By breed · what to do
What to feed your breed
Most breeds eat the same balanced bowl. A few have one thing to get right — and for most of those, a DNA test from a registered breeder settles it before the bowl is ever an issue. Pick your species, find your breed, do what it says.
Find your breed
Kidneys (PKD1) · heart · thyroid
Persian
Ask the breeder: Ask the cattery for the PKD1 DNA result. A registered, tested line has it on paper; a cheek swab at any vet lab gives it in a fortnight if not.
What to do
- PKD1-clear: feed the standard cat bowl with standard phosphorus and the standard CatCore sachet. No low-phosphorus diet — there is nothing to restrict.
- PKD1-positive or untested: same bowl for now, plus a kidney panel every year. Phosphorus restriction starts only when your vet stages kidney disease, and it is a prescription diet — the standard sachet is not it.
- Want to trim food phosphorus anyway? Two swaps inside the checker: chicken → tilapia, and part of the whole egg → egg white. That trims phosphorus from the food by roughly a fifth; it does not make a renal diet.
- Annual heart check (auscultation) and a T4 thyroid test — standard ownership for the breed.
Why
A PKD1 variant grows kidney cysts; the diet answer to failing kidneys is less phosphorus, but only once the kidneys are actually failing — restricting it in a healthy cat starves bone and muscle for nothing. Persians also run a higher hypertrophic-cardiomyopathy and hyperthyroid rate, which is why the sachet carries taurine that survives cooking and iodine that does not swing batch to batch.
Where the vet takes over: Any raised creatinine or SDMA, any heart murmur, any weight loss with a big appetite — that is the vet's diet from then on.
Heart (HCM) · size
Maine Coon
Ask the breeder: Ask for the MYBPC3 DNA result. Clear means the same heart risk as any cat.
What to do
- Cleared: standard cat bowl, standard sachet, dosed to the cat's real weight — a big Maine Coon is 8–10 kg and eats like it. Use the builder, not a guess.
- Positive: standard bowl; an echocardiogram on your cardiologist's schedule. Taurine in the sachet is a risk you remove, not a treatment.
Why
The breed carries a known heart-muscle mutation. Diet does not cause or cure it; what diet can do is never let taurine run short, and cooking destroys the taurine in meat.
Where the vet takes over: A murmur, fast breathing at rest, or a positive test with any symptom — cardiology.
Heart (HCM)
Ragdoll
Ask the breeder: Ask for the MYBPC3 (Ragdoll variant) DNA result.
What to do
- Cleared: standard cat bowl and sachet. Ragdolls sit at 5–8 kg — dose to the actual weight.
- Positive: standard bowl; heart imaging on the cardiologist's schedule.
Why
Same story as the Maine Coon, its own mutation. Taurine from the sachet is the one dietary lever, and it is already in.
Where the vet takes over: Murmur or breathing changes — cardiology.
Indie, Siamese, British Shorthair, Bengal and the rest
Every other cat
What to do
- Standard cat bowl: mutton, egg, chicken, tilapia — no rice, no dal, no curd. One CatCore sachet per 30 g of food, or simply the count on your plan.
- Three meals a day; weigh monthly; keep the activity slider honest for an indoor cat.
Why
No breed lever applies. What every home-cooked cat bowl is short of is the same list — taurine, thiamine, iodine, calcium, vitamin D, EPA and DHA — and the sachet carries all of it.
Where the vet takes over: Vomiting, weight loss, drinking more than usual — vet first, diet second.
The one rule
A tested, cleared animal eats the standard bowl. An affected one has a vet's diet.
PKD1, MYBPC3, COMMD1, ATP7B, SOD1, PFK — every one of these is a cheek swab, and a registered breeder has the result. Ask for it. The Dalmatian is the one breed where the diet itself is the answer, and the page above gives you the bowl.
Build the bowl for the animal you have
Species, weight, activity and life stage go into the builder; it returns the grams and the sachet count.