One of the things that got me thinking here was the mention of 'by-products'.
Universally hated by anyone serious about their cats diet of course. However - if a cat hunted a mouse and ate it - it would eat it whole wouldn't it? Including the fur, intestines, all that icky stuff we don't want in our cat food. In other words, including the stuff we label as 'by products'.
Interesting.
Blood soaked sawdust doesn't sound particularly appetising though does it. :dis
Glad you asked, Melysion. Yes, a cat *would* eat the by-products, which are not in and of themselves "evil." However, many of the cheaper foods use *only* by-products and skip the meat--something a cat would never do! Feeding exclusively by-products is definitely a bad idea.
Personally, I do occasionally give my kids a can of by-product based food as a treat and for those odd little nutrients and minerals that the organs contain.
What we really want for our kitties is balance and variety--both of which you can easily create over time.
Cats don't always eat the entire prey. So far Rocket has deposited on my doorstep several partial sets of internal organs, including the lower G-I tract of a young rabbit. That was also accompanied by the front feet. (Why he'd leave the front and eat the back, I don't know.) Another present was the claws, beak, and flight feathers of a starling (I saw him eating it, that's why I know it was a starling :roll: ) Again, what's puzzling is that he left the flight feathers but apparently swallowed some of the tail feathers. I think the argument that cats get some "vegetables" from the guts of their prey so they need some in their diet is unsupportable by the evidence. But I don't know whether the leavings were discrimination or just happenstance.
And he's gonna need it if he keeps going out. :evil:
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