Cat doesn't really like dry food (but chows down on wet foods)

I don’t see anything about that in the article, that people tended to prefer the organ meats. It’s interesting about carnivores, but we’re not carnivores. How about simians?

I know Taiwanese eats organ meats like crazy though…

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Two 20kg nocturnal porcupines had been tracked to their tunnel system in a termite mound. After several hours of digging and tunnelling – carefully avoiding the razor-sharp spines – two porcupines were eventually speared and thrown to the surface. A fire was lit. The spines, skin and valuable organs were expertly dissected and the heart, lung and liver cooked and eaten straight away.

I’ve seen a few videos of people living with them talk about it. Organs are valued as it’s the most nutritious parts to eat.

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Missed that!

You can buy frozen chicks and mice.

Humans definitely aren’t full carnivores, it looks like we ate what was available. But from a survival aspect, animal fats, organ meats, muscle meat, are going to be better as it’s nutrient-rich and calorie-dense. You could feed a lot of people for some time if you kill an animal. It would have been difficult to survive eating only fruits and veggies only. It’s hard now, vegetarians and vegans need to eat carefully to get enough nutrients, protein, and calories.

And it looks like the human brain evolved most around periods where animals were likely to be abundant.

Fat is calorie dense, but not nutrient rich. Muscle meat is nutrient rich but not calorie dense. Organ meats can be unhealthy due to toxins.

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You would have eaten both if you eat the animal.

Many if not most plants are toxic and not able to be eaten, yet we figured it out.

Not sure what you are trying to say.

That in today’s world due to lack of physical labor most foods are just fattening.

This sure went another direction…

Organ meats are not recommended for cats.

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Chicken necks and hearts gave me two super healthy 18 and 19 year old cats. Who would also catch and eat most of a pigeon about weekly.

Potentially true, depending on how big an animal it is and how many humans you have.

That wouldn’t necessarily translate to human success. If you have no reliable plant source of vitamin C and let all the C-rich organ meat go to the “alphas”, the logical result is scurvy for everyone else. Hence the tradition among some North American aboriginals to take the most C-rich organ (gall bladder iirc) from an animal and divide it into as many portions as there are members in the community (not that they knew there was such a thing as ascorbic acid for the last ~10,000 years, but they knew what they were doing anyway).

It’s also possible to OD on organ meat, sometimes because of the vitamins.

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Yeah but livers and kidneys are problematic. Oh and feathers can get stuck, so be careful and watch their intake.

My cat’s eye pigeons with glee.

I bought some fried hearts as snack for Toto in Canada. I think those are pure muscle. They made a great treat, he loved them.

Alphas of carnivore packs don’t eat organ meat before their pack mates. Just look how a lion pride eats. Wolf packs and African hunting dogs eat immediately as a group. African Hunting Dogs often eating before the prey is dead, again it’s just because the risk of losing out to a bigger predator is possible. Animals eat the liver first because it’s the most nutritious and if they are driven from their kill it’s best to get that first. Cheetahs tend to gorge on blood first as they lose 4 out of 5 kills.

Cats are super bird killers!

They’re cute and deadly…

Commercial cat food is shite. It contains an unreal quantity of carbs - which cats cannot handle well, although they will generally eat it if cleverly disguised. Most cats eventually develop diabetes and kidney failure because of this. Notice the number of pet cats/dogs getting fat: it happens for the exact same reason it happens to humans.

I read somewhere that big cats in captivity given standard high-carb, low-protein kibble will refuse to touch it even if they’re starving.

Just give the cat proper food. Meat etc. Not lean meat. A cat’s natural diet is about 60-70% protein, 30+% fat, almost zero carbs. You should find it’s not a whole lot more expensive than kibble, because the cat will eat less of it.

Organ meat is fine, although it can be a bit of a pain to clean it. The vet told us “don’t feed liver to your cat (because toxins)”, but presumably anything else is OK. Frankly I’m not convinced about the “toxins” bit. Yes, I know that’s what your liver and kidneys do, but they don’t hoard toxins.

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So can you tell me what I can get from the butchers that will work? They have pig organs.

What about those bony meat that is used for cooking pork broth? I tried using those and the cat loved it.

Just experiment and see what he likes. But yeah, all the scraggly, cheap bits that nobody really wants … he’ll probably love it.

Cat diets are very simple from a macro standpoint. All cats have a very high requirement for protein: 5g/kg, minimum. So if you have a 4.5kg cat, 25g/protein per day. A whole chicken, all things considered, contains 150g+ net protein, which means it’ll last a week (this translates accurately to my own experience - two smallish cats get through one chicken in about 4 days). About 50% of a chicken is fat, which again is ideal. Add to that whatever random crap you can find: organ meats, caul fat, bones, etc. Our cats don’t seem to like pork, but sounds like your cat isn’t so picky.

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