Raw Diet For Cats

Shanao

Anyone feeding their cats an all raw meat diet? It's something I've been considering for a while now, but I'm not sure if it'll work as I have one cat with a fairly sensitive stomach. If anyone does, what meats do you use and has it made much of a difference in the litter tray department?

The Sweeper

I've tried this on and off.

The notion appears very simple: feed your cats a 100% raw meat and bone diet, where you essentially try to recreate natural prey, e.g. a mouse. This involves a split in the ratio of 80:10:10, where 80% is muscle meat, 10% is bone and 10% is organ meat like kidneys, lungs, brains, and liver, with the liver component making up no more than half of the quantity of organ meat.

Few observations:

It's difficult to achieve balance in the diet, but not just because it's fiddly, more because cats are finicky. One of my cats, for instance, won't eat liver. Two more are picky. The other three love it. This means if I feed a single balanced 80:10:10 meal, one of my cats will eat around the liver, two more will consume the meat first, and the three who like liver will eat all of it between them, thereby double-dosing their liver.

Similarly with bone - if you can get your cat to crunch their way through a whole chicken neck, that's excellent. The bones are small vertebrae, highly unlikely to splinter. The neck is large and requires a lot of chewing, which is both good for the teeth and reduces the chance of choking. However, only one of my six cats will tackle a chicken neck.

My cats are not free fed; they have two meals a day, one in the morning and one at bedtime. Currently if one of them dislikes what's on the menu, they simply skip the meal. They are not offered an alternative.

The way around this would be for me to mass produce my own catfood in the 80:10:10 ratio and feed that twice a day, so that the cats can't pick around the stuff they don't like.

There are a number of 'recipes' on the internet for catfood. I would be very cautious about making up catfood involving human vitamin supplements. The only additives I would be comfortable adding to home-made raw food would be taurine, which is a vital amino acid cats get from muscle meat, and L-lysine, which is an amino acid that stops replication of the herpes virus, which can affect some rescue cats (but which should never be dosed long-term).

Vitamin C is a 'safe' vitamin for cats, as any excess is passed harmlessly through the body. Additionally it can be useful in times of stress, as cats deplete their vitamin C levels rapidly when stressed. However using too much human vitamin C in the mix can cause diarrohea.

In terms of how to make my own food, for my cats I would need to mince the bone, organs and liver so it's an easily edible paste. However for the benefit of their teeth I would then need to feed chunks of raw meat to be gnawed and chewed. Problem THEN is with six cats, I still may find one will eat more than their share of chunked meat and avoid the paste.

So I've tried it with limited success. My cats now get a mix and match approach to dinner - dry kibble, wet commercial food plus raw meat. I always use human grade meat because pet meat is full of preservatives, and feed it fresh as can be, never any smelly or discoloured meat.

It does help with the litter trays - stools are small and solid and don't stink to high heaven.

mymo

I feed something like Sweeper too (but not as well done;)).
I feed dry, mainly due to the fact both my cats have had bladder crystals, so have a special food.
I also feed a little wet, currently using Bozita, a box does 2 days then I skip 2 days.
If I have raw meat like stewing steak, I give a chunk each, same with mince, chicken wings, diced chicken, have got small scraps of liver too.
I couldn't figure a way to go all raw healthily like sweeper my cats are fussy and will go for certain parts more than others.
I have had no issues in 2 years now, one cat is 11 the other about 5 we think (rescued as an adult).

The Sweeper

Heh - mymo I actually feed the way you do, my post was describing all the reasons it's too hard to feed all raw!

Shanao

They've been getting chicken wings every couple of days now for a while, but only two of them ever seem to be able to chew the bone properly; the other three try and then give up. One of mine will almost definitely tackle chicken necks though so I'll see if i can get some for him. They get a bit of liver now and again as well and have no problems eating that at least. I might try it for a few days and see how they get on with it; knowing my luck now they'll all decide that they dont want any raw meat at all:rolleyes: Feckin cats

Selfheal

Hi

We feed our girl dry nuts bought from the vets in the morning and for dinner she usually gets raw turkey breast from Tesco - which she never tires of. If we can't get the turkey breast it will be raw chicken instead. When we first got her we did try raw liver etc but she didn't like it, but boy does she love fresh human-grade turkey....