Raw Food Cat Diet. A Detailed Guide For Cat Parents

People who are not aware that cats are obligate carnivores always wonder if it is safe to feed raw cat food. Otherwise, animal nutritionists, vets, and even pet parents who know more about cats, highly recommend feeding a cat raw diet food.

To solve all of your queries about raw cat food, we have compiled a detailed guide that will help you out in making a final decision about choosing the raw diet food or not.

*Discloser: This post may contain affiliate links, meaning, I get a commission if you decide to make a purchase through one of my links, at no cost to you.

Are Raw Diets Safe for Cats?

Since cats are obligate carnivores, they can thrive on a completely balanced and safely formulated raw diet. However, you need to be extra careful while feeding raw diets as it requires more monitoring because of some severe risks.

Otherwise, when you go with experts’ recommendations, you’re safe. Of course, cats have a better digestion system that digests raw food faster than humans. That’s why vets and animal nutritionists recommend feeding raw diet food to the cats.

Why Not Just Use Dry and Canned Diets?

As already mentioned above, cats have more acidic, shorter digestive tracts that help them to easily digest raw food, even better than humans.

This proves raw cat food safety, but if your cat has some specific health concerns, vets recommend choosing cooked food which includes dry and canned diets.

Otherwise, you can clearly prefer raw cat food over canned and dry diets. Cats with immune-mediated disease might need dry diets rather than raw food.

However, it might be an issue finding the best spot from where you can get healthy raw food.

When it comes to the best and healthiest raw food for cats, Rawpaws is the place where you get fresh and healthy raw meaty bones for cats and dogs with a wide range of categories, including beef, marrow bones, chicken, duck, goat, and more.

They offer discounted prices, and when you subscribe to their monthly subscriptions, prices are further lowered, making it budget-friendly for you.

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How to Choose the Best Raw Diet for Your Cat?

When looking for the best raw diet food for cats, consider these things in the food, and you won’t have to worry about the food anymore.

The food should meet the basic requirements of the Association of American Feed Control Officials (AAFCO) for safety.
The box should be labeled “complete and balanced” to ensure it contains all the nutrients required by the cat’s body in the correction ratio.
Look for the label “all-natural,” which means there’s no artificial by-product, color, or flavor added to the food.
Look for the discounts as you’ve to buy repeatedly, you would never want to spend extra money.

When looking for these basic requirements for the best raw cat diet, we found Rawpaws a perfect spot to get healthy raw food for your cat. They fulfill all of the above conditions while providing more meat options at further discounted prices.

Is It Complicated to Feed Raw Food?

You might think at first that it can be complicated feeding raw food to your cats, but it’s not complicated, rather different. If your pet is already addicted to canned and dry food, it might take a few days. But once they get used to raw food, you may find trouble switching back to canned and dry food.

It’s absolutely natural to feed raw food because the raw food contains superior nutrition that helps your cat grow faster and healthier than canned and dry food.

What Are Raw Diet Alternatives?

Since the primary goal while feeding a raw cat diet is providing the best nutrition possible, there’s no perfect substitute for a raw diet in that case. Still, we managed to find somehow the best alternatives to raw diets that can offer the same nutrients are listed below.

Freeze-dried

Freeze-dried is rich in enzymes, vitamins, and nutrients that make it the most nutritional and complete diet for your cat.

That’s why it’s highly recommended by animal nutritionists and vets. In addition, the food helps with disease resolution while making your cat healthier.

Treats made using freeze-dried food helps cats and dogs easily train.

Food Topper

If you’re not entirely good with raw cat food, we recommend choosing a food topper by adding it to the cooked dry or wet cat food.

This way, it will help boost taste and nutrition besides not making the entire food a raw diet.

Food toppers are well-known for making boring meals exciting and healthier with some extra nutrients to the cat’s diet.

Dehydrated

Dehydrated food is formulated by removing the water from the foods’ whole and keeping the remaining as concentrated, tasty, and nutrient-rich food.

The biggest advantage for pet parents is that it can be stored easily for a prolonged time.

