The Egyptians were the first civilization to domesticate cats in around 3000 B.C. Cats made the perfect guardians for granaries, as they naturally hunted and killed the rodents responsible for spoiling the stores of grain. As civilizations rose and fell and migrated around the globe, we took our furry little friends with us. And as our lives became more modern,convenient, and urban, the cat retired her role as guardian, and simply became our friend, our pet. Enter the first manufactured cat food.
The first dry cat food entered the market in the early 1900s as a much needed tool to save money and time. Cats are obligate carnivores, which means they are biologically wired to hunt, kill, and eat prey. However, as we moved further from farms, providing the cat her natural diet became more and more expensive and time consuming. The first dry cat food consisted mainly of dried meats in powdered form, and held together with a natural starch.
As food science and technology expanded, we found faster, cheaper ways to produce cat food, in very much the same ways we have seen applied to human food. Although, our pets have been made to suffer much worse than we have. Animal by-products became a cheap substitute to real meat, and a high-carbohydrate formula was introduced, ultimately leading to what dry cat food is today; a food fit for a grazing animal, not a carnivore. This has lead to a multitude of health problems in our cats.
For one, weight gain in cats, let alone any pet, is almost ludicrous when you think about it. What wild animal gets fat and lazy? Yet, as with humans, this is a major cause of much of the obesity in our society at large. Cats are simply not grazers. They hunt, eat once a day, and fast until their next kill. Plopping a bowl of corn starched lips and assholes in front of them, which they can nibble at all day long, makes them fat. Furthermore, by nature, being used to a high-protein, low-fat diet, their bodies simply cannot process the carbohydrates they are forced to consume as pets.
As we well know, carbs are broken down into sugars, and these sugars stress the pancreas--which is key to producing insulin to balance the level of sugars in the cats' system. This is why we are now seeing house cats with Type 2 Diabetes. We are also noticing a myriad of urinary tract disorders in cats. These are mainly caused by an alkolization in the bladder, once again due to a high concentration of carbohydrates. This can lead to bladder and kidney stones, among other things.
Possibly the worst of all is the fact that Kidney Disease is the leading cause of cat mortality in the US. Since the cats' natural diet consisted of about 70 percent moisture, we find that manufactured dry food, having a moisture level no higher than 10-12 percent, causes a chronic dehydration of the kidneys. And to repeat myself; companies allow this to happen because cats do not have the words to complain themselves. Yet, their growing list of health problems should be testimony enough to: a: the acute dangers of feeding our cats dry food, and b: observe their failing healths as a mirror of our own growing health concerns, regarding the consumption of processed foods.
In conclusion: stop feeding dry food to your cat. Ween them off, and begin feeding them only wet canned food. Go online and do some research about which wet foods are better than others, and what is readily available in your neighborhood. Or do what some others do: feed them cheap cans of tuna. Whatever works. As a rule of thumb, if you can't pronounce the ingredients on the label, you and your cat shouldn't be eating it. Avoid anything that uses rendered by-products--these are unsuitable for human consumption, and therefore unsuitable for feline consumption. Choose a wet cat food that is USDA approved, one that contains no carbohydrates, and uses natural preservatives. Meeeeoowww.......
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