Best Cat Food for Indoor Cats

With the seemingly ever-growing selection of cat food for your indoor cats, figuring out the best diet for your cat can be a difficult task. This only becomes more complicated when you realize the difference in needs for indoor and outdoor cats. While they have the same nutrient requirements, indoor cats need to meet those nutrient requirements on a lower calorie diet due to their lower activity levels. So, to help you figure out the best cat food for your indoor cats, here are the exact nutrients they need and how you can ensure their diet contains everything they need.

What Makes Indoor Cat Food Different?

Unlike outdoor cats whose major risks revolve around the outdoor environment, indoor cats are far more likely to develop lifestyle diseases such as obesity and diabetes. So, while all cats have the same dietary requirements, indoor cats need to meet these dietary requirements with fewer calories because of their lower activity levels. Indoor cats are also more prone to hairballs due to a lack of seasonal variation causing continuous shedding throughout the year. To help combat this, indoor cat food generally contains higher amounts of fiber to help hairballs move through the gastrointestinal tract.

The Best Recommended Diet for Indoor Cats

With the continuously growing variety of cat foods, it can quickly become confusing to figure out which indoor cat food fits the needs of your cat best. Essentially, the nutritional requirements of every cat boils down to a combination of amino acids from protein, fatty acids and carbohydrates, vitamins, minerals, and water. All of these nutritional requirements must be met to ensure the health of your cat on a relatively low amount of calories. This typically means a low carbohydrate diet with large amounts of protein and natural fats.

These requirements are usually met with cat food specifically labeled for indoor cats. However, each brand of indoor cat food can have variances that make different ones a better choice for your cat based on their needs. To ensure the indoor cat food you feed your cat contains high-quality ingredients always look for the source of the protein, food products without any grains and fillers, and food with vegetable fiber. Even though cats are carnivorous, they still require vegetable fiber as it mimics the fiber they would receive from eating grass in the wild.

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Protein and Amino Acids are Essential for Your Indoor Cat

Since cats are carnivorous animals, the most essential part of their diet are proteins derived from animal products. While some plant-based products contain protein, cats can digest animal-based protein far more effectively than plant-based protein as their digestive system is designed around animal products. The recommended dietary allowance for proteins is roughly 12.5 grams for an adult cat weighing about nine pounds.

High-quality proteins contain ten different amino acids, commonly referred to as essential amino acids, that cats cannot naturally produce. These amino acids act as the building blocks for a wide range of active compounds and proteins that cats cannot survive without. They also aid in the production of glucose serving as the basic carbon chains in the process.

Any cat with a deficiency in any of these amino acids can develop severe health-related issues. Arginine, one of these ten amino acids, is a crucial compound in the removal of ammonia through urine. A deficiency in arginine can cause a toxic buildup of ammonia in a cat’s bloodstream which can lead to liver failure.

Taurine, another one of the ten essential amino acids for cats, is only found in sufficient amounts within animal-based proteins. A lack of taurine in a cat’s diet can result in a wide range of health complications from blindness and deafness to heart failure. This is why your indoor cat food must contain animal-based proteins for optimal health. It also makes a strict vegetarian diet extremely difficult for cats unless supplemented with amino acids like Taurine that are otherwise only found in animal products.

Fats and Fatty Acids are One of the Primary Sources of Energy in Indoor Cat Food

Dietary fats contain the highest concentration of energy per gram in your cat’s diet. They primarily come from animal fats and seed oils from a variety of plants. Since fats serve as the primary source of energy in your cat’s diet, paying attention to the source of the fats is extremely important to prevent obesity and diabetes. These fats also provide your cat with essential fatty acids that they cannot naturally produce and serve as the form of transportation for fat-soluble vitamins.

Essential fatty acids for cats are generally broken down into three different families, omega-3, omega-6, and omega-9 fatty acids. All of these fatty acids help maintain the health of your cat’s skin and coat as well as other essential biological functions. While omega-6 and omega-9 fatty acids are still important to your cat’s health, omega-3 fatty acids are by far the most important. Deficiencies in omega-3 fatty acids can cause issues with your cat’s nervous system, immune function, joint and skin health, muscle development, and allergies. Thankfully, you can supplement your cat’s diet with omega-3 fatty acids through krill oil, sardines, or salmon oil. Supplementing omega-3 fatty acids provides for a great way to ensure your cat receives at least 250 milligrams of these fatty acids every day.

As the primary source of energy for cats, the concentration of fats in your cat’s diet can be extremely high without any adverse effects. In fact, most cat foods provide more than 50% of the caloric content from fats. So, always choose an indoor cat food with high amounts of fat. At the absolute minimum, your indoor cat food should have 9% fat content. An average adult cat requires 5.5 grams of fat in their diet.

Vitamins and Minerals for Your Indoor Cat

When it comes to vitamins and minerals you need to proceed with caution as too much or too little of a vitamin or mineral can cause health issues. Some vitamins and all minerals cannot be synthesized naturally by a cat and therefore must be provided within their diet. There are eleven vitamins and twelve minerals essential for your cat’s health. You can notice deficiencies excesses in most of these vitamins and minerals by watching the weight of your cat. If it seems like your cat cannot gain or lose any weight, you should look at the vitamins they consume in their diet and find out if they are receiving too little or too much of those vitamins.

