Should cats eat "huge" animals?
I'm going to ask a question I wondered with my dad. It was raised because I believe several things related to my cat, mostly when I heard a little from the vet, a little from the friends, a little online and so on. Maybe this is not true and feel totally free to correct me in the comments or in your answer if I'm wrong.
Alright. I believe cats are obligate carnivores, so they have to eat a minimum percentage of meat or protein to survive. I heard 30% a long time ago, but that's quite vague.
In my opinion, it's quite usual to see cats eat little birds, mouses or little fishes like tuna
Also in my opinion, and on the contrary, it's quite rare to see cats eating like elephants or beef. Actually I don't remember seeing a cat eating such big animals. I think they won't be like wolves, hunting together and sharing a huge prey.
Then my question is: should cats eat huge animals? I had this question with my father today when we were about the give him fresh raw piece of gently sliced beef. And then this question arose.
Perhaps they should totally not to. In this case, what's the frontier between huge and alright animals? Is it, like, bad for their health? Or perhaps they can eat like beef or elephants but surely they'll prefer salmon or small birds? Or do they totally don't mind between each type of raw meat?
I couldn't find any resource talking about that on the internet. Including Wikipedia pages about cat's found.
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Feed your cat "complete and balanced" cat food.
Modern cat food, both in the form of dry kibble as well as wet cat food, is specially formulated to meet the dietary and nutritional requirements of cats. As such, one of the best ways to feed your cat is to give them appropriately-sized portions of cat food, with people food such as meat being relegated to a special treat. If you're in doubt about the appropriateness of the food for your cat, in America, you can check its label for whether or not it's been certified as a "complete and balanced" pet food by the Association of American Feed Control Officials (AAFCO), according to the FDA.
Yes, cats should eat meat. The source of meat is not very important; the important thing here is to feed not only the meat but parts of the rest of the animal too, as different parts have different nutrients that cats need.
I feed my cat all kinds of raw meat (high quality meat that can be eaten raw by people) like reindeer, beef, pork, whale meat, and other types of meat, but I do not feed her this as a part of her normal diet, more as a treat and less than once a week.
Cats should not eat tuna too often as it contains elevated levels of heavy metals. It's the same with other large sea living animals; animals near the top of the food chain will have elevated levels of heavy metals and other highly bioaccumulative chemicals.
So yes, you can give many types of meat to your cat but not as a replacement for your cats normal food.
Cat food does in general contain meat from larger animals that can be seen as huge compared to the size of your cat.
Cats need about 30% protein in their food to stay healthy, so 30% meat in the food will not cover your cat's need for protein. Cat food should contain about 80% meat and meat byproducts for your cat to stay healthy. (Meat byproducts contains fat, bone meal, blood, liver, kidney, and lungs.)
Meat is meat. All cats have roughly the same digestive system and metabolism, so their choice of prey is more about size than nutrition. It needs to be a large enough meal to justify the effort of hunting it yet small enough they're likely to be successful.
A large enough pride of lions can take down enormous prey like buffalo, giraffe or even elephant. Solo lions, tigers, jaguars, leopards and cheetahs easily take down antelope, pigs and similar sized prey. Your housecat would enjoy all of those huge meals too, but he simply couldn't catch them and knows that even trying would likely result in his own death. On the other hand, your housecat will happily hunt rodents, birds, and other small prey that the larger cats lazily ignore as not worth the effort. Each has their own place in the ecosystem.
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