thorough research, discovery and a number of exertions accompanied with a healthy life style change. But, enough sermonizing concerning the human condition. That is about cats, their eating habits and raw cat food.
One thing needs to return together with this discussion from the previous paragraph. Most individuals usually are not experts in animal nutrition and depend on others to steer them in the fitting direction. The source for many ‘experts’ available to an individual for his or her each day decision making and number of selections often involves us through the standard media of radio, newspapers, television and now, the web. Media offers two sorts of resources. Investigative reporting which is presented in newscasts or opinion pieces, and secondly, the marketing hype that gives business broadcast funding. The previous is reliable enough to place credence into and might call for further research in your part if it interests you. The latter really only wants you to spend your money with them. That is not necessarily bad… it does ultimately put people to work and provides many with an adequate, and even comfortable living. Unfortunately, the underside line is… corporations only have one objective ultimately. That’s to feed their bottom line. Now recent events have caused many to reconsider the morality behind a corporations goals. But, so long as this market structure is the paradigm for our economy, the last word goal for giant business will at all times be to maximise their profit-loss statements towards the profit end of the spectrum, any way they will get away with, and at your expense… literally.
So, what does this should do with cats and if raw cat food is what you have to be feeding them? Simply put, most individuals depend on the marketing hype to base their decisions regarding the food they feed their pets. Which is precisely the mistaken source for basing such a critical decision. Take the cat for instance. It isn’t only a scientific fact, but a cultural one also, that the cat is described as an obligate carnivore. This defines cats as creatures who derive most of their food nutrients from the animals they hunt and eat (raw cat food). When a cat devours it’s prey, she’s going to eat every part including not only muscle meat, however the brains, organ meat and the stomach and its contents which can consist of grasses and grains. One thing she doesn’t do is fan the flames of a stove and saute or bake her dinner, or prepare a pleasant sauce to go together with it. She eats it raw. Cultural purists use this description as an argument that feeding cats store bought, mass produced canned or dry cat food is doing all your cat a disservice by depriving her of the natural nutrients she would normally get within the raw cat food she captures within the wild, and for which she was biologically designed.
Pottenger’s cats
Francis M. Pottenger, Jr. (1901 – 1967) was the son of Francis M. Pottenger, Sr., the physician who co-founded the Pottenger Sanatorium for treatment of tuberculosis in Monrovia, California. Between 1932 and 1942 he conducted what’s know because the Pottenger Cat Study. One a part of this study was what effect heat had on the nutrient value of raw food. In other words, what happens to food once you cook it.
“Pottenger used donated laboratory cats to check the potency of the adrenal extract hormones he was making. The adrenal glands of those cats were removed for the experiments and Pottenger noted that almost all of the cats died during or following the operation. He was feeding the cats a supposedly nutritive food plan consisting of raw milk, cod liver oil and cooked meat scraps of liver, tripe, sweetbread, brains, heart and muscle.
When the variety of donated cats exceeded the provision of food available, Pottenger began ordering raw meat scraps from a neighborhood meat packing plant, including organs, meat, and bone; and fed a separate group of cats from this supply. Inside months this separate group appeared in higher health than the cooked meat group. Their kittens were more energetic and, most interestingly, their post-operative death rate was lower.
At a certain point, he decided to start a controlled scientific exploration. Pottenger conducted studies involving roughly 900 cats over a period of ten years, with three generations of cats being studied.
Meat study:
In a single study, one group of cats was fed a food plan of:
- Two-thirds raw meat, one-third raw milk, and cod-liver oil
- A second group was fed a food plan of two-thirds cooked meat, one-third raw milk, and cod-liver oil.
The cats fed the all-raw food plan were healthy while the cats fed the cooked meat food plan developed various health problems:
- By the top of the primary generation the cats began to develop degenerative diseases and have become quite lazy.
- By the top of the second generation, the cats had developed degenerative diseases by mid-life and commenced losing their coordination.
- By the top of the third generation the cats had developed degenerative diseases very early in life and a few were born blind and weak and had a much shorter life span. Lots of the third generation cats couldn’t even produce offspring. There was an abundance of parasites and vermin while skin diseases and allergies increased from an incidence of 5 percent in normal cats to over 90 percent within the third generation of deficient cats. Kittens of the third generation didn’t survive six months. Bones became soft and pliable and the cats suffered from opposed personality changes. Males became docile while females became more aggressive.
