Foreword

Foreword

"Let food be thy medicine" Hippocrates (460 - 377 BC)

It is a long time since cats moved from being the irregular and unwelcome frequenters of farms and alleyways to pampered companions kept for their beauty, gentleness and mystery. With every day that passes their place in western homes becomes more and more assured. Indeed, the cat population now even outstrips the dog population.

Their relationship to humans has developed remarkably and their behavior has adapted to these contacts: this wild animal has become so well adapted to life indoors that its life expectancy has increased significantly, from an average of four years for outdoor cats to 18 years for those that live indoors. This comfortable life does have a downside: obesity for one is a major and growing threat. Nowadays, cat owners are very concerned about the health of their animal. Vaccination, neutering and tattooing or microchipping are all ways to try to extend its life and as such they have become a very important part of the daily routine of veterinarians.

Cats have been the subject of numerous veterinarian studies and in the field of feline nutrition, for one, great – even crucial – advances have been made over the past fifteen years. The range of dedicated food available today makes it easier to control or prevent many diseases (urolithiasis, food allergies, chronic kidney disease to name but a few). For many years Royal Canin has made it a matter of honor to find effective, targeted solutions to the specific problems affecting cats. This species is actually more of a challenge to care for than dogs. They are more demanding and fully capable of starving themselves to death even when they have access to plenty of food, so they demand very precise responses to make up for an "enzymatic toolbox" that is not really suited to compensating for nutritional deficiencies.

The advancements in knowledge have had a recent but real impact on nutrition courses at veterinary colleges, schools and universities. It is important that clinicians are able to draw on the latest, most complete knowledge on the subject. That is the aim of this encyclopedia, conceived by the Royal Canin research teams, which sets a new standard in feline clinical nutrition.

Twenty-three global specialists have contributed to its 14 chapters, 10 of them are based on a collaboration between a clinician and a nutritionist. I am proud to be able to say that seven of those 23 authors are employees of Royal Canin, which is proof of the commitment of everyone at the company to working as hard as possible and using their know-how to benefit both dogs and cats.

I sincerely hope that this book, like its sister publication about dogs, will prove a useful tool for you and your team and facilitate the employment of nutrition in your daily practice.

Jean Christophe Flatin
Chairman & CEO