Bit of an odd question but I’m wondering what you feed your cats? Bog-standard cat food or something different? Mine have coley fillets mixed with some dried food. They look at me in disgust if I give them the crunchies and omit the fish!

You feed them coley? That’s a treat for me!

I KNOW!! What did I start?!

At least it’s not cod!

If you do want something cheaper, a bit of pork back fat mixed in with the dried food might do it. Our cat loves it, but she’s not fussy.

fresh chicken, liver and occasional tinned fish.

She throws up any processed cat food, but I feel I am giving her a good diet like this AND it works out cheaper than tinned food; unbelievable, but true

I feel that feeding a cat tinned food is like feeding my family McDonalds every day.

That’s what I was wondering, Mrs Green. What do cats need to eat? Commercial cat food consists mainly of carbohydrates, isn’t it, whereas cats need protein. But does nature intend for them to eat just meat and fish?

To my limited knowledge; most of which is gleamed from living with a cat for longer than I care to remember, a cat will hunt for small animals such as birds, moles, voles, shrews, mice and rabbits. They will catch fish too, if they are near a water source and insects; ours used to love spiders. Not sure if it would catch and kill a chicken; it would certainly take a chick.

Then it will supplement the diet with grasses.

The thing to remember though is that a cat will hunt RAW meat and in eating the skin, bones, feathers, ligaments and fur, it gets a wide variety of vitamins and minerals, carbohydrates and amino acids. We take all that stuff off and COOk the meat, so I don’t believe that even that will be balanced.

I give our cat a high raw diet as much as possible. Called the BARF diet. that’s hard this time of year when stuff goes off so quickly.

When she was younger she would hunt, but she is incapable of doing that any more (don’t tell her I said that ) Sh’es 16, so has hung up her hunting hat. So I just try and give her what I can and I’ll supplement it with a little oil if her coat looks dry; such as olive oil. not natural for her, but it seems to do the trick.

Put it this way; a cat would not eat a high carbohydrate diet naturally with 4% meat; which is what most commercial cat foods consist of

Arden Grange plus they eat anything that moves and is stupid enough to get caught! Rabbits/rats/mice and voles are the most common.

mostly raw chicken and fish, do leave a bowl of cat biscuits out but they rarely touch them!

obvously not the main diet,but my sis’s cats used to go mad for marmite on toast and peas !!!!strange

rainbomama - 03 July 2009 08:02 AM

obvously not the main diet,but my sis’s cats used to go mad for marmite on toast and peas !!!!strange

That made me think of my old cat, she used to love eating my Mum’s spider plants and fresh sponge cake.  If my mum had made a cake and left it on the side to cool we would often find lumps missing from the edges and we also find her on the windowsill chomping on the spider plant leaves.

I thought spider plants were toxic to cats, I might be wrong though, you know one of those useless biys of info lodged in the back of my mind!  Our cats would only eat meat that looked like meat, ie could see the fibres of the meat, or it was still moving   They would only lick the gravy or jelly off any processed food (not sure why I kept buying it really!)  They had quite a range of food though… from wood pigeon, squirrles and rats down to mice, voles, shrews, birds of every description, worms.

I do miss my cats, but not their diet!

My cat eats a fair amount of bugs lol, but what totally bemuses us is that she ignores anything I feed her except canned fish in oil, and much prefers to eat leftovers.  I have to get rid of plates fast or she hoovers up whatever she can find - she seems to prefer cold porridge, and tomato spaghetti.  That CANNNOT be a healthy diet for a cat?!

Is there any kind of fish that would be best for her?  What about the ethical considerations of fish?  Where do you get it and what kinds would you choose to help avoid overfishing and seabird/other sealife harm?

Blackhobbescat - 03 July 2009 08:44 AM

I thought spider plants were toxic to cats, I might be wrong though, you know one of those useless biys of info lodged in the back of my mind! quote]

I’m not sure, but I do know our cat lived to be about 16 years old and then one day just keeled over on my neighbours doorstep. Perhaps she’d eaten one spider plant too many

My cat must be a very strange one- he eats cat biscuits and thats it, he won’t easy any chicken we give him- raw or cooked, if OH is cooking fish he gets very excited at the smell but will only eat a tiny bit and then appears to get bored, won’t eat ‘wet’ cat food and prefers the nasty cheapo cat bics to the expensive ones! I know he eats bugs and I would imagine the occasional shrew and bird, we’ve had him 3 years and he appears to be in good health so I try not to worry too much!

I wouldn’t complain, that sounds pretty cheap! The BARF diet sounds pretty good though, out neighbour’s dog is on it and he looks very healthy for a 15 year old.