Putting together a healthy diet for your cat is one of the best ways you have to affect their wellbeing day to day. Whether you’re dealing with too much cat vomiting and diarrhea, or unhealthy weight gain (or loss!) in an older cat, it could be time to take a look at their diet.
Today we’re offering some guidance on what might be good for your cat to eat!
Check the Age Group!
Most cat food is formulated for a specific age group. Cats go through three distinct life life-stages as they age: kittens, adult cats and senior cats. Each life-stage brings with it distinct nutritional needs, and if you’re picking food for the wrong age of cat then your pet isn’t getting all the nutrients it needs!
Your cat food should be labelled with the appropriate age range – but you also need to make sure you know when your cat stops being a kitten and when it enters the senior stage of life. Make sure you’ve done your research so you can pick the correct cat food.
Nutritional Completeness
If you don’t want to have to worry about supplements, you’re going to want to make sure you look for a label confirming that the food you’ve chosen is ‘nutritionally complete’. This means it contains all the nutrients your cat needs to be healthy in each meal. If you’re not picking out nutritionally complete food you could be depriving your cat of important nutrients and you need to do some research to learn how to make up the deficit.
Healthy Snacks
Some cats are extremely food minded and respond well to snacks as a reward, as a distraction or simply as a treat, but if you’re not careful you easily overfeed them by snacking, and give them inflated expectations of how much food to expect in a day. It’s best to keep treats as an occasional…treat to keep them novel and avoid setting the expectation that they’ll be there every day.
In the shops, look for cat treats with lower calories to avoid overfeeding your feline companion when you treat. If you want to be really sure of what goes into your cat’s treats you can make your own at home! Keep it simple with small chunks of liver, tuna or eggs – all of these, given in moderation, are a real reward for your cat that will support a healthy life and weight. If you want to make something that will keep a little longer you can bake your own cat biscuits by blending tuna, egg and flour.
