Holistic Cat Food Recipe
by Michael
(London, UK)
Vic – photographed by Giane Portal. All her cats will be cared
for holistically.
To decide what a “holistic cat food recipe” is we need to define “holistic”. In medical terms it means feeding our cat while taking into account his or her physical and psychological needs. It means treating the “subject as a whole integrated system”. Philosophically it refers to a “system that may have properties over and above those of its parts and their organisation”1
In reference to cat food it seems to me that the word “holistic” means more than just feeding our cat so that he or she can survive but thinking wider than that.
It would also seem to me that the perfect holistic cat food recipe
for the wildcat is its prey! Sounds obvious but a wild cat is programmed to hunt, catch and eat prey. To meet the cat’s complete needs both psychologically and physically the cat would need to behave naturally and express its innate desires and drives when feeding – i.e. chase prey and eat it.
Domestic cats retain the wildcat character/temperament to a large degree. You can see it if they are indoor/outdoor cats. When they cross the doorstep to enter the garden they go from domestic to semi-wild! But 9,000 years of domestication means that they have lost their true wild characteristics. So a holistic cat food recipe
for the domestic cat is not wild prey! It should be something in between – at one end of the spectrum – wild prey and at the other end, highly processed cheap cat food full of carbohydrates and of poor quality.
You will not see holistic cat food on the shelves of supermarkets. We have to work out what it is. Based on my arguments above, I would suggest that it is either a homemade cat food recipe or high quality cat food supplemented by suitable raw food and even some treats of human food. The latter suggestion might surprise people but the domestic cat has been eating human food
for thousands of years. It is a result of the domestication process; our closeness to our cat companion.
In conclusion, therefore, a cat food recipe that is holistic should be the best quality cat food either dry or canned. There is no need to spell out a recipe. It should be varied and supplemented with the odd treat of raw food and/or cooked human food. Or, it might be a full blown homemade cat food recipe from raw produce, which requires care and attention to detail to replicate a cat’s dietary needs and proper hygiene procedures to avoid bacterial contamination.
However, I would welcome alternative views on this subject…please leave a comment if you have thoughts.
There is one last point. Holistic cat food should vary with the age of the cat and the health of the cat. Old cats,
for example, have less efficient digestive systems and so require food that is more easily digested. One such dry food is Hills c/d. A continuous diet of dry cat food is not recommended no matter how convenient it is to us. In short it would not be a good holistic cat food recipe. Some cats may be allergic to some cat food.
