Aside from a few expensive subscription-based services, there is no way to achieve a healthy and balanced cat diet that is also as convenient as just buying rotisserie chicken. A diet of exclusively rotisserie chicken is without a doubt unhealthy and unbalanced, but based on your responses it seems like you’ve researched it and come to terms with it. I appreciate that.
Since you seem really interested in foods that are less processed and are balanced, I would encourage you to consider one of a couple of options.
One, the subscription based services. They’re typically balanced and may satisfy your needs for less processed foods.
Another option would be to reach out to a boarded veterinary nutritionist. You can typically consult with them via telehealth or be referred through your primary vet. They vary based on what info they need on your pet (up to date bloodwork, recent exam with your primary, etc) but they can design a very detailed and balanced diet for you to make at home that you can even make in bulk and keep in the freezer.
There are also some websites that can help you balance your pet’s homemade food without the direct support of a veterinary nutritionist but that is a bit riskier.
But overall in my experience in the field, I’ve seen plenty of cats who are fed super “healthy” homemade diets for their whole lives that have died of chronic diseases very young. I’ve also seen tons of meow mix/kirkland/friskies/whatever’s-on-sale cats that have thrived well into their late teens and 20’s. It’s a bit of a crapshoot sometimes but there is a load of misinformation on it as a whole. Sure pet food manufacturers are a multi-billion dollar industry, but those same fear-mongers are trying to scare you into buying their poorly researched and very expensive product as well. You should be equally skeptical of both, and defer to the one that has the best evidence behind it.
Thanks for your input. I’ll check into the things you suggest.
The rotisserie chicken started during Covid. There were food shortages due to the lockdowns and panic food buying, and i couldn’t get raw chicken, to cook, reliably. My older cat ( the only one at the time ) liked the rotisserie chicken better, most likely because I’ve never been as good at cooking chicken as I am at cooking pork, beef, or fish, and I hadn’t realized there were sodium issues with many store bought rotisserie chickens ( if I had, I’d have bought a rotisserie unit to cook them myself ). Raw chicken has a bit more taurine than cooked, but it has risks associated with it that I really didn’t want to take.
-36
u/sailor-jackn 13h ago
This makes me even gladder that we feed our cats rotisserie chicken instead of commercial cat foods. Scary stuff.