Meat should always be fed raw. Cooked meat is not natural and besides, raw meat requires no cooking and we're lazy so why go to the unnecessary effort.
Raw meat also helps to stimulates the carnivore's highly acidic digestive system whereas cooked meat is said to shut the digestive system of our pets down. Since most health problems begin with a digestive problem and since commercial pet food is obviously cooked, one might begin connecting the dots to the potential origins of their pet's health problems — and at the same time, one might begin to understand and/or see why their pet's health begins to improve when eating a wholesome
raw meat diet.
In the wild, carnivores eat feathers and fur and never appears to get fur balls. Well, at least I've never seen or heard of a lion trying to cough up fur balls while roaming the Serengeti plains.
The only carnivore known to man that removes the fur before eating is the leopard. So, if you're standing under a tree and fur begins to fall on you, there's a good possibility that there is a leopard above you and it's best you move on. Anyway, in addition to the raw meat stimulating your pet's highly acidic digestive system, raw meat simply has nutrients, enzymes, etc that cooked meat does not.
Raw meat is an excellent source of B-vitamins and we all know that cooking destroys many of those all too important vitamins. In the wild, a carnivore does not barbecue, grill, fry, roast or eat mice in pellet form. This is a human thing and only a human thing.
One type of meat should not be combined with another type of meat if possible. A carnivore's digestive system is designed to eat one animal protein at a time. In other words, the carnivore does not catch a deer and then say, Oh, look! There's some moose too!
Our pets do not need the variety of a buffet or smorgasboard, but they do benefit from the eat all you can
approach!
Wait — before going any further, I just want to let you know that the above paragraph will be explained in further detail later in my book when you learn more about how much to feed your dogs and cat. Okay, please continue reading now as if this paragraph never existed.
When pet foods contain a variety of meats, it is because pet foods are bought by humans, not pets. As a result, pet foods are marketed to what a human thinks is good. This is also why pet foods come in different colors, with a gravy, in various shapes like tuna and so on. It is really quite interesting when you think about all the marketing behind the sales of pet foods. I mean, really, dogs see in black and white and so they can't even recognize the color of the food they are eating anyway — but the human can recognize the colors and the marketing department in the commercial pet food companies know this — sneaky, aren't they?
I'm sure that if your pet had its way, they would not eat commercial pet food at all. In fact, according to a report in Consumers Digest back in the 1980's, Few foods are so liberally laced with artificial flavors as pet foods
. In addition, they quoted sources that basically said that the only way the pet food companies can get pets to eat the poor quality food is by adding phony flavors.
Anyway, a carnivore's system has been designed to eat the raw meat of one animal at a time, digest it and allow it to exit the body before any putrefaction begins. Their system is highly acidic, or at least it should be. Only raw meat is said to stimulate this highly acidic system that is designed to kill unfriendly bacteria.
The 10 year study done by Dr. Francis Pottenger with over 900 cats clearly illustrated this fact. Essentially, Dr. Pottenger found that feeding cats cooked meat caused numerous problems while feeding raw meat kept the cats healthy. Read the previous sentence again if you need to.
A carnivore's intestines are nowhere near as long as a cow's. A cow needs long intestines as they eat vegetation which requires time to be digested. This brings us to the next topic.
Vegetables are a mildly beneficial part of your dog's diet and to a lesser degree, your cat's diet. It's not that your cat naturally digs up carrots (although some pets occasionally do), but rather that your cat would obtain its carrots predigested by the rabbit. Saying that, many people feed their pets a diet with no vegetables at all, myself included. It all depends on the situation. I tend to feed dogs some vegetables but for cats, I tend to prefer just meat.
What I really want to focus on right now though is the fact that the cat would obtain its carrots from the rabbit's intestines. This is extremely important to remember because a carnivore's intestines are not long enough to digest a whole carrot or any vegetable for that fact.
The carrot has been predigested or broken down by the rabbit's digestive system. If you were to feed a whole carrot to your carnivore friend, you would simply see it magically reappear in the stools.
So, if we do add some vegetables to the diet of our pets, the vegetables must be finely chopped to simulate the predigestion by the prey.
Now just so you know I am not a mind reader but I am sensing that you might have some questions right now about feeding. Relax, I will be explaining more about how to feed homemade pet food in part 3 of my book. At which point you will learn a few simple ways of feeding your cat, dog, puppy and/or kitten with and without vegetables added. Again I say to you — relax — all things will be explained in due course. Knowledge must unfold like a flower opening one petal at a time as the sun rises on the horizon.