Research overview: the obligate carnivore metabolism of cats

Cats are obligate carnivores with a metabolism evolved for a strictly meat-based diet, giving them distinctive nutritional requirements including high protein needs, dependence on preformed nutrients found in animal tissue, limited ability to synthesize certain compounds, and metabolic peculiarities such as continuous gluconeogenesis and reduced capacity to handle high-carbohydrate diets. This overview synthesizes the comparative-nutrition literature rather than one citation, describing the suite of adaptations that define feline metabolism, why these traits create essential dietary requirements for nutrients like taurine, arginine, arachidonic acid, and preformed vitamin A, and how understanding this physiology underpins proper cat-food formulation. It matters because nearly every aspect of feline nutritional medicine, from deficiency diseases to diabetes management, traces back to the cat's evolutionary commitment to a carnivorous diet.