Cats are obligate carnivores, which means they need meat in their diet to thrive. Their systems aren’t designed to digest carbohydrates. A raw diet is one of the best ways to fulfill cats’ nutritional requirements. There are numerous benefits from feeding a raw diet to your cat, including improved digestion, reduced stool odor and volume, increased energy, ability to maintain ideal weight, better dental health, and better urinary tract health.

Embraced for decades by holistically oriented pet parents and holistic veterinarians, raw feeding is becoming more mainstream as pet parents look for alternatives to feeding highly processed commercial pet foods.

Raw feeding is easy

Raw feeding does not have to be complicated. You do not need to grind your own meat and bones, measure out supplements, and figure out how to make a balanced diet for your little carnivore. There are plenty of commercial raw diets on the market, ranging from frozen to freeze-dried. Unfortunately, as the market is becoming more crowded, some manufacturers are cutting corners and adding more vegetables to their formulas to cut costs. You can find the brands I recommend here.

Darwin’s Natural Pet Food

I recently came across a new offering on the market: Darwin’s Natural Pet Food. I was impressed with what I saw on their website, both in terms of what’s in the food and what’s not:

In short: they’re doing everything right.

Of course, the real test of any food is: will your cats eat it?

Putting Darwin’s to the test

The folks at Darwin’s were kind enough to send us an assortment of their raw food. The food ships are frozen in dry ice, and unlike some other raw food brands I ordered online in the past, it arrived completely frozen. In fact, it was so frozen that it actually hurt my hands a bit getting it from the box to the freezer.

The food comes packaged in convenient 8 ounce sealed packs. It takes about 24 hours for one pack to thaw in the refrigerator, so feeding is no harder than feeding canned food. The only difference is that instead of opening a can, you’re defrosting a pack of food. The food is more nutrient dense than some of the other brands with higher vegetable or moisture content. One 8 ounce pack is just right for one day’s worth of breakfast and dinner for Allegra and Ruby.

We received turkey, chicken, and duck, and all three were a huge hit with the girls. Allegra and Ruby are good eaters, but some days, they leave little of each meal behind. With Darwin’s, we’ve been having clean plates almost every single meal.

How to order

Darwin’s has an introductory offer that can’t be beat so you can try this for your own cats: For $14.95, you get 10 pounds of raw food. You can customize the flavors depending on your cat’s taste preferences.

Once you place your introductory order, you are automatically set up for automatic shipments (you choose the frequency of shipment,) but you can cancel this at any time.

I’ll be honest: I’m not crazy about the autoship option. I don’t want to have to remember to cancel if I change my mind about an order. But I love everything about this food, and it’s worth it to me to put up with it. Since receiving the free product, I placed an order, and I had to adjust the autoship date once because I miscalculated. I found Darwin’s customer service extremely responsive and accommodating, which gives me peace of mind.

For more information and to order, please visit DarwinsPet.com.

Featured Image Credit: Chendongshan, Shutterstock