feed

Why switch from kibble to raw meat? Most people dislike the idea of handing raw meat and watching their pet chew on bones.  For this reason, there are very few resources detailing how to implement a raw diet for your pet.  Most Americans are not realistic about where their meat comes from and would be appalled if they saw a meat packing plant.  You owe it to yourself and your pet to realize where your meat comes from and to recognize that the natural diet of your pet is not a bowl of dried kibble.

Most kibble is made from the diseased animals that die before reaching the slaughterhouse.  It is not uncommon for dead cats and dogs shipped from humane societies to make their way into your kibble mix, flea collars and all.  This awful mix of meat gets ground up with fillers like corn husks and bi-products from farms that cannot be used for any other purpose.  It is neatly packaged and sold to you, the pet owner, who is naively unaware of what you are buying.  Because cat and dog food is not sold for human consumption, the manufacturer is not required to disclose the actual ingredients.

When going natural, it is best to consider what your cat would eat if she were a wild cat.
Many “organic” dog and cat foods, whether raw or not, claim that dogs and cats need supplements of vitamins, minerals, etc. The only thing your dog or cat really needs is what it would get from naturally killing and eating prey (bones, organs and all).
There are two “types” of raw meat methods that pet owners use.  One is called the BARF diet, short for “Biologically Appropriate Raw Food.”  With this method, you grind up raw meat with small bones, grains and veggies.  You cannot cook the bones because during the heating process the bones microscopically fracture which can cause intestinal bleeding if your pet eats cooked bone.  Once you grind your raw pet food, you then portion it out into patties and freeze the patties, taking them out to thaw in rotation from your freezer to your fridge for each meal.  The disadvantages to this are:

• You need to invest in an industrial strength grinder that can handle bones ($250+)
• You spend more time making your pet’s food
• Your pet is still eating ground up mushy food.
• Traditional BARF diets include grains and veggies, which dogs and cats don’t naturally choose to eat themselves in the wild.

I considered the BARF diet, but this did not seem natural. In the wild, cats would not be eating veggies or grains nor would their food be served to them in a neatly ground up mush patty. Feeding my cats a Raw Diet was easier than I thought. The purely raw diet consumes less of your time to implement and allows your pet to chew on bones and eat raw liver and heart, much more natural than a bowl of mushy food.

I feed my cats mainly chicken, but 2-3 times a week I feed fish, eggs, or a live rodent. Variety is key because cats (not sure about dogs) can get hooked on one type of food if you feed it to them too often. Cats eat small bones like the breast, neck and rib bones from chickens. This is how the get their calcium. Eating the organs like liver and heart provide Taurine and Iron. I can buy a 4 pound whole chicken from the grocer for $4 and it lasts a whole week with 2 cats.

Feeding your cat the right amount of food is also important.
Each animal is different, but most cats need to eat 2-4% of their body weight in meat each day to maintain their current weight.  Before you start feeding raw, weight your pet and record their weight every 5 days or so.  If they need to lose some weight, adjust their daily intake slightly until an ideal weight is reached.  One of my cats, Edison is still a young adult, just under a year old.  He started at 10 lbs, but is still a growing boy.  4% of his body weight is 4 ounces/day.  Because he is growing, I usually provide him with a half to one ounce more than the 4 ounces and let him decide if he needs to eat more or not.  My other cat Autumn started at 11 pounds and could afford to lose a half pound, maybe a pound.  I give her 3 – 3 1/2 ounces per day.  She has only lost 1/4 lb over a three week period, which is a good pace for her to drop the weight.   They eat about 3-4 oz/ day to maintain their weight. (Tip: to weight your kitty, stand on a bathroom scale, weigh yourself.  Then weight yourself holding your kitty and subtract to find her weight)

Raw is cheaper than a medium quality kibble brand.
Before I switched to raw I was going through 2 bags of Blue Diamond kibble per month and each bag cost $18.  At $4 for one whole chicken, I spend less per month on fresh, raw chicken than I spent buying just one bag of catfood.

Some things to noticed when switching to the raw diet.
My cats are more relaxed during the day. They are more friendly towards me and towards each other. Their coats are less oily and are much softer than before. They don’t pace around the house aimlessly. They are more engaged during playtime. They also drink less water. Because their raw meat has water weight and is not packed with fillers or grain, their digestive systems work more naturally. They go through about 1/4 of the water they used to drink daily. Their poo has also changed. Where it used to be smelly, gummy and dark brown, now it resembles poo you would see from a wild animal: light brown, very crumbly. They also poo less because they are not eating “filler” kibble, so that means less litter box cleaning for me and no awful smells when they do use the kitty box.

Helping your cat make the switch
Some cats are addicted to kibble.  Others will take right to eating raw.  There is no magic plan to making the switch, just go at your cat’s pace.  Pushing her isn’t going to help her and starving her into submission can actually harm her.  If a cat goes more than 24 hours without eating there is a danger that she will develop a fatal liver disease called hepatic lipidosis. Hepatic lipidosis occurs when a cat’s fatty deposits are metabolized in the liver for energy.  A cat’s liver is not built for long term fat metabolism.  What can happen is the liver becomes overwhelmed and covered in fatty deposits, which causes organ failure.  Don’t make your kitty go cold turkey.

