Cats Are Carnivores

Designed To Eat Whole Raw Foods

Nature’s Magnificent Feline

Lithe, graceful, mysterious, regal and enigmatic, the cat is one of the most successful species of animal on the planet. Thriving for tens of millions of years in regions and conditions as wide ranging and diverse as the tropical jungles of South America and Southeast Asia, the arid deserts, fertile plains and equatorial forests of Africa, the mountains and woodlands of North America, the snowy forests of Siberia and the icy slopes of the Himalayas, the cat is surely one of Mother Nature’s most perfectly designed and adaptable creatures.

The Predatory Instinct

All of these qualities contribute to the fact that the cat’s most natural proclivity is geared toward the hunting and dispatching of their primary food source, their prey. This innate inclination is evident in even the tiniest of kittens and cubs, who from almost the moment they learn to take their first wobbly steps, start inquisitively exploring every corner of their environments as they begin to stalk, chase, pounce and attack anything and everything in their world that moves, including things like their mother’s tail, their littermates, or when nothing else will do, even their own tails.

“A Cat is a Cat is a Cat”

Fossil records indicate that the prehistoric forebears of modern day cats may have first appeared on Earth as far back as over 30 million years ago. Unlike many other animals that are today virtually unrecognizable in comparison to their ancient ancestors, the basic design and distinguishing characteristics of the cat species have changed little over the course of many millions of years.

As the poet E.E. Cummings wrote, “A cat is a cat is a cat.” Clearly, Nature’s original, basic blueprint for the cat was so remarkably viable and successful, that even through countless eons of time there have been relatively few evolutionary modifications to the basic feline archetype. Present day wild and domestic cats of all different shapes and sizes each bear a striking and unmistakable resemblance in more ways than one, not only to one another, but also to their prehistoric forebears who lived and died many millions of years before them.

The indisputable fact that the cat is without a doubt one of Nature’s most ancient and classic examples of the ultimate carnivore should leave no doubt in our minds as to the appropriate manner in which they should be fed. And yet astonishingly, cats who have been fed an unnatural conglomeration of cooked, canned, dried and over-processed pet foods, continue to fill the waiting rooms of countless veterinarians’ offices the world over, waiting to be treated for a variety of health challenges that have been brought about, at least in part, as a result of being fed an utterly inappropriate diet.

Cats’ Carnivorous Characteristics

  • Strong predatory instincts – stalking, chasing and pouncing
  • Superior eyesight
  • Acute hearing
  • Keen sense of smell
  • Soft paw pads for silently stalking prey
  • Sharp claws for traction while hunting and catching prey
  • Sharp teeth that come together to slice like scissorsfor gnawing, ripping and tearing
  • Jaws that open and close in a vertical plane only, rather than moving horizontally
  • Strong stomach acids for neutralizing potentially harmful bacteria on raw meat
  • Short digestive tract which makes for
  • Rapid digestive transit time, minimalizing the opportunity for potentially harmful bacterial colonization

Nature’s Model – The Ultimate Raw Diet for Carnivores

All carnivores, whether they be sharks, raptors, polar bears, foxes or wolves, are made to eat and digest the raw meat, bones and organs that make up the whole carcasses of their prey. And cats are certainly no different in this respect from any other carnivore. Feeding a carnivore a steady diet of anything that is cooked, canned, dried or ground is simply unnatural for that animal, and over time, doing so puts a strain on that animal’s system. Such a chronic strain may often result in any number of the different kinds of health problems from which far too many present day domestic cats are suffering.

By using Mother Nature’s way of feeding small wild cats as a guide, we humans may feed our domestic feline companions a diet that is most appropriate for the carnivores they are, while simultaneously affording them the myriad health benefits that a natural diet of whole foods can provide.