All of the cats that live in the wild, large or small, eat a totally raw diet, and continue to be healthy with it. The same thing holds true for the wild canine species, like wolves, coyotes, foxes, and hyenas. Feeding our animals with a packaged cooked food is a very new innovation, relatively speaking. For thousands of years, animals ate a raw diet, although dogs have also eaten scraps of food given them by himans who ate cooked foods.
After food started to be manufactured in factories, rather than grown in gardens, or otherwise raised by each family to feed themselves; commercial food producers realized that they had a lot of waste scraps after processing commercial food for people, so they processed it into pet food. This is how dog and cat food also began to be produced commercially, and how it still is done. Ralston-Purina started as a cereal company, and now produces more dog food than breakfast cereals.
Just as people get healthier food if we raise it ourselves, so do our pets. Cats out foraging for mice and birds are healthier than one that eat a canned food diet. I think that to give our pets some of both is a good compromise. That way, they will not go hungry whether they catch a mouse or not.