- The cats suffered from a lot of the degenerative diseases encountered in human medicine and died out totally by the fourth generation.
On the time of Pottenger’s Study the amino acid taurine had been discovered but had not yet been identified as an important amino acid for Cats. Today many cats thrive on a cooked meat food plan where taurine has been added after cooking. The deficient diets lacked sufficient taurine to permit the cat’s to properly form protein structures and resulted within the health effects observed. Pottenger himself concluded that there was likely an “as yet unknown” protein factor (taurine) which will have been heat sensitive.
Milk Study:
In one other study, dubbed the “Milk Study,”, the cats were fed 2/3 milk and 1/3 meat. All groups were fed raw meat with different groups getting raw, pasteurized, evaporated, sweetened condensed or raw metabolized vitamin D milk. The cats on raw milk were the healthiest while the remaining exhibited various degrees of health problems much like the previous cooked meat study.
This particular Pottenger cat study has been cited by advocates of raw milk as evidence that it is probably going healthier for humans than pasteurized milk.” +
Though Pottenger’s experiments don’t conclusively confirm that raw cat food diets are higher for sustaining a healthy support for the physiological needs of cats than cooked (canned) or dry kibbles, (because he didn’t use canned cat food or kibbles within the experiments) certain conclusions might be drawn.
- Cooking meat can destroy certain food nutrients, namely amino acids (proteins)
- Cats thrive more healthily on raw meat fairly than cooked meat with less degenerative results
- Cooking meat on your cat requires the alternative of the essential amino acid taurine, and possibly other nutrients destroyed within the cooking process
Pet food marketing hype says that “XYZ” cat food products are healthy on your pet since it adds “ABC” nutrients, vitamins and minerals to their product which safeguards your cat’s health. Fortunately, marketing laws require that the ingredients in any given product be listed on the packaging of your cat’s food. Ultimately, it’s left as much as you to make the choice about which is the most effective shelf product on your cat.
For a discussion that details interpreting cat food labels CLICK HERE
Today’s problem plagued market place has left many unsure as as to if the company entities that provide the majority of our aggregate necessities can proceed to be worthy of our trust. Arrogance and greed have at all times gone face to face with social morality and it’s always the top user that finally ends up paying with unnecessary suffering. Many pet owners have now taken matters into their very own hands and are resorting to providing from raw ingredients meals made with their very own hands for his or her pets. It isn’t a foul step but certain measures, which include a life-style change, should be taken when preparing your pet’s meals to maintain her secure from bacterial infection and insure that her dietary needs are met.
Here’s an example of a raw cat food meal preparation from scratch:
- 2 kg [4.4 pounds] raw muscle meat with bones (chicken necks are mostly cartilage, are easy to cut and simple for the cat to digest) thighs and drumsticks or, higher, an entire carcass of rabbit or chicken amounting to 2 kg; should you don’t use an entire carcass, go for dark meat like thighs and drumsticks from chicken or turkey)
- 400 grams [14 oz] raw heart, ideally from the identical animal (if no heart is obtainable, substitute with 4000 mg Taurine)
- 200 grams [7 oz] raw liver, ideally from the identical animal (should you cannot find appropriate liver, you’ll be able to substitute 40,000 IU of Vitamin A and 1600 IU of Vitamin D–but try to make use of real liver as an alternative of substitutes).
- NOTE: When you cannot find the guts or liver and choose to substitute with the Taurine/Vitamin A and D, then remember to exchange the missing amount of organ meat with the equivalent amount of muscle meat. In other words, should you cannot find heart, you add one other 400 grams of the meat/bones. When you cannot find the liver, add one other 200 grams of meat/bones.
- 16 oz [2 cups] water
- 4 raw egg yolks (use eggs from free-range, antibiotic-free chickens should you can)
- 4 capsules raw glandular complement (reminiscent of, for instance, “Raw Multiple Glandular” from Premier Labs)
- 4000 mg salmon oil
- 200 mg Vitamin B complex
- 800 IU Vitamin E (“dry E” works well) Buy Vitamin E in dry powder form. It’s much easier to take care of than those little oil-filled capsules.
