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When Rachit Shadra adopted a three-month old kitten named Obi-Wan, he didn’t expect him to transform his career path.

Obi-Wan had a persistent eye infection, and Rachit’s experience of navigating veterinary visits and generic “one-size-fits-all” pet food proved frustrating.

“When we saw [Obi], we fell in love with him. We said, we're going to take care of him. So at the beginning of his life, we had to do a lot of vet visits.”

He noticed that most veterinary guidance, research, and product innovation centered on dogs.

Time and again, Rachit was told: “we assume that if something works for humans and it works for dogs most of the time, it would also work for a cat.”

“That was when I started questioning the industry,” Rachit said. “I was like, “it's a different species! I'm pretty sure they have completely different needs compared to dogs or humans,” he told Feline Business Brief.

That experience became the inspiration for The Better Cat, a Berlin-based company dedicated to feline-first nutrition and wellness.

Rachit, whose worked in technology companies Heyjobs and Wunder Mobility, started discussing the idea with Niklas Köster, a friend of a friend who worked in investment banking (and is an avid cat dad).

Niklas had previously worked on pet deals and was already looking at the pet food market. And so The Better Cat was founded in late 2022.

Right away, Rachit and Niklas knew they had to take an innovative approach to feline nutrition.

“If you look at majority of [feline] products, they’re second hand recipes for dogs. That's why there's so much predominance of kibble in it. Cats are not as easy to please as dogs, and they have completely different needs.”

“We start with what’s natural for cats: high-meat diets, high hydration, and minimal processing,” said Rachit.

Meanwhile, the market landscape was shifting in Europe. In Germany and other countries, cats have overtaken dogs as the most common companion animal, propelled by urbanisation and younger owners who value sustainability, transparency and quality.

The Better Cat started with feline needs first and foremost. The company developed wet foods using fresh meat and organic ingredients, designed to support kidney and digestive health.

The Better Cat also produces hydration boosters and functional treats for mobility, digestion, and immunity: categories well-developed in dog care but still emerging for cats.

Palatability is paramount, Rachit said.

“It’s important to us that cats actually enjoy the food,” he said. “We spend a lot of time on palatability, because you can make the healthiest product in the world. If the cat won’t eat it, it doesn’t matter.”

The Better Cat works with veterinarians and nutritionists and recruits “taste testers” from a cat shelter in Hamburg.

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Backed by VC investor FoodLabs, The Better Cat is also in the process of raising a seed round.

The company is also developing new products, including a fish-based line, a product for cats with allergies, and a liquid supplement-snack hybrid. Being a purely feline-focused brand enables them to devote more resources to innovative products, Rachit said.

“We have a new product called the appetite booster, which is a freeze dried topper that you can sprinkle on wet food. That’s an example of a product that only a cat dedicated company would think of,” he said.

“For a company which is making 50%, 60% of its revenue through dogs, this problem would be so small that it most likely would not be able to dedicate the resources to develop something like this.”

Beyond food, the company is focused on lifestyle, community and education. A lot of work still needs to be done around cat stereotypes, Rachit said.

“After I became a cat parent, I found that cats were such misunderstood pets. They can give so much love to a person … and a lot of fun. It's one of the things we're very passionate about: how do we break these stereotypes?”

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Germany isn’t just Europe’s largest pet market, it’s one of the most dynamic arenas for feline-first innovation. Here’s what makes it such fertile ground for brands like The Better Cat:

Since cats are already deeply embedded in German households, a feline-first brand can scale effectively in Germany and Europe.

This summer, major dog brand BARK announced that it was now co-owned by dogs. While The Better Cat hasn’t gone to quite the same lengths, it does have an adorable feline C-suite: