Pets
“Raw fed cats poops smell WAY less than regular poops, and they don't need to poop as much either as there is very little waste in the food, their bodies can use it all.”
Plain restatementCats fed a raw meat diet produce less odorous faeces and defecate less often than cats fed conventional food, because raw food is almost completely digested and leaves very little residue.
General information only - not veterinary advice.
The part about less poop is real. In controlled cat feeding trials, cats on raw meat diets produced less stool and went to the tray less often than cats on dry kibble, and the raw diets were digested more completely. The part about smell is not proven. No study measured whether raw-fed cat faeces actually smell less to people, and the support for it comes from measuring a few odour-related chemicals, which is not the same thing. The explanation in the post is also overstated. Raw diets are digested at roughly 83 to 95 percent of dry matter, not completely, and in the same studies a cooked meat diet gave the same benefit while adding a small amount of plant fibre to the raw diet brought the stool volume back up. That means the effect comes from a highly digestible, low-fibre food rather than from the food being raw. The studies tested their own research diets, so none of this is evidence about any particular brand. This is general information only and not veterinary advice.
[drifted from the evidence:] Raw fed cats [drifted from the evidence:] poops smell WAY less [drifted from the evidence:] than regular poops, and [drifted from the evidence:] they don't need to poop as much either as there is very little [drifted from the evidence:] waste in the food, their bodies can use it all.
Cats [added by the neutral restatement:] fed a raw meat diet produce less [added by the neutral restatement:] odorous faeces and [added by the neutral restatement:] defecate less often than cats fed conventional food, because raw food is [added by the neutral restatement:] almost completely digested and leaves very little [added by the neutral restatement:] residue.
Red-tinted words in the claim drifted from the evidence. Green-tinted words are what a neutral restatement needs.
The trace / claim to source
- Cats fed raw meat diets in controlled trials defecated less often and produced less faeces than cats fed kibble. In the Butowski trial of twelve cats, the fibre-containing diets produced three times the defecation frequency of the raw diet at similar dry matter intake.
- Raw meat diets were more digestible than extruded diets in these cat trials, across dry matter, protein, fat and energy.
- Less faecal output follows from higher digestibility and lower indigestible residue, which is the mechanism the post gestures at.
- Compounds linked to faecal odour, including ammonia and branched-chain fatty acids, were measured at higher concentrations in cats fed extruded food than in cats fed raw or cooked beef in the Kerr trial.
- A peer-reviewed veterinary review accepts better digestibility and stool quality as among the more plausible raw-feeding claims, in contrast with most other health claims made for raw diets.
- "Their bodies can use it all" overstates what the measurements show. Reported dry matter digestibility for raw meat diets in cats is roughly 83 to 95 percent, so a meaningful fraction still passes through. Cats on raw diets in these studies still produced faeces every day.
- The effect is attributed to the food being raw. In the Kerr trial a cooked beef diet gave the same digestibility advantage over extruded food as the raw beef diet did, and in the Butowski trial adding just 2 percent inulin and cellulose to the raw diet moved faecal output and frequency back toward the kibble result. What the trials separate is high-digestibility, low-fibre food from higher-fibre processed food, not raw from cooked.
- "Smell WAY less" is stated with more certainty than the evidence carries. No sensory or odour-panel study of raw-fed cat faeces was found. The supporting data are concentrations of selected chemical compounds, which are an indirect proxy for perceived smell.
- "Regular poops" is not a defined comparison. The trials compared raw diets with specific extruded kibbles and canned diets, and digestibility varies widely between commercial products, so the size of any difference depends on which food is being replaced.
- The sentence is placed inside a promotional post for a specific named product. The trials cited above tested other diets, so they say nothing about the product shown.
- Lower stool output is presented as self-evidently good. The trials measured it as a physical outcome and did not test whether fewer, smaller stools improve a cat's health.
- Whether raw-fed cat faeces actually smell less to a human nose. Perceived odour comes from a mix of sulfur compounds, phenols, indoles, amines and volatile fatty acids, and no study measuring perceived odour in raw-fed cats was located.
- Whether higher dietary protein increases some odour compounds even as it reduces others. Studies in dogs report higher faecal indole, phenol and branched-chain fatty acids on high-protein diets, which runs in the opposite direction from the ammonia and branched-chain fatty acid findings in the Kerr cat trial. The cat-specific picture is incomplete.
- The size of the effect in ordinary households. The trial cats were small groups of healthy research animals on controlled intakes of single diets, not mixed-fed pets.
- Funding for the individual cat trials was not retrieved, so independence of the digestibility findings from manufacturer sponsorship could not be confirmed, though the findings come from more than one research group in different countries.
Controlled feeding trials in domestic cats support the stool-volume and stool-frequency part of the claim. In the Butowski 2019 crossover trial, twelve domestic shorthair cats were each fed three complete diets for 21-day blocks: a raw meat diet, the same raw diet plus 2 percent added inulin and cellulose, and a commercial kibble. Cats on the two fibre-containing diets, kibble and raw-plus-fibre, defecated three times more frequently and produced a larger volume of faeces than on the raw diet, at a similar dry matter intake averaging about 60 g per day. Apparent digestibility of dry matter, energy, protein and fat was lower on the kibble diet than on either raw treatment. Kerr 2012 found the same direction in domestic cats: faecal output was 36.1 g/day as-is (13.0 g/day dry matter) on an extruded diet versus 17.6 g/day as-is (6.7 g/day dry matter) on a raw beef-based diet. In the same trial, dry matter, organic matter, crude protein, fat and energy digestibility were higher in cats fed the raw beef diet and in cats fed a cooked beef diet than in cats fed the extruded diet, with raw and cooked performing alike. On odour, no sensory measurement of raw-fed cat faeces was located. The closest evidence is chemical: Kerr 2012 reported that faecal ammonia, isobutyrate, valerate, isovalerate and total branched-chain fatty acids, compounds associated with faecal odour, were higher in cats fed the extruded diet than in cats fed the raw or the cooked beef diet, while total short-chain fatty acids did not differ. A separate cat trial comparing minced or whole mice with an extruded food found lower faecal ammonia and lower concentrations of most biogenic amines on the mice diets, with p-cresol higher on the extruded food at borderline significance. On "their bodies can use it all": published apparent total tract dry matter digestibility figures for raw meat diets in cats fall roughly in the 83 to 95 percent range, with one study reporting 84.1 to 88.1 percent of dry matter and 96.6 to 97.3 percent of nitrogen. Digestibility is high but not complete, and cats fed raw diets in these trials still defecated and still produced measurable faecal output. The Davies 2019 veterinary review concluded that formal evidence does exist for an altered intestinal microbiome and for subjectively improved stool quality in raw-fed animals, while most other claimed benefits of raw feeding rest on anecdote and opinion rather than relevant data.
Complete reasoning
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Answers come only from the case file above; nothing is added.
Do cats on raw food really poop less?
Yes. In controlled trials, cats fed raw meat diets defecated less often and produced less faecal volume than cats fed kibble, even at similar intake levels.
Does raw food make cat poop smell less?
This is not proven. No study actually measured whether people perceive raw-fed cat faeces as smelling less. The evidence only shows that certain odour-related chemicals, like ammonia and some fatty acids, were lower in raw or cooked diets compared to kibble.
Is it true that cats' bodies use almost all of a raw diet, leaving no waste?
No, this overstates the evidence. Studies show raw diets are digested at about 83 to 95 percent, not completely, and cats on raw diets still produced measurable faeces every day.
Is the lower poop output actually caused by the food being raw?
Not specifically. A cooked beef diet gave the same digestibility benefit as the raw diet in one trial, and adding a small amount of fibre to the raw diet increased stool output back toward kibble levels. This suggests the key factor is high digestibility and low fibre, not rawness itself.
Does this evidence support claims about a specific raw cat food brand?
No. The studies tested their own research diets, not any particular commercial product, so the findings cannot be used to support claims about a specific brand.