The most common deficiency in a cat’s diet revolves around vitamin E because most canned foods derived from fish products do not contain enough vitamin E. This makes your cat susceptible to oxidative damage as vitamin E acts as an anti-oxidant. Vitamin A is the most common vitamin fed in excess with foods derived from the liver of an animal, particularly for kittens. This results in skeletal lesions, particularly outgrowths along their vertebrae.

As for minerals, most deficiencies and excesses can be identified through a lack of growth in a kitten or anorexia in an adult cat. However, magnesium in excess can cause urinary tract stones and an excess of iron can cause vomiting and diarrhea.

Avoid Carbohydrates

Carbohydrates in cat food usually come from cereals, legumes, or other plant foods. Since cats are carnivorous animals, naturally they would never eat these types of food. This shows in the short length of their long intestine which makes it difficult for them to digest any type of carbohydrates. It simply does not allow enough time for the fibers from the carbohydrates to ferment into useable products meaning that the grains essentially go in one end and out the other. An excess of carbohydrates can also lead to a wide range of health problems from obesity and diabetes to irritable bowels, muscle weakness and more.

Indoor Cats Need Moisture in Their Food

Aside from the nutritional requirements your cat needs in their diet, you also need to ensure they consume enough water. Most indoor cats require moisture in their food in order to stay hydrated. This is because most domesticated cats come from Northern Africa or the Middle East in arid environments. These types of cats naturally get most of their water from the food they eat instead of just drinking water. Because of this natural tendency to get their water from food, indoor cats generally will not drink enough water from a bowl. This can lead to a constant state of dehydration if not fed food with moisture in it. So, to combat this, you can either add water to their dry kibble to ensure they consume water with their meal or feed them canned wet food.

What Type of Cat Food Should You Feed Your Cat?

While every cat requires the same nutritional requirements, the amount of each nutrient varies based on the size of your cat and the age of your cat. You also need to consider whether canned food or dry kibble works best for your cat’s diet. Since indoor cats have far lower activity levels, you need to ensure they receive all of the nutrients they need without excessive amounts of calories. This generally follows a low carbohydrate diet that’s high in protein and fats.

Canned Indoor Cat Food

For most indoor cat owners, canned cat food made for indoor cats makes for the simplest way to ensure your cat receives all of the nutrients and water they need in their diet. In fact, one of the largest risk factors for obesity in cats is a dry food diet. Given that dry foods usually contain higher amounts of carbohydrates, this makes sense since cats cannot properly digest carbs. Feeding your cats canned food also helps you portion out their meals appropriately instead of allowing your cat to graze on dry kibble throughout the entire day.

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Dry Indoor Cat Food

Feeding your cat dry indoor cat food in portioned out meals makes for a great way to promote dental health for your cat. This is because the hard texture of dry food helps scrape off any plaque on their teeth. However, with dry cat food, you should investigate exactly what the kibble contains. Look for dry kibble made primarily out of proteins and fats. You can also consider adding water to their food to ensure they stay hydrated.

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Kitten Indoor Cat Food

When choosing food for your kitten, make sure it’s high in proteins to promote healthy growth for your kitten. They need a nutrient-rich food to avoid any complications in their growth. You also want to feed them three to four small meals throughout the day instead of one or two large meals like you would with adult cats. This is because kittens struggle to eat large meals all at once without becoming bloated. For very young kittens, vets typically recommend wet food, but as they get older you can consider switching to dry kibble.

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Senior Indoor Cat Food

As your cat ages, you should consider changing their diet slightly to a lower calorie diet with nutrients that are easy for them to digest. This is because cats tend to become less and less active as they age. They also tend to develop more digestive issues that can make it difficult for them to process regular adult cat food. Most cat food brands recommend switching over to senior food at around the age of seven.

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Frequently Asked Questions

How do I figure out the amount of protein and fat in my cat food?

While pet food labels do not require essential nutrients listed in grams, they do require minimum percentages of protein and fat. You can figure out how many grams of protein and fat your cat food contains by multiplying that percentage by the grams of a single serving.

Is there a difference between indoor cat food and regular cat food?

Cat food made specifically for indoor cats generally contains fewer calories with the same nutrients than regular cat food. This is to accommodate their lower activity levels preventing obesity and diabetes while still containing all of the essential nutrients they need for a healthy life.

What ingredients should I look for in my cat food?

Always look for cat food that’s high in protein and fat for optimal health. Cats need high-quality animal proteins in their diet as these products contain the ten essential amino acids that cats cannot naturally produce. You also want cat food high in fat as its the primary source of energy for cats since they cannot properly digest carbohydrates.

What ingredients should I avoid in the food I feed my cats?

Avoid any cat food that’s high in grains and fillers. These grains and fillers typically contain large amounts of carbohydrates that are difficult for your cat to digest. Diets high in carbohydrates can lead to a wide range of health-related issues from obesity and diabetes to irritable bowels and muscle weakness.

Is a vegetarian diet healthy for my cat?

Vegetarian diets can cause complications for your cat’s health. Since they’re naturally carnivorous animals, they cannot properly digest most plant-based products. This can lead to a wide range of deficiencies in the nutrients that they require.