It helps a lot supporting the cat’s optimal well-being because of the present nutrients.

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How To Transition To Raw Food?

Transitioning to raw food from dry and canned food is not that challenging as many pet parents think because of the cat’s addiction to current food. But if you do it slowly in more than two weeks, it’s quite easily possible.

Start with feeding once a day and then twice in the next few days. Later you can totally switch to raw food, and your cat won’t feel a difference in its health. Otherwise, it might be a little risky to directly switch to raw food as suddenly changing diet badly affects a cat’s digestive system.

Probiotics

Probiotics are always helpful when it comes to repopulating the digestive tract.

Using probiotics helps keep your cat’s digestive tract healthy.

At the same time, it also maintains overall health as the high-quality probiotics are easy to administer and provide the necessary elements required for healthy digestion.

Digestive Enzymes

In the start, switching to raw food might make digestion a little difficult.

In that case, you can feed digestive enzymes to easily digest the food, so your cat starts linking the food, and their body gets prepared for a new diet.

Digestive enzymes help alleviate inflammation, joint pain and improve circulation. Also aids with digestion.

Freeze-Dried Treats

Freeze-dried treats come with removed water and contain more proteins, making them perfect for dogs and cats. It’s the best cure for diabetes, allergy, overweight, and gastrointestinal disorders.

Make sure to get all-natural freeze-dried treats, free of preservatives, additives, fillers, or artificial ingredients.

When switching to raw cat food, you can consider any of these three paths to entirely change the cat’s diet. However, going for these three at once might not be a good option, and it’s not recommended by veterinarians either.

Benefits of a Raw Diet Food for Cats

Cats grow faster when being fed raw diet food rather than commercially cooked dry and wet food as most nutrients are not there once cooked. Also, chances of adding artificial and by-products are reduced in this situation. Some more benefits of raw diet food for cats are listed below.

Improved Digestion

Cats’ digestive system is adapted specifically to a raw diet, and that’s why when most cats are switched to raw food, their digestive system starts working fine. A cat digests raw food faster than humans and quicker than cooked dry and wet food. It means raw food also helps improve digestion for a healthy body.

Good Gut Health and Less Poop to Scoop

As the raw cat food contains naturally occurring probiotics that help your cat keep a healthy ratio of bad to good bacteria. As a result, it supports gut health, prevents infections, and the brain functions well. This type of food helps constipation which makes the cats poop less while keeping the digestive system fine.

Healthy Coat, Fewer Hairballs

Raw food excessively contains omega-6 and omega-3 fatty acids along with unsaturated fatty acids that help a lot in making the skin healthy and coat shiny. As a result, hairs shed relatively less. Less shedding prevents hairballs as the cat is not consuming hairs anymore, which is the primary cause of hairballs.

Better Dental Health

Cooked dry and wet foods are easily chewable, which can be convenient for the cat to eat food but not healthy for cat teeth. Healthy teeth require as much chewing as possible, and it can be provided by feeding raw diet food. Besides healthy teeth, chewing prevents plaque inside the teeth to keep the mouth odorless.

Better Urinary Health

Cooked food causes dehydration because of low moisture food, which causes alkaline urine. In the case of raw cat food, there’s 65 to 70% content of high moisture, making the food hydrated. As a result, hydration keeps the urinary health better.

Weight Loss

Commercially cooked dry and wet food is the primary reason why most cats are overweight and facing diabetic issues because of the artificial by-products and flavors added to them. These flavors make the food tasty and unhealthy, which cats overeat. In the case of raw diet food, the situation is totally opposite as the lower amount contains more nutrients to prevent overeating.

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Recommended Read: Help Your Cat Lose Weight. 3 Easy Steps

Conclusion

After shedding light on the benefits of raw cat food, it’s obvious you should transition your cat to raw diet food. If you’re still confused, we recommend consulting your cat’s vet for a final decision.

Otherwise, this article is backed up by expert veterinarians and animal nutritionists as we always ensure to provide the most authentic information about the topic to our respected visitors.