How a kitten's nutritional needs differ from ours?
In a study of homemade pet foods, more than 90 percent of foods
were found to be nutritionally unbalanced and incomplete for
pets.*
- Each species has very different nutritional requirements.
Cooking for your kitten is not the same as cooking for
your children or yourself. Kittens have nutritional
requirements that are quite different from humans.
- Foods that are not properly balanced to meet a kitten's
needs can lead to health problems. For example, calcium and
phosphorus must be balanced to ensure that a careful ratio of
more calcium than phosphorus is maintained for a healthy
metabolism.**
- Kittens have a very critical need for much more taurine
than humans require. Too little taurine can lead to heart and
eye disorders.†
- Never feed raw meat to your kitten. The handling of raw
meat is always a critical part of cooking our human foods. It
is also important in pets' foods. Raw meats often contain
bacteria like salmonella, listeria and even E. coli, which
can be very dangerous to pets and the humans who care for
them. Kittens and other pets fed raw meat can pass bacteria
on to the humans who come in contact with them. Small
children, the elderly and people with compromised immune
systems may become seriously
ill.††
*Small Animal Clinical Nutrition IV Edition, page
169.
**Small Animal Clinical Nutrition IV Edition, page
310.
† Small Animal Clinical Nutrition IV Edition,
page 30.
†† FDA Notice December 18, 2002.