I was warned that tinned tuna wasn't enough, doesn't have all the nutrients needed and taurine and stuff I don't understand lol.
Also it has to be in water not brine as that salt levels are too high for cats.
I really haven't research it tho.
Discussion
there is no tuna i have seen ever that doesn't have salt in it. i just drain it off. my cat drinks a lot of water, i assume that the salt makes him more thirsty.
compared to the other options i have available at my local supermarket, it's the best. i do try to mix it up a bit sometimes with beef and also now with cod, i should pull some cod steaks out of the freezer to cook up for him to eat.
i think tuna is pretty good though, i mean, if his condition and health are any condition, it's giving him more than enough, and better than what any "cat food" is giving him (they make his hair manky and his allergies and susceptibility to parasites increases - this is why i stopped feeding them to him. and he now refuses to eat those things).
idk if you knew this but most cat food products you can buy at regular supermarkets are part or more than half composed of textured vegetable protein. i was raised on this garbage and i know exactly what it looks and smells like. my cat does not like soy. soy is not cat food. it's not human food either, but that's a separate issue.
I occasionally buy tuna for the cat I look after. But our local supermarket has tuna in spingwater (the other options are oil and brine which have bought before but rinsed off).
Yeah catfood products can be really shitty. As well as salt, cats are sensitive to sugar and can get diabetes. The cheapo catfood often has loads of sugar too. Although I did find one that was sugar-free and grain-free, saw it recommended on a cat forum for people struggling with prices of catfood. The expensive stuff is an insane price.
You can get taurine supplements, it seems pretty essential for cat eye and heart health in the little research I've done. No idea what the taurine levels are in tinned tuna or meats. (I think stuff like animal organs /offal is higher in taurine). Again , no expert lol I just did a bit of research when my flatmate rescued a poor wee thing from dying and she now lives with us:)
yeah, organ meats... i have seen liver around here, i should get it to feed him in between things. he loves it, i have fed him it at times.
i don't think salt is especially bad for them, it just makes them need to drink more water. salt stimulates kidney elimination, it also is good for your health to have somewhat elevated levels of salt intake. unrefined grey salt is the best.
I’m always amazed they never made mouse meat food for cats. Even though my cat is hard, pretty sure he’d never kill and eat a cow left to his own devices.
My friend who has a pet snake often used the freezer for frozen mice 😬
oh, that is a great idea. mice are easy to raise and breed. quails are another option too, also pigeon. actually, lizards too. there are thousands of little lizards living around me and they are so easy to trap, just set up a plastic container, even one of those tubs used to soak clothes in (i caught one today, even) and then keep them in some kind of enclosure, probably a clear plastic tub would do, and i even have a heat mat i can put under them, and then in parallel, catch a bunch of crickets and breed them up to feed the lizards.
i think overall, mice might be the easiest option tho.
i'm gonna think about this some more. it would be so easy to raise mice and just take them by the tail and smack them dead and drop them in his bowl. the only thing is my cat hasn't got his front canines anymore, but i think they cut up critters like mice mainly with their front incisors, the only cutting (as in, as opposed to tearing) teeth they have, and he still has all his incisors.
the advantage of mice is you can feed them on cheap seed feeds, even like the stuff they sell for birds, and just keep a big stash of tuna cans in reserve when the mice population is low and i can't feed him that.
thanks for the idea. this is what i'm gonna do when i see the opportunity. i may even do the mice soon, as it's not hard to get them at pet shops
feeding them what they eat in the wild is of course the best, and since he isn't out there picking up all kinds of parasites, it should result in substantial boosts in his immunity.
actually, now i'm thinking about it, i know exactly how i can collect a load of lizards, and kill them and drop them in his feeding bowl. i am sure that they are good eating for cats, i often see half dead ones that i assume were killed by cats. not the greatest, but they mainly eat insects which is the typical profile of what is good for cats to eat. insect and grain eaters. what is good for cats is not a lot different from what is good for humans. cats are actually the transition point between common types of land mammals (ie, rodents, ungulates, and such) and monkeys, who are the intermediate to apes, of which we are the successors of.