Boost Cat Food Nutrition: Top Tips for Healthier Feline

The quality of cat food directly impacts the health of our feline companions. Discovering a wellrounded and highquality cat food is a crucial skill for every cat owner. This article will delve into three key aspects to help you enhance the nutritional value of your cat's diet, ensuring that you, as a caring pet parent, can provide the best care for your furry friend.

How to Buy Cat Food on a Budget

It's common for cat owners to purchase cat food from the most popular stores or brand flagship stores. However, this may lead to price inflation due to brand price control. So, how can you buy the cat food you want at a lower cost?

Secondhand Options

Explore the secondhand sections on platforms like DouBan's community groups or online marketplaces to find local secondhand cat food. Some cat owners may sell unused food that their cats didn't like. When buying from secondhand platforms, always ask the seller for proof of purchase to avoid buying stale or moldy cat food.

Some cat owners mention that it's possible to buy nearexpiration cat food from flagship stores. While this is significantly cheaper, it's not recommended due to potential nutrient loss or other issues. It's best to opt for fresh cat food through the methods mentioned above.

Optimizing Your Cat's Diet

Understanding the principles of scientific cat feeding is essential. When ranking the nutritional value of cat food, raw meat and bones are superior to cooked homemade meals, which are better than canned food, followed by dry kibble.

Raw meat and bones might sound unfamiliar to some cat owners, who might assume it means feeding raw meat. However, this is a misconception. Raw meat and bones consist of three types of red and white meats, organs, bones, and essential nutrients, all carefully balanced scientifically. If you want to provide all the ingredients as raw meat, you'll need to purchase various nutritional supplements, mix them according to the recipe, and ensure a balanced diet for your cat to avoid deficiencies in key nutrients.

Besides raw meat and bones, cooked homemade meals also require careful recipe planning. The process is more complex than simply feeding premixed dry kibble, making a combination of fresh meat and dry kibble a more practical option for most cat owners.

It's important to follow specific feeding ratios when combining fresh meat with dry kibble. If fresh meat or cooked homemade meals are not the main food source, the feeding amount should not exceed 20% of the cat's total feeding for a certain period. For example, you can cook chicken breast or liver as a snack to accompany the commercial cat food, or feed homemade food four days a week and commercial food the other three days.

While commercial cat food has its drawbacks, such as a lack of moisture and a high carbohydrate content in lowerquality brands, which can lead to insufficient protein, the minimum protein content for cat food should be 28%. If this is not met, you can supplement your cat's diet with the following ingredients:

Chicken liver and duck liver: These are affordable and contain good protein, but should not be fed too often, with once every five days being a suitable frequency.

Chicken breast and duck breast: These can be cooked and served daily as a snack to provide nutritional support and help with your cat's facial development.

Chicken heart: Often served steamed, with once every five days being a suitable frequency.

Lungs: Choose between beef and pork lungs, depending on your cat's preference, and serve once every five days.

Seafood: Wealthier cat owners can prepare clams or sea scallops as a snack, as seafood is rich in manganese, which is beneficial for cats with joint issues, such as foldedeared or Manekineko cats.

Changing Cat Food Brands

It's recommended to switch cat food brands or flavors every 23 months. Many cat owners tend to stick with the same brand for half a year or even a year, which is not ideal for their pets. Here are several reasons why we should change cat food every 23 months:

Different cat foods have different formulas and nutritional values, ensuring a more balanced diet for your cat.

Just like humans, cats can get bored with the same food. Longterm consumption of the same cat food can lead to picky eating and aversion to food, which is not good for their health.

Reducing the risk of consuming substandard cat food. With recent incidents of quality issues in some popular cat food brands, it's crucial to switch brands to minimize the risk of your cat consuming lowquality food.

Therefore, it's suggested that if your cat doesn't have a sensitive stomach or specific dietary requirements, you can change their cat food every 23 months.

Of course, there are proper methods for changing cat food!

The sevenday transition method is generally used when switching cat food. The process involves mixing 90% of the old food with 10% of the new food on the first day, then gradually increasing the new food's proportion while decreasing the old food's proportion over the following days.