What is the best cat food?

What is the best food for your cat? This is a very controversial topic depending on who you ask. If you ask a veterinarian who does not have any further education in pet nutrition, nine times out of ten you will get Science Diet and Royal Canin brand foods pushed on you. If you ask a pet nutritionist, you are likely going to be told a raw balanced diet. So what is the right answer? I'll tell you how to come up with the best answer all by yourself!

Begin by pushing up your sleeves and prepare to educate yourself because YOU have to come to this conclusion by putting forth effort. I am writing this page because I am in a lot of Facebook groups and I see people post questions about a healthy diet for a cat and dog and everyone has their opinions of what is best and not best. Some have convinced themselves that feeding a raw diet is the absolute best, just to turn around and hear their own veterinarian tell them NO, do not feed raw! How do you look your vet in the eye and tell him/her she is wrong? They went to school to be a doctor to animals. They are supposed to help keep our pets healthy right? Yes, this is true and they are all doing their very best with what they have learned. None of us can truly give good advice on any topic we know nothing about but we are all full of opinions right? 

Veterinarians are not taught nutrition in vet school.  I learned this from Dr. Karen Becker on her youtube channel (and one of my vets confirmed this as well). Dr. Becker is a veterinarian who went on to specialize in nutrition  (and much more) and I have loved learning from her since she was working with Dr. Marcola years ago. Since then, she has become a very well known, successful veterinarian who I have much respect for. I will share her youtube channel for you to watch and learn for yourself. You decide for yourself if you agree with her findings and teachings. I have done extensive studying and research on pet food since the late 90's when I started breeding and raising Toy Poodles. I owned a grooming spa and carried products for sale in my store. I sold what I fed to my own dogs and I needed to have as much knowledge as I possibly could on what was going into my animals as well as to being able to inform my customers. I was introduced to raw feeding in the early 2000's by someone doing holistic studies for humans. Long story short, it was where I began to care much more about canine diet and how it affected my breeding program. Fast forward a few more years. I started studying more, reaching out to dog food companies, and acquiring samples of different dog food brands. I did tests with my own dogs to see what they preferred. I watched closely for immediate physical reactions as well as how the food made their coats look, feel and if they had any adverse reactions. I kept tally on what worked best and in the end, I found that knowing the ingredients and limiting the ingredients was what worked best. Now, at this point I was only worried about canines, not felines.  I did not raise cats at that time. I had several rescued cats and kittens in my life. I even had a couple of pet Persian cats. I learned from my first indoor cats, hard kibble was a big no no for me and my family. All of our cats prior to the Persians were either indoor-outdoor altered cats or strictly strays that I caught, altered, vetted, and released. They were all on a commercial hard kibble for years.

The first litter box I had in my home was with our Persian cats and that stunk our home up something fierce! I will add, to be fair, I have a very keen sense of smell and I smell things that others don't at times. I could not handle that stink when a cat used the litter box! It made me nauseous! Then I remembered, my representative that sold me my food I fed in my pet spa told me a story about how he was allergic to cats except he had a client who he delivered raw food to and he would never have a reaction when he walked into their cattery! They were a five generation raw fed cattery. So the switch came about and our cats were put on a 100% strict raw diet. That was all it took! Our home did not smell, the cats did not stink, dander was not eliminated but it sure wasn't what it was! I bathed my Persians once a week and shaved them in a a lion clip once a month for their entire life.  So years later when we decided to get Maine Coons, I already knew there would be NO indoor cats in my life that did not eat raw food. 

I now make my own food so I know where it is sourced from, know each ingredient, and how fresh it is. I can limit proteins since I have some cats with food sensitivities and I can measure it out easily for each one of our cats. It will not hurt a cat to feed them a half and half diet of kibble and raw. I'll be the first to tell you that feeding raw is not convenient or cheap! When prices went up 10% each month on the commercial food I was feeding, I knew I could not continue to spend $300+ a week on all of my animal feed. I can spend that in one month with what I raise and it is a win win situation for us.  I will provide information on how I make a homemade, balanced, raw diet for cats in the very near future. These pages take me a lot of time to put together. Baby steps...