slightly confused about cat feeding...

Here's a thread about feeding raw to a cat: http://www.mothering.com/discussions...d.php?t=472994

I'm thinking about transitioning to raw with my three cats, but will have to work on selling DH on the idea. As a trial, I got a chicken leg from Whole Foods last Friday, ground it up in the food processor and split it into three bowls. The two older cats (10 years old this month, brother and sister), sniffed the bowls and looked at me like I forgot to put out the good stuff. The third started eating right away, but didn't eat much. He probably wasn't very hungry at the time since it wasn't his usual feeding time and there was still food in his regular dish. So it will probably take some work to convince the cats that this is really what they are supposed to eat.

A little off-topic, but whenever anyone mentions trying to get their cat to drink more water, I laugh a little. Tiger, the three-year-old cat in our house, drinks more water than any cat I have ever seen. He will meow urgently and lead us to the water dish if it is empty. Or not so empty. Maybe it's been two hours since the last time the dish was filled, so it is time for fresh water. And unfortunately, my DH started filling his cupped hand with water from the sink and the cat would drink out of it. This was cute the first time, but now every single time the faucet is running on the bathroom sink, that cat jumps up on the sink and drags your hands towards himself, trying to get you to give him some water. He's a tough cat to ignore as he is 18+ pounds -- and quite long and tall. When he stands on his back feet and reaches up to get my attention, he can reach the bottom of my boobs (I'm 5'3").

Once he gets new water in his water dish (or your hand), he starts drinking and drinking and drinking. Actually lapping quite loudly. On more than one occassion, I have been in a different room and thought there was water boiling on the stove. It turned out to be the silly cat drinking water so fast that it was making that churning water sound!

This behavior seemed so abnormal to me, that I had him tested for diabetes. The test came back negative. So he's just an odd cat. But then, I could have told you that already!

My dog has been on raw for awhile, doing great, tried it initally with the cat but he snubbed it. Im wanting to give it a try again, but Im wondering: if he wont eat, isnt it bad for cats to go hungry for too long, something about their metabolic system? I may be way off base on that one though. Also, the recipies Im finding online have alot of "extras" in them, supplements, oils, vitamins; my dog gets meat/bones, egg and yogurt occasionally. Why isnt this enough for cats (except the taurine, I understand that)? My main concern is him not eating and getting into trouble that way but he is a fatty, so....
Oh, and when I get a whole chicken for my dog and want to give her the organs, I just given them all to her. For a cat, since they need taurine, do they need the heart and liver only, or all the "stuff? Do they include more than those two in packaged whole birds? Whats an easy way to tell whats what? I honestly cant tell....

I think my brain is battling with what I thought I knew about feeding cats and what I'm slowly learning. So, bear with me please! And thank you for the replies!

Okay, I'm going to way oversimplify this out loud. So, I can basically (remember, way oversimplify ) I can feed my cat one whole ground up chicken? Take one raw chicken, bones and all, and process it and feed directly? And providing I'm making sure theres the liver or heart in there I'm good to go?

Dry food is bad for cats? Not just, "not the best thing" for cats, but bad? Harmful? Again, please bear with me, its like the first time I really thought about circ/vaccines/etc.

I've read about the worry of UTI's in cats, thats why I worry about water consumption. (and I personally hate UTI's, too painful) But, a raw diet will almost eliminate that concern?

Do indoor cats benefit, or just outdoor cats? I'm not sure why I'm having a hard time wrapping my head around this. Cats system is for outdoor prey, but I have an indoor cat?

Now off to read all the links. Thanks!

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I was wondering the same thing.......

I use chicken leg quarters. The dark meat has more taurine in it than the white meat. I use livers and egg yolks. I have a hard time sourcing heart so I bought a Taurine supplement. I use a recipe very similar to what thekimballs gave in the post mentioned above.

Cats do not have a strong thirst drive. They don't get enough water by drinking alone. With that recipe you will not have to worry about UTI's and your cats breath and litterbox will smell much better.

Canned food is better than dry but you have to find a quality one. Dry food only cleans the tip of the teeth. Once your cats start eatting raw start leaving some pieces of meat about the size of a quarter or half dollar. This will clean their teeth.

This is beneficial for all cats especially indoor cats. Outdoor cats catch mice and such.

I don't buy whole birds. Super Walmart has 10 lbs of leg Quarters for $4.30 and 1 lb buckets of livers for $1.50.

I feed a 10 lb bag of leg quarters a week for 4 cats. Much cheaper than good cat food.

EdlynsMom

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(I am not a vet. This is all my opinion based on research and experience. I will not be held liable for any problems you have, yaddah, yaddah. But I won't suggest that you do anything I wouldn't do w/ my own pet.)

Some people go for the gradual switch by mixing in more and more of the new food each day. This has never worked for me with the ~10 dogs and 1 cat I have switched over. In addition, IMO this type of feeding is unsafe. Part of why dogs and cats can eat food that has more bacteria and other stuff in it than we can is because they have shorter digestive tracks and things pass in and out more quickly. However, grains take much longer to digest. If they are combined w/ raw meat in the same meal, everything gets stuck in the system a longer time. Not saying they would necessarily get sick, but it is not something I would do.

Most animals are going to pick out the bits they like anyway no matter how thoroughly you mix things. Also some cats are so addicted to their dry kitty-crack (yummy sugar, salt, & artificial flavors. ummm.) that if it is anywhere in the house they will refuse anything else. We had to store our just-in-case/emergency bag in the unattached garage so that she couldn't smell it.

Switching to commercial can food for a few days can be a useful intermediate step for a dry-fed cat. This gets them used to the different texture while still having the junk-food taste of kibble. I did do this when switching my mom's cat.

At this point my mom was still "in charge" and I was just making suggestions and providing information. She started putting out a dish of raw in the am. Another in the pm. And when she hadn't eaten either she would give her can food later that night. Sometimes she got ground chicken or minced turkey necks and sometimes cut up pieces of my mom's very expensive sushi-grade raw tuna. Went to the raw pet store and asked owner for advice. She said to try other meats and gave us some rabbit, mackerel, and lamb.
We tried baiting her into eating it by putting yummy supplements (the vitamin drops from my mom's vet had sugar as their first ingredient)
We always picked the food back up after an hour or so b/c we had read that (unlike trash eating dogs) cats liked their food very fresh.
This went on for about two weeks. Then my mom went out of town for two weeks.
We gave the cat food in the am (turkey) and just left it on the counter. She sniffed it. Turned her nose up at it. Did not eat. She was drinking water though and nibbling at her cat grass. That night she didn't eat. Still just the same dish sitting out. No other food giving. Next morning I wanted to give her fresh food but DH was standing strong. So we put a little bit of fresh food in next to the old stuff. Well, at noon she ate all of the old stuff. Didn't touch the fresh. Waited another 24 hours before she ate that. Then we gave the rabbit a try. She ate it all right away.
Since then she has eaten what she's been given w/o fuss. However she still does not like chicken/turkey at all! She will eat it eventually, but she obviously does not want to. She LOVES rabbit. She is happy with lamb, beef, and expensive tuna as well. Does not like other types of fish.

Three Ways to Introduce New Foods To Your Pet
This author is quite liberal in his opinion of cat fasting. Others are overly conservative and say your cat will die after 24hrs w.o food. Personally, when we switched my mom's cat over I gave myself a 48 hour limit. Also made sure she was drinking. She took the food w/in 30hrs.

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I think that part of it is that owners feel better when they give more supplements. My mom gives Missing Link b/c it makes her feel good. I'm not totally convinced it is necessary. OTOH, since a lot of the food we feed is less nutritious then when cats were created/evolved (whatever you believe AND environmental stresses/toxins are greater they may not be a bad idea. Also if the "whole" chicken you are grinding up doesn't include a head, stomach, etc. you are going to be missing certain things.

If you feed enough heart everyday then you don't actually have to give taurine supplements. But that would be a challenge.

Shenjall

Accidently closed window and lost a ton of stuff. Will try to remember it all.

Also I discovered that a bunch of the links were dead on the page I gave you. Sorry. Can hunt up more if you tell me what you want.

(BTW- I am not a vet. This is all my opinion based on research and experience. I will not be held liable for any problems you have, yadda, yadda. But I won't suggest that you do anything I wouldn't do w/ my own pet.)

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Not all cats like chicken. Also, feeding mostly poultry doesn't make since to me. Yes, they will occasionally catch a songbird, but normally eat lots of rodents. So I would think that more red meat is needed. (You actually can order whole frozen mice and rats. They sell them to feed to snakes)
But I guess that could work. See my PP re: supplements.

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I would say yes. Depends on who you ask. Sort of like w/ formula. Is it bad, or just not as good as BM? (maybe I shouldn't go there) In either case it is better than starvation or feeding a diet of twinkies and bubblegum.
The pet food industry did not arise from vets/researchers trying to provide superior animal nutrition. Rather it was a way to make money off of scraps from the grain mills. Also for rendered meat (which sometimes includes road kill & discarded bodies from kill-shelters). Meat/beef/chicken "by-products" are basically what they wipe off the slaughterhouse floor and include beaks, hoofs, feces, etc. and very little muscle meat.
Also most have yucky additives, preservatives, artificial flavors, salt, etc.

The better brands use whole human grade foods, and you can find organic brands as well. However, IMO even they are "bad" for your cat simply because they are 1- cooked & 2- have grain.

Pottinger's experiments on cats provides a clear picture of the harm of cooked food on felines. Many use it as their argument for human raw diets as well. http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&q=pottinger+cats

Aside from the UTI issues of a dry diet, grains cause other problems:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&l...diabetes+grain
I can't find the best sources right now, but there are also links to cancer and certainly allergies. There are also tons of stories of pets who were cured of diabetes, Cancer, etc. when switched to raw diet.

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Pretty much! There is sooo much water in raw meat.

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If you decided to move to the country and let your cat live in the barn, would its biological needs or digestive system change? Cat's have only been fed commercial foods/kibble for 50 years or so. Not nearly enough time for their systems to have adapted to a different way of eating.
Inside cats benefit just as much, if not more- b/c outside cats always supplement themselves with raw (mice, birds) anyway.

Both my cats are on raw and I switched both of them cold turkey. The older one, Keeley, is a kibble head and didn't get switched until he was 6 months.

I started Keeley on raw after he came down with a nasty UTI that reoccurred in full-force accompanied by a bad bladder infection just a few days after completing the full cycle of antibiotics. It's a long story involving my previous pet and my own health, but this was the last straw that made me give up on conventional medicine. I did a lot of research and ended up deciding to treat the UTI holistically. I gave Keeley a lot of vitamin C and other supplements, syringe-fed him extra water, and switched to raw. Keeley has not had UTI since then (now 3 years). He did have an almost occurrence when he was boarded and went on canned food for 2 weeks, but it was nipped in the butt with the Ester C that I left the boarder. He doesn't have any "almost" occurrences when he's at home and on raw.

The biggest benefits of raw after good health are lively playful cats that act like kittens all the time, clean teeth, tiny poop, and great smell. My cats actually smell sweet and we keep getting asked by cat-owner friends whether we bath them all the time since they don't have any animal smell.

One thing I learned about cats is that they can hold out for a long time. If they think something better is on the horizon or that there's something better in the house, they will hold out and refuse to eat. My cats may be spoiled cause I feed them raw human-grade meats, but they are fed on my terms. If they don't like what I set out, it is put away and appears at the next meal. They have learned to eat what I set out, to eat their food cold (most recommend warming raw food to make it more appetizing), and they have learned to eat chunks, including hunks of chicken necks. I don't worry if my cats want to skip a meal, and they have seldom gone for more than a day without eating at least a bite. However, fatty liver disease is a reality and can be dangerous even for thin cats that have been fed kibble for a long time. But one bite does constitute having eaten, and a cat will unlikely get sick if it's eaten at least a bite of something in a day.

In nature, cats do get most of their liquids from their foods. In terms of drinking, cats preferred aerated water and will tend to refuse stagnant water, which is why many cats come running when they hear the faucet. We use one of those pet fountains, which both of our cats love to drink from especially after one of their "chase" sessions.

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Yes, I believe feeding the whole animal is the easiest way to go, especially if you want to avoid using lots of supplements.

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I read somewhere that cats on dry food are dehydrated no matter how much they drink. When I researched UTIs in cats, many people recommended going to raw, and if that's not possible, to go to wet food. My cats don't drink as much when they are on raw, but then again they are getting lots of moisture from their food.