WHY IS PUSS PORTLY?
As our waistlines have expanded, so
have those of our pets. The Association for Pet Obesity Prevention’s
ninth annual clinical survey (2016) reports that nearly 54 percent of
dogs and 59 percent of cats were clinically overweight or obese in the
US. To put some numbers on that, they reckon that equals an estimated
41.9 million dogs and 50.5 million cats (based on 2016 pet population
projections provided by the American Pet Products Association). Being
overweight puts puss and puppy at an increased risk for weight-related
disorders such as type 2 diabetes, osteoarthritis, hypertension and many
cancers.
A
recent Swedish cross-sectional study using data from medical records
for cats visiting an academic medical centre and from a questionnaire on
insured cats found that the factors associated with increased risk of
puss being obese were: “Eating predominantly dry food, being a greedy
eater, and inactivity”.
What’s the ideal weight for a
cat? The Cat Bible author and Radio Pet Lady, Tracie Hotchner, says “it
is hard to judge since cats come in so many shapes and sizes. However,
if your cat has a belly that hangs down and swings when she walks, you
need to make some plans to reduce her weight. Oftentimes this will
simply mean removing all dry food and feeding canned or raw instead,
which research shows is the best diet for every cat.”
Dry
food is not appropriate for domestic cats she says. “Numerous
veterinarians who share my dismay over the widespread use of dry food
are concerned about a cat's digestive system being challenged to process
foods it is not designed to eat. Cats are not ‘little dogs’ yet a dry
food developed for canines was then manipulated to give to cats.”
Hotchner views dry food for cats as an addictive harmful source of
nutrition which she calls ‘kitty crack’ as she believes it encourages
felines to consume carbohydrate-heavy plant-based food sources which
their body is not designed to digest and metabolize. Keep in mind the
wild ancestors of puss snoozing on the sofa were obligate carnivores and
their diet was essentially the small animals they hunted. Despite
appearances, the domestic cat still closely resembles its wild ancestor.
Who
thought of dried food for cats and dogs? And when? It has a fascinating
past as GI News editor Philippa Sandall discovered researching
Seafurrers, her book on ships’ cats. The story goes that in the late
1850s, an Ohio electrician named James Spratt journeyed to London to
sell lightning rods. He noticed dogs hanging around the docks at
Portsmouth tucking into scraps of hardtack (ship’s biscuit) and had a
eureka moment. He patented a similar biscuit for dogs (they can digest
carbohydrate-based foods) and the rest is history. Spratt’s Patent Meal
Fibrine Dog Cakes were a baked mixture of wheat, beet root, and
vegetables bound together with beef blood. Dried food (kibble) for cats
followed.
To whet your appetite, here’s a World War 2
“dry food incident” reported by a 17-year-old Massachusetts seaman who
saved the ship’s cat after they were torpedoed. “We were in the lifeboat
seven and a half days with not much to eat besides hardtack,” he said.
“The cat didn’t like hardtack and wouldn’t eat a bite until some flying
fish landed in the boat. Before we got to shore, though, she ate
hardtack and liked it.” It’s likely the lifeboat lad improvised a grainy
seafood salad to tempt puss’s taste buds (and his own) by tossing
crumbled hardtack with flying fish flakes moistened with a little water
and puss focussed her attention on the fishy bits surmises Seafurrers
author Philippa Sandall.
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