Hello! I hope my question is general and nonmedical enough to pass the filter. A family member has linked to me someone’s (the person raises abysinian cats) site that feeds their cats a diet of raw meat, eggs, some raw vegetables and some vitamin/mineral cat/dog supplement made from yeast and herbs. As a vet, what do you think about the general idea, and is there anything a person feeding cats majority-raw-meat diet absolutely shouldn’t forget? (like lemons for sailors). Have a lovely day!

drferox:

Followup.-  How good an idea do you think it is over getting half-decent
tinned food + dry food + some meat scraps, raw bones and whatever (AKA
normal cat diet) Also, for question tax – I hope it won’t annoy you but
your avatar reminds me of a psyduck for some reason XD. And I can
totally see you do headache-driven psionics to stupid people!

I always wonder what the ‘supplement’ is intended to be. It does imply that the diet they are feeding is not nutritionally complete, but most of them need to contain calcium as meat is relatively high if phosphorus to correct it.

Cats produce their own vitamin C, they don’t need an oral supplement like lemons for sailors. It’s we humans that are dependent on a dietary vitamin C (as are some bats, other apes, and guinea pigs).

Generally speaking a varied diet is not a bad idea, providing there are no medical concerns that wound require the cat to be on a controlled diet. There are a couple of caveats, and I can’t comment on what’s in the ‘nutritional supplement’ but if it contains garlic then somebody threw it together based on what their emotions tell them ‘feels right’ for the cat rather than anything based on science.

• Liver shouldn’t be more than 10% of the total diet but is otherwise excellent as a carnivores ‘nutritional supplement’
• Raw egg whites bind biotin and can cause nutritional deficiency if fed in excess
• Some fish species contain thiaminase and will cause nutritional deficiency if fed in excess
• Legumes may be implicated in relative taurine deficiencies in dogs, and I wouldn’t mess around with them in cats
• Raw kangaroo, lamb and goat in particular are higher risk meats for Toxoplasma, which may not concern a healthy human but might concern a pregnant or immunologically compromised one.
• Don’t feed the so-called ‘last resort hypoallergenic’ meats, like crocodile, because they wont work as a novel protein in the future if your cat is already used to them.
• Personally I’d rather people use some quality dry food as part of the diet instead of a supplement, makes it more likely the cat will eat it if it ever ends up in hospital or needs a medical diet. Cats can be fussy like that.

As for the psyduck, I have a headache most days. The deliberately obtuse people I come across wouldn’t stand a chance.

Also, cats and dogs have very different nutritional needs, so I’d be extremely suspicious of any supplement that claims to work for both of them.