Is a cat a carnivore

As we all know, cats are obligate carnivores and dogs are omnivores. Why do cats have to eat meat? Why not eat leftovers like a dog? Today Lao Hu is here to talk about why cats must eat meat?

Cats are members of the feline family, and all cats, including domestic cats, are obligate carnivores. In addition to cats, other obligate carnivores include polar bears, brown bears, seals, sea lions, walruses, etc. The reason why these obligate carnivores must eat primarily meat is due to the way they consume nutrients.

Obligate carnivores generally obtain the vitamins and fatty acids they need directly from meat, while impurities and herbivores can synthesize certain amino acids and vitamins in their own bodies, such as vitamin A, and some plants can synthesize carotenoids. white. We humans can extract vitamin A from these carotenes, but cats cannot. Cats cannot extract vitamin A from carotene and can only obtain it from animal tissues, that is, meat.
Long-term lack of vitamin A in cats can cause conjunctivitis, cataracts, retinal degeneration and other phenomena. In addition to vitamin A, cats also need to obtain vitamin B, taurine, niacin, arginine and other nutrients from meat. These are basically the things that cats can only obtain from meat. If arginine is insufficient for a long time, May cause death of cat. Long-term taurine deficiency can cause blindness in cats. Simply put, cats must eat meat to survive.

In addition to the fact that cats need meat for nutritional intake, all the organs in their bodies are also made for meat. For example, teeth, dogs have forty-two teeth, and cats have thirty teeth. Dogs have more molars than cats, and these molars are used by dogs to chew food.
Cats have cusps on their molar crowns and smaller premolars, which are suitable for tearing or cutting meat, but not for grinding food. Therefore, when cats eat, they usually tear it off and eat it directly, and then swallow the meat directly into the stomach for digestion. This is also the reason why cats do not chew food.
Moreover, cats do not have amylase. We humans have amylase in their saliva. When carbohydrates enter the mouth, salivary amylase will initially digest the starch compounds, so that most of the starch can be hydrolyzed into maltose in the mouth, and then further It is hydrolyzed into glucose under the action of small intestinal juice and pancreatic juice, and then absorbed by small intestinal epithelial cells. However, cats do not have salivary amylase. Starch is initially hydrolyzed in the small intestine by amylase with low activity in pancreatic juice and small intestinal juice. This also makes it difficult for cats to digest starch.

When a cat consumes too much starch, it must rely on the pancreas and small intestine to digest these substances, which will increase the burden on the cat’s organs. Long-term starch intake and insufficient protein intake will cause cats to fall into two extreme states, one is obesity and the other is thin.
Because cats need protein for metabolism, if there is not enough protein, cats will metabolize their bodies and break down their muscles to obtain protein. Therefore, in our daily process of raising cats, we must give them enough meat.
If you have the time and energy, you may consider learning to feed your cat raw meat and bones. Feeding raw meat and bones is currently one of the feeding methods that is in line with cats’ dietary instincts, but feeding raw meat and bones requires a certain amount of time and energy to learn.
If you don’t have the time and energy, you can also choose a high-quality low-starch or starch-free cat food.