Carnivore Digestion and Inflammatory Bowel Disease

The digestive system of a carnivore is very simple. Unlike herbivores and omnivores, cats lack salivary amylase used to initiate digestion of dietary starches. Their jaws have limited side to side motion, which is necessary to grind food, and they have no flat or grinding teeth in their mouths. Their teeth are designed for grasping, cutting, tearing and biting.

 

The domestic cat's stomach, which is quite small, has two purposes. It holds the food and it is not necessary to hold a lot of food because the natural food of the cat is nutrient dense. Small wild cats hunt more frequently than their larger cousins because their prey is smaller.

 

While lions and tigers may gorge after a kill, small cats, if they are successful hunters, eat more frequently. The second function is the great acid break down. Hydrochloric acid dissolves and liquefies the food. Foods that cannot be digested — raw vegetable matter, cellulose, feathers, teeth and so forth — pass through the animal unchanged. As an experiment, feed your cat some whole corn or peas and watch it come back out the way it went in.

 

The dissolved food, called " chyme" leaves the stomach at scheduled intervals and enters the small intestine. The length of a cat's small intestine compared to body length is even shorter than a dog's: 4:1 for the cat and 6:1 for the dog. It is from the small intestine the food is digested and enters the blood stream. The pancreas and liver supply the enzymes necessary to break down the fats and proteins into fatty acids and amino acids. As there is limited enzyme activity capable of digesting carbohydrates, little or no digestion of carbohydrates can take place.

 

If the capacity of the small intestine to digest carbohydrate is exceeded, the undigested carbohydrates reach the large intestine. Because the cat has a non-functioning cecum and short colon, it has a limited capability to use poorly digestible starches and fiber by microbial fermentation. The small intestine does not join the large intestine in a straight line, but at a right angle. At this point is a small appendage, two or three inches in length, called the cecum. While this has no functional use in a carnivore, it should be noted because it is one of the major differences between a carnivore and an herbivore. In herbivores and to some extent, omnivores, microbial fermentation occurs in the large intestine, especially in the cecum. In a carnivore, the colon has limited functions, to extract excess water and compact the waste material and expel it.

 

It would not be safe for a carnivore to have a long digestive tract or for the food to stick around for any length of time for risk of bacterial contamination. You certainly would not want protein fermenting in your cat's colon. Carbohydrates and plant matter take longer to digest and it is necessary that the creature consuming carbohydrates or plant matter to have a long, slow digestive tract so that the food matter may be digested as completely as possible. An animal consuming large amounts of carbohydrates or plant material will produce a lot of stool. The stool of a carnivore consuming its natural food is minimal.

 

 

Highly digestible food yields more available nutrients for passive or active transport in intestinal absorption. Undigested residue (carbohydrates) alters pH and increases the liquidity of the chyme which means decreased stool quality and diarrhea. This condition may eventually lead to inflammatory bowel disease. The severity of the disorder depends on the amount of carbohydrates escaping digestion in the small intestine. Small amounts of sugars or decomposed starch, for example, can have more dramatic effects than large amounts of raw starch of low digestibility. Pet food manufacturers cook and process the carbohydrates they use in their foods in order to increase digestibility. Because of all the carbohydrates, cats consuming dry food are prone to IBD. Most cats exhibiting IBD symptoms (diarrhea and vomiting) experience a complete reversal of symptoms when switched to a grain-free diet. The best results are seen when the cat is put on a grain and carbohydrate-free raw meat diet.

 

Michelle Bernard, has spent nearly a decade digging into what makes cats bloom naturally with excellent health. A freelance writer who breeds and shows American Shorthairs, she has been keeping her own cats vibrantly healthy using a raw meat diet and plain common sense since 1993. "Carnivore Digestion and Inflammatory Bowel Disease" is excerpted from her book, Raising Cats Naturally: How to Care for Your Cat the Way Nature Intended and is posted here with Ms Bernard's kind permission.