Truth About Cats and Dogs

Today, many studies are being conducted on the connection between our ancestral and contemporary diets. As it turns out, most of us have deviated far from what our ancestors ate. In this respect, the same goes for cats and dogs. Just like us, most of our pets are not eating the diets that are meant for them.

Dogs . . .
This may not come as a surprise, but dogs are historically scavengers and are primarily meat eaters. In fact, a natural diet included bones, chunks of carcass, fish guts, animal guts and heads, rotten greens and fruits, and eventually discarded human food. Sounds appetizing, doesn’t it? That explains why your dog will eat any and everything in your garbage can if given the chance. In fact, the major contributing factor in the domestication of dogs was their attraction—way back to the beginning of civilized mankind—to whatever food was available at human garbage dumps. Eventually, the tamer wolves that were the least threatened by human beings, over tens of thousands of years, became our companions and evolved into doghood.

Cats ...
If you have watched a National Geographic episode and witnessed how large cats eat in the wild, you know everything you need to know about a cat’s most basic needs. All cats chase and devour different kinds of prey, which supplies them with abundant protein, fat, some pre-digested flora or grasses and moisture contained in the meats.

Though cats became domestic much the same way dogs did and have also been subjected to omnivorous diets, they’ve managed to retain their original need for protein even more than dogs.

This explains their relatively short intestine, requirement for specific animal protein constituents such as taurine and their inexorable craving to jump on moving prey. The hunter is still in them. Cats unequivocally require meat in their diets and we as owners shouldn’t compromise this need.

This article initially appeared in the May 2006 Isuue of the Zone Net Newsletter.

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