- OPTIONAL: 1/4 teaspoon of kelp and 1/4 teaspoon of dulse (1/2 teaspoon total) Try to get dulse and kelp in powder form which you can easily measure with a teaspoon fairly than in capsule form. Taking apart those capsules is time consuming. When you can only find kelp in caplet form, you’ll have to spend time crushing the caplets with a mortar and pestle.
- OPTIONAL: 4 teaspoons psyllium husk powder (8 teaspoons if using whole psyllium husks) ?
It looks like this recipe will produce about 5- 6 lbs of finished raw cat food product which might feed a single cat for several weeks. Meaning most of it might should be frozen in individual air tight containers and thawed as needed.
The digestive system of a cat is designed to handle things human systems cannot. Their stomachs have a highly acidic environment, which is a wonderful deterrent to ingested bacteria reminiscent of e coli and salmonella. Within the wild, cats sometimes eat some pretty iffy stuff with no in poor health effects. Wild cats die more often from infection on account of injuries than from food poisoning. Nevertheless, there are steps you’ll be able to take if you’ve concerns about raw cat food bourn bacteria.
- Avoid packaged supermarket ground beef using whole chunks of meat as an alternative
- Buy “free-range” meat and poultry as fresh as possible
- Add priobiotics (which help maintain intestinal health) to your raw food preparation
- Proper handling of raw cat food is important since some raw cat food may contain bacteria that might cause illness to you or your pets. Remember to keep raw cat food meat and poultry separate from other foods. Wash hands prior to, and after handling raw cat food. Wash working surfaces, bowls, and utensils that are available in contact with raw meat with hot, soapy water. All the time wash your hands after cleansing your cat’s waste; this includes litter boxes.
- Pick up and eliminate uneaten raw cat food inside half-hour of feeding your cat
Preparing raw cat food meals from scratch on your cat is a labor of affection indulged in by purists. Most individuals haven’t got the time, and possibly lack the talent to tackle such a task. When you count yourself amongst this latter group, rest easy. Ready-made products are finding their strategy to the market place. There are entire raw cat food meals that are shipped frozen and there are mixes which all you’ve to do is add the meat. Just keep in mind that should you are going with the combo, make certain that the essential amino acids reminiscent of taurine are included. If not then be sure you add the guts (a source for taurine) and other organ meat from the identical animal if possible, with the raw cat food meal in order that your cat won’t be deprived of those critical ingredients.
So, what are the trade-offs you ask?
Well, for one thing you’ll have to forego the convenience of one-stop-shopping within the supermarket pet food aisles. Orders for raw cat food meals or mixes are mostly made on-line so you’ll have to take care of credit or debit cards. Pre-planning can have to be regular routine so that you just don’t run out of raw cat food before the following shipment arrives. If a shipment thaws, you’ll have to return it because you will not wish to take any possibilities with bacterial infection. Most firms will honor returns on account of thawing. And, should you prepare raw cat food meals completely from scratch, be prepared to spend a few hours within the kitchen with this task.
The actual trade-off is with the standard of cat food you will probably be providing. The shop bought ‘meal’ based cereal foods will probably be replaced with the top quality fresh foods that cat’s were designed for. Some cats may balk on the transition at first because they weren’t socialized with raw cat food as kittens. But, their health will show marked improvement, you will likely be surprised by the outcomes which might be in comparison with how your cat behaved before being fed a fresh, top quality raw cat food food plan that meets their needs nutritionally, plus their immune systems will probably be stronger giving your cat a likelihood for an extended, healthier life.
Ask any monk and even the bizarre, next-door-neighbor contemplative type, and so they’ll let you know that life just isn’t easy; suffering is the characteristic that describes much of the existence on this corner of the Universe, and that the punishment for ignoring this fact is to bear more suffering. Yet this suffering might be relieved with even just a little knowledge and understanding of why and the way things can operate to ease your burden. It does take a willingness in your part to vary and accept recent habits to accommodate a modified life-style. But, knowledge and understanding can’t be acquired through osmosis. It takes a number of work to grasp even a small amount of the sense that holds life together. One cannot depend upon epiphanies either. Like magic and miracles, fast knowledge occurs only rarely… and you’ll be able to become older waiting for it while your cat pines for a raw cat food meal. It would be like huffing and puffing along wondering why you are carrying around all that extra baggage.
+ – Due to Wikipedia for this excerpt
? – Due to Wikihow
