What would cats eat in the wild?

 When was the last time you saw cats in the wild? Have you had a chance to watch them eat? Wild stray colonies don't count, because cat food is largely dependent on humans.

Nevertheless, even if it is true that feral cats are rarely found in the wild, knowing about their diet will give us extremely important information, because this is what our pets are supposed to eat. 

So, what does a feral cat eat? A feral cat's diet consists of?

The most common diet of feral cats:

• small rodents such as mice, shrews, rats, and even rabbits or hares;
• small birds like sparrows or robins;
• insects and reptiles such as spiders, grasshoppers, lizards, and snakes.

The latter type of prey, although small in size, should still be considered an integral part of a wild cat's diet because, firstly, it provides the cat with nutrients like any other prey and, secondly, they are the easiest to catch and, sometimes, the cat consumes them in large quantities. Cats can also eat squirrels, bats, moles and other large animals, but this is not common. Nevertheless, the above list gives us a rough idea of what a feral cat eats.

In general, a cat's prey is any animal that is smaller than its size, and in some cases even larger. Studies, however, show that a cat's hunting success gradually decreases with increasing prey size. This can be explained for three reasons: firstly, large animals are harder to capture, secondly, larger animals are usually smarter and harder to fool, and thirdly, cats are more cautious when attacking large game. Also, not all cats eat everything; a cat's diet depends on various factors: Availability of prey. If the region is rich in rabbits, as in Australia and New Zealand, the cat's diet will consist mostly of rabbits. In Europe and North America, cats eat mice and rats. Also, cats attack squirrels more often in the United States because the gray North American squirrels are more attractive to cats than the red European squirrels. Seasonal changes. For example, it is much easier to catch baby rabbits in the spring, most birds are vulnerable and easier to catch in the winter, and rodents are hibernating in the winter.

A cat's abilities and personality. Some cats specialize in one type of prey. For example, birds. Catching birds requires high skill and to maintain it, the cat goes out hunting birds as often as possible. The social structure in which cats live. Cats live in a variety of social structures, such as free-standing cats or colonies where cats share food with each other. Sometimes this can have an effect on the choice of prey. For example, to chase rabbits, cats are grouped together and the more cats in the group, the better. Cat gender. Some studies show that cats attack larger prey, such as rabbits, more often than cats. This is because the cat has free time to raise kittens and does not have time to hunt often, so they choose large prey because it provides more food and does not have to go out to hunt often. Wild Cat Diet Teaches Us How Domestic Cats Should Eat If we talk about diet, it's not just what cats eat that matters, but how they eat. Cats usually eat their prey whole, including muscle tissue, internal organs, bones and feathers. So, if you feed your cat only raw meat, you will do more harm than a well-balanced dry food. Also, as you may have noticed, there are no plant foods such as fruits and vegetables in a feral cat's diet, only grains, which cats eat along with their rodent stomachs.