Since time immemorial, humans and cats have lived alongside each other. Initially kept for hunting disease-spreading and food-eating vermin like rats and mice, cats have exploded in popularity to become the second most popular pet, after dogs. Despite the centuries passing, many cats still like to snack on a mouse or two, and many people still keep them to help control rodent numbers. If mice are so popular with cats, why don’t they make mouse-based cat food? 

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History of Cat Food

Cats are adept hunters, so for thousands of years, cats living with humans survived on what they could hunt, scavenge or steal. Rarely did they receive proper meals from people. Remember that, historically, the concept of a pet was quite unknown to most people, and animals were kept primarily for their usefulness.

Aside from the wealthy, it probably wasn’t until the 19th century that cats and dogs started to be kept primarily for pleasure by the general populace. This also coincided with changing views on animal welfare, meaning people were more willing to ensure cats got regular meals. In Victorian London, there were thousands of cat food sellers who sold horse meat to people wanting to feed their cats (or a lucky stray!). The recommendations for what to feed cats at the time were a little unusual however (oatmeal and milk, white bread in milk, boiled lung, butter and horse meat were all recommended!).

The first commercial cat food was developed in 1860, made from buffalo, and canned food was invented in the 1930s. However, as a consequence of meat shortages and war rationing, dry food was developed later on, culminating with the extrusion process to produce the kibble we know today.

In the 21st century, pet food is a huge global industry, and there are thousands of brands, varieties and flavours of cat food to suit all kinds of cats and owners. The choices can sometimes get overwhelming! Yet for all this variety, why doesn’t anyone make a mouse-based cat food?

How Do They Make Cat Food?

Understanding why mouse-based cat food isn’t really a thing needs some understanding of how cat food is made. 

Wet food is simple. The main ingredients are chopped into chunks or processed into pate, cooked and then added to pouches or cans. At various stages, nutrients and minerals are added to ensure the diet is ‘complete’ (it has all the necessary nutrients to keep the average cat healthy). The main ingredients are usually water and the main meat protein (chicken, salmon, beef, etc.), but other common ingredients include salt, offal, vegetables, wheat or other grains, and other animal protein sources. Most cat food manufacturers list their ingredients online. 

Dry food (biscuits or kibble) requires a little more processing than wet, though the ingredients are often similar. First, the proteins are cooked and then added to an extruder machine, along with the other ingredients. This machine pushes food through a narrow tube at high temperature and high pressure, mixing and cooking as it goes. The mixture is pushed through an opening with a specific shape. As the mixture exits, it is cut and then dries and hardens into the specific shape. This is the same process that produces dried pasta shapes. The main advantage of kibble is because the product is dry it is preserved for a long-time when stored correctly. However, because it lacks moisture, cats do have to drink more. 

At all stages of the process, there are quality controls to ensure the resulting product is safe for cats. In many countries, including the UK, this ensures that the food is also safe for human consumption, should any be accidentally ingested. Special foods, such as reduced fat, renal, or hypoallergenic diets, may have additional ingredients or processing done too.

Why Don’t They Make Mouse-Flavoured Food Then?

This is a difficult question to answer as no one has really sat down to explain precisely why. There aren’t any sources online; but we can put forward a number of suggestions why mouse protein cat food isn’t made. Do bear in mind most of this is UK-centric, and other parts of the world where rodent-meat is consumed more readily may have options for cats too. 

The first reason may be the lack of demand 

Although many people are aware cats like mice, we don’t think there are huge numbers of people calling for mouse-based cat food. Humans tend to anthropomorphise their animals. And many people want their cats to eat food they would eat, like beef or chicken. A mouse-based product may just not be that appealing, and thus pet food companies don’t want to spend millions developing one. We also don’t know if cats would even prefer the taste. They probably don’t hunt mice specifically for the taste, but just instincts, hunger, and the pleasure of the hunt. 

Secondly is the difficulty of actually getting the mice

Meat for cat food doesn’t just appear at the factory. The animals must be raised just like for human consumption (and often, what goes into cat food is what’s left-over from human food: it all has to be fit for human consumption, but there are lots of bits people in the UK don’t like to eat!). Raising animals requires time and effort from farmers. Mice farming is not a thing in the UK and although rodents are bred for laboratories and reptile-feeding, scaling this up for millions of cats just isn’t practical. It is dubious whether it would even be legal to sell rodent meat as fit for human consumption in the UK. 

Even if mice were readily available for pet food factories, the logistics of this may still not be simple

First, these mice need to be humanely killed. It is unclear how this would occur. For example, pigs are stunned with carbon dioxide gas, then killed via slicing their jugular vessels. Gas typically kills most animals if given for long enough, but legislation requires bleeding to prevent any animal waking up. This is not practical for thousands of mice. Automatic machines, like those used for chickens, may work, but these would have to be invented and then developed. 

Consider also the actual nutritional value of mice

Pet food is carefully processed to ensure it has everything a cat needs. It would likely be impractical to strip the meat from thousands of tiny mice, so their whole carcasses would have to be ground up. This may result in high levels of some nutrients and deficiencies in others. Again, this may be mitigated with additives, but it is another stumbling block. 

So, in summary, although mouse-based cat food is not impossible to create, the logistics, costs, lack of desire, and questionable legality would make it impossible for most manufacturers, particularly when other animal-based cat food is so popular.

To note, there actually are mouse-flavoured foods out there for cats but they do not contain any mice. It’s unclear what the taste actually is, but they probably don’t taste much different from other cat foods, especially given their primary proteins are chicken, beef and other common foods. There is also nothing stopping you allowing your cat to hunt mice, or even feed them mice grown for snakes. We would advise against this however, as “farmed” mice alone are not necessarily a complete diet for cats! 

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