The Importance Of Taurine For Cats

I’ve been doing a lot of reading on cat nutrition lately.

Because of Tiger, everyone is on home-cooked food now (we still give them Monge and kibble as a snack). But cooking destroys two-thirds of the taurine in the meat, so this is a concern. I know raw is good, so I’ve started the cats back on Coco & Joe’s Barf again, but not everyone likes it. I haven’t been able to get Pole and Zurik to eat raw food so far. Still working on it… Cleo and Vincent both love raw food and can be totally on it. For the rest, I mix cooked food with raw food.

For the home-cooked food, I use either antibiotic residue-free chicken or antibiotic- and hormone-free chicken (just found a new brand available at the hypermarket) and add organic vegetables.

Taurine is very important for a cat’s health, but it’s tricky because cooking destroys two-thirds of it. Even grinding and freezing destroys taurine, though not completely. The best way to get taurine is from raw fresh meat, especially organ and muscle meat.

Whenever I buy meat to make the home-cooked meal, everyone is offered some raw meat. But this doesn’t happen every day. In any case, the cats are fussy – they will only eat raw meat when it’s fresh.

Here is an article which I find useful and informative:

http://feline-nutrition.org/nutrition/no-bull-taurine-is-a-must-for-kitty

This provides a good back-to-basics on feline nutrition: http://fnae.org/basics.html

Zurik: I’m highly evolved, I don’t eat raw meat. 

Pole: Eat raw meat? You mean, like a cave-cat? Yikes!!

It does seem like Mission Impossible to get Zurik and Pole to eat a bit of raw food.

But we’ll try…

Source: https://myanimalcare.org/2016/12/22/the-importance-of-taurin..

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