I’m a real fan of feeding cats rich, red meats. If we want to mimic what cats would eat in the wild, we should look at how their prey lives and what its flesh is like—rather than simply the size and shape of the animal.

For the past 20 years, I’ve fed my own cats predominantly on wild venison and lean, pasture-raised, grass-fed beef and mutton.

Many caregivers like the idea of feeding chicken or rabbit, because cats would naturally hunt birds and small mammals. (By the way, rabbits aren’t rodents!) But there’s a flaw in this thinking. Meat chickens and meat rabbits are typically raised for just 5–8 weeks, kept indoors with no room to move, and without access to natural light or fresh air. They’re fed a commercial pellet diet made from cereals and soy—often genetically modified and grown on monoculture farms that replaced forests. The resulting meat is pale, immature, poorly exercised, and nutritionally lacking. Add to that the residue of antibiotics routinely used just to keep them alive until slaughter.

By contrast, any wild prey caught by a free-living cat would be just that—wild. It would be well-exercised, forage- or grass-fed, and would have lived its life in fresh air and natural light. All of this has a marked effect on meat quality, nutritional content, and even appearance. The meat of wild mice and birds, for example, is dark red.

The closest we can get to replicating the meat quality of a cat’s natural prey is to choose meat from wild animals, or from animals raised outdoors on pasture. Meats like wild venison, elk, moose, bison, grass-fed beef, mutton, or goat all fit that description beautifully. It really doesn’t matter that a small wildcat would never catch a moose or a cow. What matters is the nutritional profile and quality of the meat.

Another important factor to consider is the ethical impact. From experience, I have no doubt about the superior quality of lean red meats for feeding cats. Incidentally, feeding red meats is probably more humane, too. For example, a single steer raised on pasture for up to two years—grazing, fertilising the land, and living in social bonds as part of a herd—may weigh up to 1,500 pounds (680 kg). Once butchered, that steer yields around 375 pounds (170 kg) of boneless meat—enough to prepare 1,888 daily portions of cat food, or to feed one cat for five years.

By comparison, a fryer chicken or rabbit with bone typically weighs 3–4 pounds (1.4–1.8 kg). Ground with bone, each one can feed a cat for just 13–18 days. Without bone, it’s more like 7–10 days. Over the course of a year, one cat would need to consume 20–28 chickens or rabbits with bone—or the meat from 36–52 of them without. Over five years, that adds up to as many as 260 animals.

To many, this may not seem significant—until they learn more about the cruel and inhumane conditions under which most commercial chickens and rabbits are raised: kept entirely indoors with little to no space, or confined to cages, and often slaughtered using methods that cause distress and suffering. Commercially farmed rabbits in particular endure tremendous hardship. Both meat chickens and meat rabbits are only 5–8 weeks old—still babies—when their lives come to an abrupt end, often without ever seeing sunlight.

There’s nothing natural about this system, and it’s certainly not better for your cat than feeding the rich, nutritious meat of a wild or ethically pasture-raised ungulate.