BENGAL CAT NUTRITION
The diet you provide you Bengal cat is of crucial importance for the best health of your cat, and is one of the most important decisions you will make. A Bengal that is fed a high quality diet will feel good, have a stronger immune system and suffer from fewer illnesses.
There are 3 main options when deciding what to feed your Bengal kitten. These are discussed below:
Raw Food
A kitten from Angeldust Bengals will have been raised being fed raw, complete meals sourced only from reputable, specialist raw pet food companies. These meals are nutritionally balanced, with the correct proportion of bone, muscle meat and offal, with the correct supplementation added. This is vitally important to prevent nutritional deficiencies. We only use meals that are specifically formulated for cats as the needs of dogs are different. We also find that mixing a little high quality, grain free kitten food from a can helps with smell, thus enticing kittens to eat. We strongly recommend that your kitten continues with this diet once home with you and we provide lots more detail in our care booklet. Just some of the benefits include improved digestion, good breath, a stronger immune system, better energy levels, a decrease in feline diseases and ideal body weight. Our kittens absolutely thrive on this diet and leave us robust and healthy.
Complete Wet Foods
We will always recommend the raw, complete diet recommended above for our kittens because it really is best for them. However, we understand that occasionally it may not be possible for the owner to continue feeding these meals. In that case, the second option would be a complete wet, canned/pouched diet. This should be high quality and age appropriate. Many Bengals will develop loose stools on this type of processed diet, so we have given guidance on which brands work in our care booklet.
Kibble/Dry Food
The third option is a dry food, or kibble, diet. We never recommend that this is the only food offered to your Bengal. A solely dry diet has been linked to numerous health conditions such as diabetes, chronic diarrhoea, bladder diseases and kidney disease due to the dehydration is causes. Naturally, cats have a low thirst drive as most of their water is contained in prey and dry food does leave cats dehydrated as they struggle to drink enough water. It is possible to leave a little out to nibble on, but it is by no means necessary. Some dry food is not well tolerated by Bengals and so we do provide advice in our care booklets about suitable brands.
Good heart health
There has been a rise in cases of Dilated Cardiomyopathy (DCM) in both the UK and the USA linked to the rise in popularity in both of these countries of grain free diets containing high proportions of peas, lentils, pulses, sweet potatoes and potatoes. Vets and scientists are still working out why these diets are linked to Dilated Cardiomyopathy, but it's possible that these ingredients change the way certain nutrients, such as taurine and L Carnitine, are synthesised. Therefore, we recommend that diets are not fed to our Bengal kittens are contain these ingredients.
