INSIDE KATKIN'S FRESH NEW STUDY

Ever felt like you needed an advanced degree just to pick out cat food? We get it. The pet food aisle is a jungle of claims. And more promises than you can count. With so many options, it’s hard to know what’s true and what’s a bunch of fluff. 

We’re on a mission to cut the fluff. And learn firsthand how diet impacts cat health, behaviour, and quality of life. That’s why we’re launching our first-ever diet transition study, led by our very own team of in-house scientists. And here’s how:

Before jumping into the finer details, we conducted an in-depth literature review on cat diet studies. Spoiler alert: there aren’t many. Only a handful have been conducted in pet cats, very few have studied the effects of a fresh diet, and most are focused on specific health conditions or body weight. 

That’s where we come in. By studying generally healthy pet cats transitioning to a fresh diet, we’re stepping up to fill the gaps and shed light on how what’s in their bowl affects everything from their energy levels to their coat. This study will be instrumental in helping bridge the gaps pertaining to the effects of diet on feline wellbeing. 

We didn’t pick just any study design. We chose a randomised controlled trial (RCT). Why? Because RCTs can provide the strongest evidence for a cause-and-effect relationship between what your cat eats and the health outcomes we’re tracking. By randomly allocating participants to either a treatment or control group, an RCT is able to control for confounding variables — or differences between groups like breed, living conditions, socialisation, age, and sex, that could mess with the study outcomes. This design ensures that the only difference between the two groups is the diet they’re on.

In our case, we’re enrolling a bunch of pet cats (286 to be exact) and randomising them to either our Cluck recipe (our “Treatment group”) or a chicken-based dry+wet combination diet (our “Control group”). We chose the dry+wet combo as our control diet because it’s the most common feeding practice reported by cat parents. This way, we can compare how the health impacts of feeding KatKin stack up against the mainstream feeding practice over time. 

We’re not messing around. Cats enrolled in our diet transition study will be asked to stick to their assigned diet for a full 12 weeks. But we didn’t just pull that timeline out of thin air, this was a science-backed decision (of course.)

During the study, we’ll be tracking a whole range of health outcomes relating to body condition, skin and coat health, energy levels, quality of life, behaviour, and digestive health. And while some changes, like shifts in digestive health, may show up quickly. Others, like changes in quality of life, may take some time. So we’re following the science and giving it a solid 12 weeks to make sure we have enough time to see meaningful differences across all the health outcomes we’re monitoring.

We’ve crafted an online health survey that participating cat parents will receive eight times during the study. And while we love hearing from cat parents and know just how valuable their insights are, we also know that science demands rigour, and recognise that owner-reported data can often be met with scepticism in the scientific community. 

To strengthen the credibility of our surveys, we’ve included a variety of validated questionnaires and assessment tools designed specifically for use by pet owners. We also adapted a few validated scales originally designed for clinicians. These tools have been rigorously tested to ensure that they measure exactly what they’re intended to, making them reliable research instruments. In our survey we’re including tools designed to capture feline behaviour, quality of life, human bondedness, coat and skin condition, gastrointestinal health, body condition, stool form, and dental grade.

Since there’s a strong connection between dietary moisture content and voluntary physical activity levels in cats, we’re also equipping our furry participants with activity monitors designed specifically to track every step, leap, snooze, and playful pounce. These monitors will give us precise, quantitative data on how their diet fuels their daily adventures. 

To ensure our study results are meaningful, it’s crucial to have strict inclusion criteria. We need to target the right population to truly see how diet impacts cat health, without any other factors muddying the results. For this study, we’re looking for generally healthy adult cats who aren’t too picky about their food, live mostly indoors, don’t share their home with other cats or dogs, and currently eat a traditional dry+wet diet. We chose this set of criteria to make sure our trial is as representative of a typical housecat as possible, while excluding any factors that could interfere with or lessen the impact of diet change. This way we're confident that any differences we observe will be due to the diet alone.

At KatKin, we’re big believers in the nutrition and power of fresh diets. And while it’d be great to say we’re totally unbiased, the truth is — we're not. That’s why we’re only recruiting cats who have never tried KatKin before. We want to avoid expectation bias, meaning we don’t want cat parents to start the study thinking a fresh diet will automatically lead to better health or that a traditional dry+wet diet will fall short.  We want the science to speak for itself. 

Still curious about this study? Or maybe you even want your cat to participate? You can check out the details here. 

We can’t wait to see what this study uncovers. Whether we confirm the benefits our customers rave about or discover something new, we’re proud to be advancing feline nutrition science. After all, at KatKin, it’s all about the health and happiness of our beloved cats.