There are some general steps you can follow.
Some cats don’t need to take all these baby steps and will jump from kibble to raw meat and bones, while others may need more time on each stage.  Simply offer your cat the next “stage”.  If he loves what you gave him, try the next stage.  If he sticks up his nose and won’t eat what you offer, step back one stage.

• To get your cat off the kibble, you can start wetting it with water.  Softening the kibble helps kitty get used to non dry food.
• Try giving your cat canned cat food.  If she refuses, crush up some kibble and sprinkle it on the canned food.
• Move to canned herring or sardines.  These have tiny bones and skin still on the fish.
• Cutting raw chicken or turkey into bit size pieces will help your cat get used to the texture and smell of raw bird.
• Next, try giving her larger pieces of chicken.  She will have to learn to break up the meat with her molars in order to swallow.
• Add in some small bones with her raw meat meals.  Leave tasty morsels on the chicken ribs and neck bones.  You will get to watch the true carnivore come out!
• The final step would be to let your cat try to kill her own mouse or fish.

Basic Raw Feeding Tips:

• Frequency: I have found that feeding my cats 2oz in the morning (like 8am) and then 2oz at night (9pm) is best for them. I could get away with feeding them once a day, but this is the equivalent to them catching a mouse in the morning and a mouse at night and eating each prey item entirely.
• Never cook bones.  Cooking bones creates microscopic fractures in the bone that can cut your kitty’s soft intestine causing internal bleeding.
• ALWAYS SERVE RAW MEAT AT ROOM TEMPERATURE. This goes back to thinking about how a cat naturally catches and eats prey items.  They would never eat a cold piece of raw from the fridge.  If cold raw meat hits your kitty’s tummy, she is liable to throw it up.  An easy way to thaw out food is to set it in a dish submerged in warm water for 10-15 mins.
• Giving your cat a balance of 47% meat and 33% fat, 15% bones and 5% organs is an approximate ratio of what they would ingest by eating a whole prey item.  Your kitty isn’t going to eat the large thigh bones of a chicken, but she will crunch up and eat the little neck and breast bones, wing bones and connective tissues.  If you buy a whole chicken, you can use everything.
• Invest in an accurate scale.  Weigh out the portions you give your cat each time.
• Record!  Get a logbook just to keep track of what you give your cat, what she actually eats and what she weighs every 5 days or so.  You can also record foods that she refuses to touch in case you want to reintroduce them later.
• I usually take one day a month to prep all my cat’s food for the entire 30 day period.  I buy 4 whole birds from the supermarket, butcher them and bag them in weekly portions that I can thaw out for the week at a time.  I even save money on birds sometimes by offering to take and butcher birds from friends of mine who keep chickens for egg laying.  Sometimes a hen will get a taste for eating eggs.  She’ll start stepping on fresh eggs to eat them.  Once she does this, there is no cure and she must be removed before she teaches the rest of the hens how to be egg eaters.  I make myself known as someone who will take these hens away for my cats.  People generally don’t like eating hens that are egg layers because with age the chicken’s meat toughens up.  Most birds humans eat are killed at 9-12 months of age.

Raw Diet meal plan I feed my cats:

• Eggs (or just the yolk) 2-3 times/ week
• Fish 2-3 times/week
  • Tuna and Sardines have needed Lineolic acid (so does safflower oil, sunflower oil or corn oil)
• Cod (has Arachinodic and Vitamin A)
• Bird with bones for all other meals
• Whole mouse/rodent (usually live)

Cat nutrition:

• Though cat food usually only consists of 26 percent protein and 9 percent fat, cats get about 47 percent protein and 33 percent fat in the wild, so their bodies are set up for the increase.

• Nutrients that may need to be supplemented: vitamins A, B-complex, D, E and calcium, which can be aquired naturally. Vitamin A can be found in cod liver oil, and calcium is present in bones, which your cat (or dog) will ingest.

• Cats also require linoleic acid, arachindonic acid and taurine, all of which may need to be supplemented in a homemade raw diet. Lineolic acid can be found in safflower, sunflower or corn oil as well as some fish such as sardines and tuna, and arachindonic oil can be found in cod liver oil. Taurine is found in organ meat, such as heart meat as well as tuna, mackerel and clams.

The transition to raw diet is simple, cheap and healthy. Cats usually make the switch easily as long as the right protein sources are chosen. My cats turn their nose up at shrimp and clams but love to eat lamb, tuna, herring and tilapia. I keep an aquaponics system to grow herbs for myself and fish for my cats. It is sustainable and very green   Enjoy watching your kitty find her inner carnivore.

Check out this website for more instructions on raw feeding cats.
http://www.rawfedcats.org/practicalguide.htm