We feed ours grain-free food, and play with them quite a bit, with fishing poles and lasers. They go outside, but generally stay in the yard, and neither has gotten a bird in the two years we’ve had them. Also, since they were bottle fed almost from birth (their mother was too sick to nurse them, let alone teach them to hunt), they never learned.
13 thoughts on “Cats’ Killer Instinct”
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Hi Rand
You may want to check with your vet about grain free food. I was giving it to my dogs, but my vet told me to stop as it has been shown (or at least thought) to cause heart problems. https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2019/07/grain-free-dog-food-fda-warning/593167/
Just as I don’t generally take nutrition advice from MDs, I’m not sure a vet is the best place to go for advice on pet food. I also don’t trust the FDA. And that article says nothing about cats.
I’ve read articles claiming cats and dogs thrive on roasted meat and veggies, but that’s what I eat, and few of my many cats would smell my dinner without gagging. Except for one brown tabby I had in the early 70s, who stole and ate my Brussels sprouts…
Footnote: and of course my dogs would eat pretty much anything, including crunchy “snacks” pilfered from kitty’s literbox.
That’s interesting, although the FDA document linked in the article suggests dilated cardiomyopathy is not a common problem for cats. I’m a bit annoyed that the reporter did not to talk to a board-certified veterinary nutritionist. Like MDs, most DVMs are not experts in nutrition.
FWIW my cat has been thriving on a prescription food that includes grains and no legumes. I supplement it with as much sardine and lean meat as she wants.
Oh, just one more thing. That article made me think of “The Gleaners”, but with dogs. https://bit.ly/37b2WmR
I second what you are saying.
Yes, they are both in the order Carnivora, but dogs have a different digestive arrangement than cats. An American speech scientist living in Japan told me that dogs have a two-compartment stomach (do they?) and in nature have a more diverse diet than meat. Cats might be more pure meat eaters.
He also told me that humans can indeed thrive on dried dog food, and that he fed himself that way when he was homeless for the duration when constructing a new house. I know there is an “ew” and a “yuck” factor, and “eating dog food” is a metaphor for extreme poverty, especially among the elderly without savings, but could a sack of dried dog food be a survival ration?
Dogs aren’t obligate carnivores like cats, though, so their diets won’t be the same.
I am not sure which kills more birds, domestic cats or all the many raptor species of birds. Being a bird watcher, I would bet on the raptors.
Does it matter?
If you’re some kind of whiny PETA type, probably. Last I heard, they weren’t trying to ban wild animals.
We have megatons of hawks and falcons here, impacting the squirrels and bunnies more than the songbirds. In fact, one of my cats (a very gray tabby) was killed by a hawk a few years ago. Probably by mistake and the hawk let go and crashed before limping off. But too late for sweet kitty. My current cat gorges on Fancy Feast before going out for the night and pursuing his main interest in life: intra-feline single combat.
A single good hunting cat can wreak havoc. The first year I got married, my wife got me a cat. We let her outside because we lived on the edge of a small town right next to a field that was roughly an acre in size. Every day she’d bring home 2 or 3 dead mice (or parts thereof.) After a few months, she started bringing home moles instead. We assumed she’d killed all the mice.
A few months after that she started bringing home shrews, which are apparently more than most cats want to tangle with.
Cats only kill the stupid or slow birds.
Think of it as evolution in action.