For more in depth information about having a healthy cat, see my ebook Naturally Healthy Cats.

Carnivores (cats) and omnivores (dogs) have evolved, from the very start of life, on a diet of raw food.
Cooked food is not natural, alters the nutritional value and kills vitamins and enzymes. Additionally, processed pet foods often contain harmful additives, such as preservatives, colours, flavours, etc which are not in a pet’s long term interest. The synthesised vitamins and minerals which are added are often in a form unavailable to the body.

Commercial Pet Food

Processed pet food often contains diseased meat, some of it cancerous, along with other rejects for human consumption, giving the overall balance of very low grade food.
There are no laws governing the quality of commercial pet foods. This means anything can and usually does go.

Generally, only about 40% of commercial pet food is meat, usually by-products which can be anything from ‘waste’ meat from human meat processing plants, to diseased carcasses to hair. (Different proteins have varying digestibility. Much of the protein used in commercial pet food is difficult to digest.) The other 60% is made up of grain (usually discarded as unfit for human consumption) and often in a form that is not nutritional to the pet. Then come the additives, to preserve, improve the flavour, make it look better, redress the lack of mineral and vitamin content, etc.

“Nutritionally complete” or “scientifically proven” processed pet foods which are advocated not only by the pet food manufacturers, but also by many vets may contain harmful substances. An example is sodium nitrite, which gives a nice rosy colour to food and can produce powerful carcinogenic substances known as nitrosamines; ethoxyquin was originally developed for the rubber industry and is suspected of causing severe health problems; propyl gallate used as a preservative is now suspected of causing liver damage; propylene glycol used to maintain the right texture and moisture content is now known to cause illness in dogs; salt, up to 1000 times more than in natural food is believed to cause hypertension and heart disease; sugar in a refined and unnatural form is believed to contribute to hypoglycaemia and various mental problems, and so it goes on.

Raw Food

Cats and dogs on a natural diet are less prone to disease and live healthier lives. They are more resistant to fleas and worms. Vet bills can be drastically cut.

Dr Edward Bach (1920s) and Dr Pottenger (1930s) both found huge improvements in health in people and animals on a raw food diet.

Dr Bach discovered that the bowels of those people who ate mainly raw food, had only a small amount of bacteria as the food was processed easily, with little food held up in various pockets. The smell of the resulting faeces was inoffensive. Those people on a mainly cooked diet had a larger (more unhealthy) concentration of bacteria, the food was not processed through the bowels as quickly and the resulting smell of the faeces was more foul. They had more gas and a greater tendency to digestive disorders.

Dr Pottenger headed a research project showing the offspring of cats fed only cooked food, even though the diet was perfectly balanced, would be born with immune deficiencies and that within three generations, if little or no raw food was fed, the immune system deteriorated to virtual uselessness. It took another four generations to build the immune system back up to an optimum level of efficiency where the cat was capable of fighting off severe chronic disease.

Dogs normally happily convert to a natural diet, but it can sometimes be challenging converting cats.

Read what some vets say about a commercial diet versus a natural one.

For more in depth information of having a healthy cat, puchase my ebook Naturally Healthy Cats. This goes into greater depth, provides nutritional information and has a chapter of home prescribing homoeopathic remedies for your cat. It carries an eight week money back guarantee, so if you're not completely satisfied with it, you can return it for a full refund.