Feeding cats a raw diet?

[Suze]

I have a desire to wean my cats to a raw diet, as that is, of course, the most natural for them, too! There is a website that gives lots of information on this subject, especially techniques for convincing really picky cats to eat it, but I lost it. Even Googling it I didn't find the site I remembered. Ah well, just another way to force me to take more responsibility for it myself. Anyone else here have a desire to go this route? Perhaps we can help each other. I have a very finicky cat who wont eat anything but one brand (Science Diet) of dry food and another one who will eat anything, so the trick is to trick my finicky one into eating the raw meat. What are your thoughts?

[Rebecca]

I too would like to have my cats go raw but, I am not sure how to do this. I know that dogs for the most part can get "away" with this type of diet I am just not sure about cats.
Plus if I feed my cats "raw" meat what do I feed them do I go to the local pet store and pick up a few mice or the grocery store and pick up a chicken or whatever?

[Suze]

Hooray! I found the website I was looking for, after hours and hours of searching. Through all this searching and reading I learned a lot and I am ready to go for it. There is no question it is better for my loved ones, as it has been for me, and I will begin the process tomorrow. The key seems to be to transition them very slowly, one site even said six months. Carol, maybe that was the problem with your little baby? At any rate, for anyone who is interested, here is the link to transitioning them and some tricks for finicky cats (like my Jasmine) but be sure to look over the whole website (all that is available, it is fairly new and still under construction) for there is a lot of good information and photos for clarification.

http://www.rawfedcats.org/practicleguide.htm

Also, on several of the forums I passed through, there seemed to be a lot of questions about feeding cats bones. What I gleaned from this, according to the veterinarians on board, when bones are cooked, they are splintery and can cause real damage to cats and dogs alike. However, raw bones are natural for them and they need them for calcium and the marrow they contain. They are not splintery uncooked and cats jaws and teeth are well equipped to tear them apart, and in fact, enjoy them and it is good exercise for their jaws. So raw bones OK, cooked bones, NOT. If anyone cares to join me on this raw cat food endeavor, keep in touch, I'm sure I'll need support that that, too!

One more interesting aside. When I was researching this, out of the hundreds of articles I read, every article was full of incredible research in support of feeding dogs and cats a raw diet, except for articles by Purina and one other pet food company. Gee, I wonder why!

[Suze]

Naked Food Cafe said:

I would love to feed my cat raw food but he has had Science Diet kibble so long I couldn't even get him to switch to wet food. If I ever get another cat I will start raw food from day one. Good luck!

My cat is 9 years old and has had Science Diet kibble since I brought her home as a very tiny kitten. She is very finicky, won't eat anything else, not tuna, not cheese and so on. This will definitely be an experience in patience, but they say it can be done......very sloooooooooowly!! I'll post my progress!

[rebeccaj]

my CoCo, like me, was just a natural raw foodist. all i did was crack an egg! but maybe that was because she was preggo. lol!

[.·:*¨¨* :·.Elka.·:*¨¨* :·.]

I have two cats. I've changed them to raw. It was easy for me, as I had already begun eating RAFs myself, so I just offered them a bit of almost everything I ate, until I figured out what they will eat.

Those websites are helpful in explaining things like what raw heals in cats, why raw is better for them, how meat should be cut and the why's, how to present it to the cats so they're more likely to eat, etc.

My cats have been 50% raw today. It's my fault it's not 80%. They prefer 80, but I didn't buy meat in a couple of days. Oh, yeah, cats like it fresher than dogs do.

[Debbie Maddox]

I have very picky cats. They will not eat any kind of "people" food be it raw or cooked. I have never had to worry about them getting on the counter and getting any food I might leave out. I try to share if I do eat something cooked and they turn their nose... I think mine would starve if I tried to transition them. But my boy has a very delicate tummy. Sometime throws up what he eats. So I am considering trying this for him. He is getting older (10 yrs) do you think he is too old to start?

[Laurie]

Hi Debbie,

Cats can live quite a long time, so I think it would be worth it to try raw and give him the best chance at good health as he ages. It generally helps with itching, fleas, and almost any problem! I think I posted this before, but an awesome site for rawfeeding cats is this one:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/rawcat/. They can tell you how hard or easy it would be for a cat that age and they'll be very helpful with transitioning tips.


Debbie Maddox said:

I have very picky cats. They will not eat any kind of "people" food be it raw or cooked. I have never had to worry about them getting on the counter and getting any food I might leave out. I try to share if I do eat something cooked and they turn their nose... I think mine would starve if I tried to transition them. But my boy has a very delicate tummy. Sometime throws up what he eats. So I am considering trying this for him. He is getting older (10 yrs) do you think he is too old to start?

[esther frances]

my cat spike loves lobster. he will steal it off your plate...watch out! and he loved only lobster until last year when he decided to also love prosciutto. at least that's raw! he has a very sensitive tummy (can't hold down, or in, beef or fish canned cat foods), doesn't seem to be attracted to sushi/sashimi. is 12 years too old to learn new "tricks"?

[Laurie]

I'm not sure how different cats are, but I've heard about some older dogs being given a new lease on life with raw. Some take to it right away, some need help transitioning.

esther frances said:

my cat spike loves lobster. he will steal it off your plate...watch out! and he loved only lobster until last year when he decided to also love prosciutto. at least that's raw! he has a very sensitive tummy (can't hold down, or in, beef or fish canned cat foods), doesn't seem to be attracted to sushi/sashimi. is 12 years too old to learn new "tricks"?

[jane]

As I started my raw journey 6 months ago I also started my 2 cats on theirs! My tom cat is 15 and had eaten science diet biscuits and various wet cat foods such as Felix all his life. He has always generally been in good health but was becoming an old man. Now he is now getting younger and has very few signs of age. My female cat who is about 13 (she came as a stray 7 years ago) however has always had poor health. A lot of sickness, diarrhea, anxiety etc. The vets never got to the bottom of things even after having her on a drip for a week after one really bad bout of sickness. Within a week of introducing more raw her symptoms went and her health has continued to improve. She has put on weight and is much more confident and out going. Having been vegetarian for 23 years I knew I would struggle a bit with having raw meat in the house. I have got used to it and after much research what I feed them at the moment is a mixture of raw chicken or duck or turkey or pheasant ( I stick with small animals as I can't envision a cat jumping on a cow etc in wild) mixed with a dry powder called Instincts (which has been designed for a raw cat food diet and has in everything they need if not giving them bones. My cats wouldnt touch bones), see web www.felinefuture.com, plus some raw chicken livers. This is not a cheap way of eating! I was originally buying all organic but that was very expensive so now try to get best quality I can from local butcher and from people who hunt rabbits etc. Ethically this has been a tough journey but then I realised that what I had been feeding them was supporting all sorts of other poor practices and was giving my cats less than great health. I have found that after a while of flourishing on raw they seemed to step a bit back so I followed my intuition and added small quantities of a very high quality cooked, convenience cat food and they returned to flourishing. So they are about 75% raw. This also helps when my neighbour looks after the cats when we are away. Hope some of this helps.