Good Nutrition for Your Cat 
What should you be feeding your cat? You need to consider what cats will need in the wild to determine the best food sources for them.
In the wild, cats will eat mice and birds, and drink water. Obviously this is a diet high in protein and it is essential that your cat gets sufficient protein to maintain a good healthy diet. What many people don’t realize is that cats can get diabetes from having a diet that is too high in carbohydrates.
By constantly feeding your cat carbohydrates it can become insulin resistant and unable to keep its blood glucose levels at a suitable level.
Some signs that your cat is becoming diabetic include drinking a lot of water and eating considerably more than they usually do. You might also notice a sign of weakness in the back legs as they tend to wobble a bit when walking. The only way to be sure whether your cat is developing diabetes is to give it a blood test.
This is the best way to determine whether the cat has diabetes or not, although you can do a urine analysis to check blood glucose levels, but this is not as accurate. Unlike humans and other animals it is possible for cats that have diabetes to go into remission provided their diet has been changed with an elimination of high carbohydrate foods. More protein will help to stabilize the blood glucose levels.
Dry biscuits are particularly bad for cats as they are generally very high in carbohydrates and even though your cat might love eating them, because of the additives that have been put into these dry foods, it certainly won’t do their health a lot of good.
The reason why these dry biscuits are so popular is because of theconvenience and the fact that cats are very fussy eaters, and most cats like dry biscuits except possibly those that have been found straying in the wild.
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11 Comments on “Good Nutrition for Your Cat”
I have often wondered why there are “rice and veggie” pet foods. Dogs and cats are carnivorous. They need their meats!
It’s cheap kind of food source. And that food even cheaper than other premium cat food.
I have a friend with a diabetic cat. I’ve often worried about one of mine getting diabetes and wondered how I would know. This post was so helpful!
Dear Maria,
you can check below links for Diabetes. its sound scary thought.
http://www.sniksnak.com/cathealth/diabetes.html
http://www.sniksnak.com/cathealth/diabetes2.html
A well written article, however there are a couple of misconceptions present. Firstly there is absolutely nothing wrong with feed your cat dry biscuits, as long as the packet says that it provides complete and balanced nutrition. The only difference between wet tinned food and dry biscuits is water content, with wet food containing around 10% dry matter/90% water and dry biscuits being 90% dry matter/10% water. Its usually the addition of other ‘treats’ to the diet that hike up the carbs.
Also diabetes does not imply insulin resistance: both are very different things and one can be present without the other.
I agree Sarah. Not all dry biscuits are bad for animal. This is on matter on what brands of biscuits you are choosing. The cheap one, premium or super premium.
But, although I feed dry biscuits to my cats, i also feed fresh boil chicken and meat every 3 times a week.
By the way, Thanks Sarah, for adding some info and pointing your advices.. I hope readers will read the comments for this post too
Although premium food is better than the cheaper brands, the cheaper brands are equal to what premium brands were 10-15years ago, so they’re still not too bad - the downside being that inferior quality ingredients = smelly big poos. I don’t really agree with supplementing other foods in as part of their regular diet though, because its really hard to get the right combination for optimum health simply because they need so many things in balance. Most vets I’ve worked with recommend feeding raw meaty bones rather than cooked meat to pets because they have more vitamins and minerals, and are also good for their teeth. Try and tell that to my cat though
Yes true again, not to boil it too much, else all the nutrition gone just like that. Giving raw meat means frequent diet. Only fresh. I do give fresh sometimes, but most of the time, i will make it half cook. I make it half cook to kill the germs or any other thing that might my cat having stomach ache. Oh well, they are not wild cat, so their body system might not be as strong as the cat in the wild. This is only supplement for my cats. Other time would be Royal Canin for the kittens, and Blackwood for the adult.
By the way, the cheap food like Whiskas, contain very less meat, and more grains. I believe this is something like our junk food.
Anyway it is not as bad as it look like for short term. But long term, maybe. Else this brand won’t be allowed to sell in the market right.
Because I ever have this kitten age 4 months that get kidney and bladder stone while eating whiskas. My vet advice me to change the food. And always make sure my cat drink more fresh water. My kitten digestion system might not be strong to handle grains food. But now he is 1 year plus and doing so good with Blackwood + half cook meat or chicken 3 times a week.
I agreed with you