"Kitten M" wrote in message
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Please help my research for cat food. Before lots of people started
feeding their cat commercial cat food, (crunchy type or canned food)
what were they feeding their cat?
Is there such a thing like a traditional "home made" cat food?

If you were living with a cat/cats back in those days, what did you
usually end up feeding them?

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"Back in those days" (before commercial pet foods were manufactured) were
the 1860s! (Steve probably remembers those days). Before then, diets for
cats and dogs consisted of mostly table scraps and leftovers from the dinner
table, although some people prepared actual meals for their pets.

The first canned food was Ken-L-Ration, produced in the early 1900s by the
Chappel brothers in Rockford, Illinois. The "meal" was introduced in the
1930s by Paul Gaines. It was called a "meal" (Gaines-Meal) because it
consisted of several dried, ground ingredients that were mixed together and
sold in big (100 lbs) bags.

In the early days of pet food manufacturing, very little was known about
feline nutrition so the same food was marketed for both species - the cans
and bags were merely labeled differently.

Here's a little trivia: Pet foods weren't sold in grocery stores until 1957
because store owners and customers didn't like the idea of pet foods being
sold next to human foods, but the convenience and economy of buying pet
foods at the grocery store while shopping for the family's food quickly
won-out. Before 1957, pet foods had to be purchased at feed stores and farm
animal feed outlets.

The metal shortage of World War II gave a boost to the dry food market, but
dry food didn't really become popular until the extrusion process was
developed. Before then, canned food was more popular.

Phil.