How to achieve healthy cat nutrition and cat feeding
Cats are pure carnivores with a relatively short intestine. For your metabolism and to optimally supply your body, you need a very high proportion of animal protein for a healthy diet. You can digest vegetable proteins only very little and only very poorly. You should therefore feed your cat with a good quality cat food that contains a high-quality meat content and makes up the largest proportion of food in the daily diet of the cat. But what is healthy cat food? What is important when feeding the cat? And what can I offer my cat daily as nutrition?
What do Maine Coon eat in nature?
If a cat lives in the wild, it feeds mainly on small vertebrates such as mice, rats and moles. A cat then eats ten to twenty of the little animals every day. A mouse as a food contains a lot of fresh meat, fiber, vitamins, trace elements.
How do I feed my cat properly?
Good food for a healthy cat diet
In principle, you should feed your cat with a high-quality cat food. That should:
- be rich in high-quality meat
- be made without cereals and free of sugar and
- have a high content of taurine.
Homemade food for your cat
In principle, you can also prepare cat food yourself. But in any case, you need to pay attention to a balanced and full-fledged composition of all the necessary nutrients. The appropriate know-how should be available for this. In the specialized trade there are guides and “cat cookbooks”. Advice can and should also be sought from the veterinarian. However, if you want to become a star chef for house tigers, you need a lot of time and leisure – very few cat owners will be able to spend both often enough. In this case, industrially manufactured lining is the better alternative. Many manufacturers offer diet food for different ages and health conditions of a cat, tailored exactly to its needs.
How much wet and dry food should a cat eat a day?
The difference between wet and dry food
Often, ready-made feed contains a water content of about 75 to 80 percent, then it is called wet or wet feed. If it has twelve or less percent water content, you are dealing with dry food. Both have advantages and disadvantages: with wet food, the cat’s need for liquid is already largely covered. With dry food, on the other hand, it must be strictly ensured that sufficient liquid is available. On the other hand, the dry food is more durable and can be offered to the cat in larger rations, provided that it is not prone to weight problems and overeating. So the cat can decide for himself when and how much he wants to eat. However, you should regularly check the weight of your cat and in case of danger of bacon rolls, you should prefer to use controlled feeds. You can find out more about what is important for a good wet food or good dry food in our guide.
What amount of food per day is ok?
Portion the food by weight, according to the target weight of your cat. If you feed dry and wet food, then add both together in a mixture with dry and wet food. So do not feed, for example, the amount of dry food for a cat weighing 5 kilograms plus the amount of wet food for a cat weighing 5 kilograms, but then half of both. Exactly the same applies to wet food. Portion the food according to weight and the specified declaration on the respective cat wet food and match the amount to the dry food.
When to feed cats?
Food does not have to be available all day. A cat is a predator, so it does not constantly need food in front of its nose, like a cow in the pasture. For adult and healthy cats, two full meals a day is quite enough. If possible, always feed at the same time. Adapt the feeding to your cat: young cats need three to four meals a day. In adult animals, one should feed twice a day: in the morning and in the evening. Old cats should be given the opportunity to eat three times a day.
How to feed a cat?
Everything important about cat feeding
Please refrain from offering your cat cold food. If there is canned food: take it out of the refrigerator in time and wait until the temperature of the food has adjusted to room temperature.
If the cat lives out of the can, a cat-friendly (not strongly spiced or salted) treat can also be served from the lunch table. It is best not directly, but at the usual feeding place on an extra plate, this avoids later begging.
The food should always be given on time at the same time. Regular feeding times for cats will help with a healthy diet.
The dining area must be located quietly, during meals the cat should not be disturbed.
Please always keep a clean bowl. For cleaning, please use only a mild soap and warm water and do not use harsh cleaners. The nose of a house tiger is quite sensitive.
What should Maine Coon not eat?
House tigers should by no means eat chocolate and cocoa, onions, chives, garlic, raw pork, raw liver, stone fruit, grapes and avocados. Dairy products and tuna, please, even in small quantities. Milk and co. can have a laxative effect in case of too large quantities, since cats do not have the enzyme lactase in their gastrointestinal tract. Tuna is often contaminated with a lot of mercury.
Are cats allowed to eat milk, cottage cheese, yogurt and cottage cheese?
Some cats like diluted cottage cheese, cream cheese, cottage cheese or natural yogurt. However, do not feed them sweet milk products such as milk, cream or butter, because they contain milk sugar, which leads to diarrhea in cats. In sour-milk products, that is, cottage cheese, cottage cheese and yogurt, the milk sugar is converted into acid, for which the intestinal microflora is very grateful.
What do cats especially like to eat?
Domestic cats like a lot of fresh meat in their daily diet. That’s why we recommend that you feed your velvet paw with a high-quality cat food, which has a high meat content and tastes particularly good to your cat. With the cat food from the shop of the ANIMAL WELFARE LEAGUE you provide your cat with a delicious meal. Thanks to the high fresh meat content of at least 60 percent, the food tastes particularly good to your four-legged friend and is also just the right thing for a species-appropriate and healthy cat nutrition.
Understand the declaration of cat food
In general, it is very complicated to understand and interpret the “technical Chinese” of the ingredients. A typical designation, for example, would be “meat and animal by-products (of which 33% beef) “. Here it is suggested that there would be 33 percent beef in the can. Far from it! This information only means that of the products contained, 33 percent are from beef. The meat content is therefore not equal to 33 percent. More exemplary would be a declaration like the following: “Meat and offal from chicken (33 %) and salmon (33%), meat broth (31 %), rice (2 %), minerals (1 %).“ You add up the percentages and you get to exactly 100 percent. Please note: there is no 100% meat content, as there is always a certain amount of liquid contained. In some varieties, this is declared extra, for example, as a meat broth or water.
What does “slaughter waste” mean?
Of course, the meat content does not say anything about the quality of the meat. It can also be slaughter waste, but this is still better than soy. In general, “slaughter waste” is not necessarily bad food for cats, because this sometimes includes offal, which is simply not processed in human food. But even the muscle sections that are unpopular in the human food chain are an expensive raw material, which is why the proportion of these in almost all feeds is relatively small.
What do “animal by-products” mean?
Unfortunately, “animal by-products” can also mean that so-called “slaughter waste of category 3” is included. These are, for example, furs, hooves, horns, etc. Usually a cat would not touch such a thing, but fats, salt, sugar, flavors and preservatives make the cat forget about its disgust. Sugar, sometimes also declared as caramel, has no place in cat food. Equally unfavorable are various salts, for example, sodium chloride, they can lead to previous kidney problems.
What does “complete feed” mean?
Complete feed contains additional minerals, especially taurine. Cats can not produce taurine themselves, it must be fed through food. A permanent deficiency, for example, with constant feeding with dog food, leads to retinal degeneration, up to blindness. Taurine is found in marine animals, in poultry, in the muscle meat of beef and lamb. There is especially a lot of taurine in heart tissue, most of it in a mouse. Complete feed also means that it can theoretically be fed daily without any deficiency symptoms, since all the required minerals have been added to the mixture. Since the feed may still contain so much waste and fillers, hardly any meat, a lot of sugar, but minerals are supplied – that’s why it is considered a complete feed!