Feeding your cat all-natural cat food could definitely be healthy and cost-effective, provided the food is correctly made. On the flipside, failing to provide your pet with the right all-natural cat food could lead to metabolic bone disease, lameness of the rear legs, and retinal degeneration, and even all the way to threatening its life.
Not good!
Common mistakes made in preparing all natural cat food
It’s also seen that those cats that are given the wrong all-natural cat food end up with skeletal and endocrine problems as also organ failure caused by dietary deficiencies. These again are mostly due to the ignorance of pet owners on how to prepare the food or the mistakes they make in doing so. Some common mistakes are discussed below.
All-natural cat food is often prepared without adding Taurine: Taurine is an essential amino acid that cats don’t naturally secrete. This, therefore, needs to be given with its natural diet or else it may develop serious cardiovascular and eye problems.
Lack of Thiamin (B1) & Niacin (B3): Often when preparing an all-natural cat food,critical nutrients like Thiamin and Niacin are ignored but are simply essential for a cat’s growth and development.
These elements also get degraded through cooking and are not supplemented by way of drops or capsules. Niacin-deprived adult cats tend to lose weight abnormally and could also die from this deficiency. Thiamin deficiency can lead to neurological impairments like heart-rate disorders and seizures as also blindness.
Not supplementing vitamin, A: Vitamin A deficiency leads to blindness. Moreover, neither can cats manufacture this vitamin nor synthesize it from beta carotene. Therefore, it must be supplemented in their diet by way of egg yolks and liver, which most cat owners are ignorant of.
Calcium deficiency in all-natural cat food: If natural meat is used without the requisite amount of calcium supplements or finely ground bones, it could lead to a curvature or collapse of the lumbar vertebrae as also the pelvic bones; fractures and bone pain and hyperparathyroidism. This also needs to be remembered very essentially.
Adding supplements before cooking, pureeing or grinding all-natural cat food: Many cat owners make it a habit to add key supplements to the raw meal before they start cooking it. This is a mistake as the key nutrients don’t survive cooking or heating processes.
The supplements should only be added after cooking, pureeing or grinding and the Taurine too, needs to be added after any cooking.
Even raw food or edibles that contain natural Taurine gets somewhat degraded after grinding and pureeing. Moreover, most B vitamins can’t survive the heat, and these are essential for the cat’s health also.