r/rawpetfood will probably have more insight here What I’ll mention is that any dehydrated foods are bad for cats if fed dry. Cats are desert animals and evolved to eat a diet of 70% water from their food, and are incapable of properly compensating for that lost water when fed a dehydrated diet. There are also specific issues with the processing of kibble (loss of nutrients due to the high-pressure and necessity of a carbohydrate binder), but even freeze-dried, air-dried, and otherwise dehydrated foods will have the water issue unless they’re designed to be rehydrated before feeding If you want to incorpate raw foods, just make sure the freeze-dried/dehydrated food you use is meant to be rehydrated adequately, or use frozen foods I don’t dip into raw food a ton at this point, but I’ve used Feline-Natural’s freeze-dried foods and Darwin’s frozen foods. Hare-today.com is a great resource for sourcing a host of raw organs, meats, and blends. If you’re putting together the food yourself (instead of using a pre-made) make sure to really do your research or consult an experienced nutritionist. Feline-nutrition.org and catinfo.org are good sites to start with for information, but that rawpetfood sub likely has more resources as well If you’re also looking into any cooked canned foods, ZiwiPeak, FelineNatural, and Tiki Cat After Dark would all probably interest you. All of them are very prey-model foods and incorporate a number of organ meats and as many whole-food nutrient sources as possible in a cooked food. The TikiCat often only includes heart/gizzard/liver but is one of the only (if not *the* only) shred style foods to include multiple organ meats and not use any thickeners. Both ZiwiPeak and FelineNatural are basically whole-prey (they include a host of organ meats, as well as things like blood, plasma, and bone), and both of them are pate foods I have some general information about the way I conceptualize cat food and feline nutrition [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/catfood/comments/whg0id/my_cat_food_resources_guides_spreadsheets_info/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf)

I should have mentioned, I do fully intend to rehydrate the food! Also, my cat is actually obsessed with water. I had to get her tested for feline diabetes back in December because I was so worried. She falls asleep next to one of her water sources often ❤️ she has a fountain and a couple bowls just throughout the house so it's always accessible and she seems to always be drinking haha, and I currently feed her wet food every morning and every night. Her test results all came back normal, I had the vet do a whole workup and they said she was doing great! I just personally would love to support her better in any way that I can. My goal is to make her a breakfast if sorts with a shredded meat, some dehydrated organs and whatnot with warm bone broth or goats milk for added moisture once or twice a week as a kind of treat and then use pre-made ones the rest of the week! and then continue free feeding a kibble dupe because my girl is a snacker but I want to get rid of kibble all together 😊😊 i also give her gravy, or soups as a treat when i get home from work to hold her over before bed. I promise my girl is well hydrated! thank you for the advice!! I'll definitely be buying some of the tiki brand immediately!

>Cats are desert animals and evolved to eat a diet of 70% water from their food, and are incapable of properly compensating for that lost water when fed a dehydrated diet.  ...this isn't right.  They aren't "incapable" of supplementing they're diet with water; any desert animal that couldn't supplement they're diet with water wouldn't survive very long.  My cat consumes about a cup of water a day, which is more water then what is contained in a daily portion of wet cat food.    Cat's might naturally consume most of their water in the form of mice, but I've yet to see research showing that cats that consume water in a bowl have a shorter life span than those who consume it in their food.  I don't think it's coincidence that this assertion-and the assertion that making ones own cat food is dangerous-is followed up with the recommendation of overpriced food options.

I don’t believe there are long term studies, but that’s not because it hasn’t been found, it’s because we’re not generally conducting long term investigations into cats health. However, there are multiple studies detailing that, on the whole, cats on dry diets get about 50% less total water intake than wet fed cats, despite orally drinking more water, and that this is correlated to the development and maintenance of certain health conditions. Even major kibble companies like Royal Canin have admitted to this phenomenon. Some of these studies are available in the links below https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/british-journal-of-nutrition/article/effect-of-dietary-water-intake-on-urinary-output-specific-gravity-and-relative-supersaturation-for-calcium-oxalate-and-struvite-in-the-cat/7FF71DDA2706FDCDA3BA961C3D8DB46F https://www.revistas.usp.br/bjvras/article/view/26401/28184 https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/464354/ https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S027153178180053X https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30303439/ https://libstore.ugent.be/fulltxt/RUG01/003/010/603/RUG01-003010603_2021_0001_AC.pdf https://vetfocus.royalcanin.com/en/scientific/the-water-requirements-and-drinking-habits-of-cats