The phrase "natural dry cat food" is an oxymoron. There are an increasing number of "natural" dry cat food manufacturers entering the market. At one time, Flint River Ranch was the dominant "natural" dry cat food manufacturer. Now a new one seems to pop up about every week. They add ingredients to their food to make it look healthier and invariably package the foods in earth tone-colored bags. It is most certainly not healthier. These manufacturers will tell you their food is designed to be exactly like what a cat would eat naturally, just in a dry form. What "dry form" food would a cat ever encounter in the wild? Biscuits leaping across the desert plain? This is the key problem: "in a dry form." Between the addition of grains and removal of water, natural or not, it is not healthy food for your cat. For example, here is the ingredient list for a natural cat food I just discovered on-line:

Chicken meal, Fresh Chicken, Brown Rice, Chicken Fat (preserved with mixed tocopherols, rosemary extract and citric acid), Barley, Fresh Potatoes, Flax Seed, Cold Water Fish Oil (preserved with mixed tocopherols, rosemary extract and citric acid), Fresh Eggs, Dried Chicken Liver, Anchovy Fish Meal, Dried Whole Milk, Dried Whey Extract, Nutritional Yeast, Kelp, Casein, Calcium Carbonate, Potassium Chloride, Lecithin, Choline Chloride, Lactobacillus Acidophilus Fermentation Product, Bifidobacterium Thermophilum Fermentation, Bifidobacterium Longum Fermentation Product, Enterobacter Faecium Fermentation Product, Bacillus Subtilis Fermentation Product, Fresh Blueberries, Fresh Cranberries, Zinc Sulfate, DL-Methionine, Taurine, Iron sulfate, Carnitine, Zinc proteinate, Vitamin E supplement, Creatine, Manganese sulfate, Iron proteinate, Manganese proteinate, Vitamin B12 supplement, Vitamin A supplement, Niacin, Vitamin D3 supplement, Cobalt Proteinate, d-Calcium Pantothenate, Riboflavin, Copper sulfate, Cobalt Carbonate, Biotin, Thiamine Mononitrate, Folic Acid, Pyridoxine Hydrochloride, Copper Proteinate, Sodium Selenite, Papain, Yucca Schidigera Extract.

It certainly looks better than IAMS or Science Diet, but when was the last time you saw a wild cat in a nature program consuming rosemary, potatoes, milk, brown rice or anchovies?

Rosemary is a preservative (for the fats in the food). Sure it´s better than using toxic BHT or BTA or another preservative, but it´s still a preservative. You should not feed your cat food that can sit out on the countertop for weeks or months without spoiling. Real food spoils.

Anchovies are added for their omega fatty acid content, but omega 3 fatty acids are far too fragile to survive the shelf life of dry cat food. This company itself claims that it sprays salmon oil onto their food to improve the omega 3 fatty acid ratios. Too bad the salmon oil they recommend is in cobalt blue containers. Salmon oil cannot be properly stored unless it is maintained in an airtight container. The minute that bottle is opened, oxygen gets in and the fats start to go rancid. Capsules are the only way to properly preserve salmon oil.

Why milk is in the food is beyond me. Perhaps to help raise the protein levels or perhaps for calcium. Once cats are weaned, milk is no longer a part of their natural diet.

The blueberries and cranberries are added to help acidify the food to maintain proper urinary tract health. Unfortunately, acidified dry cat food can lead to formation of calcium oxalate crystals. A cat´s natural diet (raw meat) maintains a proper pH balance. For many cats, dry cat food does not.

Yucca is added to reduce stool odor, which wouldn´t be a problem if the cat were fed a proper diet in the first place.

I believe these natural pet food manufacturers are even more outlandish (if that is possible) than the mainstream manufacturers. They are playing to a particular market: those people with the means to purchase a more expensive product, those who have a cat who may have experienced some sort of health problem due to another brand of cat food (although manufacturers of "prescription diets" may have a firmer hold on that market), but there are certainly those in the mix who are aware of some of the problems associated with grocery store brand cat food, or those who simply want a more natural product to feed their cats. Natural is best, but this does not pertain to dry cat food. There is nothing natural about dry cat food.

While many of the natural dry foods today are manufactured by small companies, the larger manufacturers now have their finger in the pot too. If you look at the ingredients in, for example, Science Diet´s "Nature´s Best" brand, you will see that it is actually inferior to their Original formula. Brewer´s Rice is the first ingredient in Nature´s Best, chicken by-product in their Original formula. Is this "Best" for a carnivore?

Many of those smaller companies who are manufacturing food have not spent a lot of time studying feline nutrition and often have no clue of what is involved in feeding a carnivore. If they do have this knowledge, they clearly have disregarded it in favor of marketing a product as healthy when it is truly not.

Although I expect it will never happen because it would be too expensive, I´m waiting for a manufacturer to start dehydrating mice, mixing them with brown rice and calling it cat food.

LOL How I´m sure that dehydrated mice stuff would fly off the shelves! Closest my cats get to mice are the catnip-filled ones. But i agree, the kibble we feed our cats are very far removed from their natural diet. I mean, they´re carnivores, right? Even with "real added meat/fish", we treat them as herbivores, feeding far too much vegetable extracts in the food. Perhaps that´s why the stools have such bad odor in the first place! I recently introduced Iams´ new organic range in Salmon & Chicken flavour - but that´s still only a compound kibble with a far bigger vergetable&herbs component than ever. Occasionally I treat them to "Feast" wetfood or Iams pouches - look and smell fairly close to pure meat/meat products in flavours like "real turkey/fish/chicken in jelly". However, their favourite treat remains pure tuna or even a little raw chicken breast meat or minced beef. A little given as a treat now and then supplementary to kibble seems to be the best we humans can do apart from letting them hunt down their own meal!

mmmm. that ingredient list looks dodgy.....especially the ´Enterobacter faecium ´fermentation product. Enterobacter belongs to the coliform family that are usually found inhabiting intestines and then found in faeces....in my biotechnology backround, I have never heard of any by product of this bacteria being of any use!

Plus I love the fact that Papain is added to aid the break down of proteins....like you said, cats really need that??