Raw Feeding Diary

26 August 2009

I have been absolutely delighted with our raw fed cats this year.  We have glossy coats, happy healthy cats, beautiful teeth and litter trays that smell far less than they used to.  

We have even started to take raw feeding to its next step.  For a while now, Kat and I had been discussing including whole chicks, or baby rats or mice in the cats' diet.  It's something I wasn't entirely sure of to begin with, but it did start to make sense the more I thought about it.  Whole small animals or birds are even closer to a cat's natural diet than raw meat.  

So we took the plunge, and brought home some frozen day old chicks for the cats.  Phoenix and Valentine were immediately delighted.  Phoenix grabbed a chick and took it off somewhere safe to eat in peace.  Valentine on the other hand played with his for ages before getting around to eating it.  Although slightly gruesome, it was lovely to see him pouncing, chasing and throwing his dinner in the air.  

The other cats weren't as impressed straight away, but the second time I gave them a go, there was interest from everyone and I think they will become a favourite in time.  I'm hoping to include about three meals of chicks in a week, the other meals will continue to be a balance of the usual raw meat and offal with some cooked white fish.




03 December 2008

An interesting challenge presented itself this week.  Little Phoenix arrived home on Friday.  Everything went quite well on the introduction front, and when I noticed that all four cats were in the kitchen at the food dishes together, I was so desperate to get some food down straight away to get them eating together, I put down some commercial wet food.  Of course they were thrilled and ate it all.  The next morning reminded me why I had stopped using the damn stuff in the first place.  The front room was decorated with piles of cat vomit.  Most worryingly some contributions had blood in, and to my horror, roundworms.

Now, I knew that there would be an increased likelihood of worms with raw feeding.  I knew I needed to get a proper worming program in place if I was going to accept that risk.  As all the boys were treated recently, I admit to having put this out of my mind somewhat. 

Having literally just brought a new kitten home, I was really worried that this could turn into a big problem.  I went straight to my vets to get worming tablets for all four cats.  Half an hour after giving the tablets, I knew it was Calcifer that was suffering.  Without being too graphic, he paid a visit to the litter tray that left me in no doubt.

One slightly panicked phone call to Kat later, and given all the available information, we decided that the commercial food would have been enough to upset Calcifer’s stomach, which would already be sensitive and damaged by the worms. 

I have now turned into some sort of cat faeces obsessive.  I can’t now just empty a litter tray; I have to trawl through it, examining the contents.  Calcifer’s poor stomach has settled down, and no one else has shown any problems, so I am hoping we caught this episode early enough.  However, this morning he had no appetite, and I’ll be keeping a very close eye on

him this week.

27 November 2008

Note to self:  tuna now makes Indie sick.  Quite a lot.  In my handbag.

25 November 2008

Well the fridge is now operational.  I can get white fish and some beef for poor Sirius on the way home from work today.

Yesterday evening the boys had one of the meals from the whole chicken that I’d prepared.  This particular bag contained some sections of rib cage, so smaller bones with quite dark meat.  Sirius seemed happier to tackle these than he normally does with larger pieces of chicken.

Interestingly, since I’ve started to actually weigh out the food according to body weight, the plate has nearly been empty after every meal, and the bones have all been gnawed, and partially eaten.  I’m keen to avoid food being left after meals for a couple of reasons.  Obviously there is the question of waste – no-one likes to waste food and throw it away.    Another consideration is health.  I put down breakfast before I leave for work in the morning, and I would rather it was all eaten, rather than raw meat sitting on the floor all day where it could start to breed infection.  The third aspect, which only occurred to me yesterday, is that the cats seem to spend more time stripping and eating the bones if they have eaten all of the meat available.  I suspect they don’t bother with bones so much if there is a surplus of meat.

24 November 2008

This week is going to bring a couple of changes to our household.  For one thing, the fridge broke down two weeks ago and we will finally get to turn the new one on tonight.  For the other, our first foundation queen arrives on Friday.

Prior to the fridge issue, the three boys were on a mainly raw diet.  The fact that I only been able to refrigerate tiny amounts of meat at a time has meant that I’ve had to slightly adapt their feeding habits.  They have still been having chicken thighs and drumsticks.  They have about half a pack for an evening meal, and I have been cooking the rest to feed as breakfast the next day.  Prize Choice mince packs have turned out to be a bit of a saviour as I’ve been able to buy one frozen pack each day, and either defrost half a pack straight away for a meal, or let it defrost over night.  They are in nice neat little packages, so I can manage to fit one at a time in the mini beer fridge we’ve been living out of. 

I’ve also given in and fed some commercial foods during this time, for the first time in ages.  The raw diet I was able to manage was not as varied as usual, so I bought a pack of Purely…. wet food pouches from PAH, which are supposed to be free of additives, and to be fair, actually look like shreds of meat when you open them up.  All three cats really enjoyed the treat of being allowed ‘junk food’ and although the litter tray smelled a little more unpleasant than usual, I didn’t notice any upset stomachs.  I also gave them a few RC biscuits.  They all really seem to enjoy them, but Calcifer in particular seems to usually vomit after eating them.

Yesterday we bought a whole chicken.  I cut off the breasts to be used for a human dinner, and then chopped all the rest of the bird into pieces for cat dinners.  I weighed the pieces into meal sized bags and ended up with four and a half cat dinners.  This morning I put down one of these – a mixture of cubes of meat and sections with bone in.  Calcifer and Indiana were both enthusiastically straight into the plate, but Sirius isn’t that keen on chicken.  I gave him a separate bowl of biscuits in the bathroom while I was getting ready for work.  He has lost some of his extra weight since we’ve been raw feeding, but I don’t want him loosing any more, and as his usual favourites of white fish and beef steak weren’t on the menu these past two weeks, I felt he needed a bit extra.

I’m hoping to get everyone back to normal by the time Juniper Berry arrives on Friday.  I know that one of her favourites is quail or guinea fowl.  I’m hoping that this will encourage Sirius to give poultry more of a go too – he’s usually quite interested in what other people doing, especially if it’s a new person.