Raw Food

Cats, in my opinion, should eat a raw diet; raw meat, puréed raw fruit and, vegetables and raw chicken wings (for calcium and for their teeth). It is simple to feed and, logically, it is what cats  were, and are still are, designed to eat. Here’s how it works:

The Rules

• Cats should be fed on a variety of raw meat and chicken wings. Just sticking to one meat source is no good – you don’t get all your nutrients. Poor quality cuts with gristle and a bit of fat are better than pure meat. AMP meat contains bone particles if you are not happy feeding chicken wings, but this will not clean teeth. Do not feed pork.
• For every 90 — 95g of meat, feed 5 — 10g of pureed raw veg *. Cats will avoid vegetables at all costs. By puréeing the food you can smear it on the raw meat which will usually be eaten with gusto. By giving such a small amounts of vegetables it is easily hidden. If fruit and vegetables — is impossible for your cat, use a very good supplement. Onions are toxic to cats - do not feed.
• Quantities — Feed similar quantities as for wet food or 1 ½ times the volume of dried previously fed.
• Feed raw chicken wings once or twice weekly, minimum. (RAW chicken wings are easily chewed and digested. It is very unlikely, but not impossible, they will get stuck in the gut. If you do NOT give bones to clean teeth, however, a general anaesthetic for dental work is very likely). Fine ground bone is contained in the AMP chicken, turkey or rabbit dinners, this will not, of course, clean teeth.
• Feed fresh, non-frozen viscera (kidney, heart, lung or liver) once a week instead of meat. Remember, wild animals come with viscera (organs) alongside the meat. It is a necessary part (however distasteful) of a balanced diet. Vary the organ meat weekly, but make sure heart is often on the menu. Cats cannot live without taurine. Fresh heart is high in taurine. Frozen meat has little or no taurine.
• Do not feed cereals.

* Take any vegeTABLES, especially green leaved ones, fruit and salad items and place in the liquidiser. You can use just one or two ingredients at any one liquidising, but make sure you have variety from week to week. Blend to a purÉe. Add some water to give a liquid texture, if necessary. Pour on the meat in a 9 or 9.5 to 1 ratio, meat to vegetables. You can feed 2—3 times daily.

How to Bend the Rules

• If you cannot bear to feed raw meat, light cooking in olive oil to ‘seal’ the juices is ok.
• Pureed raw veg will last for 48 hours in the fridge, so you can do the blending only 3 times weekly, but remember it looses it’s goodness pretty quickly after liquidising. Alternatively puree the mix and put into an ice cube tray and freeze – thus you can take out small quantities daily.

Further Reading

The best book on the subject is ‘The Barf Diet’ by Ian Billinghurst (ISBN 0 958 592 1 9) an Australian vet with 20 years’ practice experience. You can order the book and a great selection of other pet products from the Natures Menu Book Shop, or by clicking on the book itself!

Also Kymythy Schultze has a good book entitled Natural Nutrition for Dogs and Cats (ISBN 1-56170-636-1). You can order this book, along with DVDs, videos, CD-ROMS, toys, grooming products and much more in the Natures Menu Book Shop.

 

Convenient Disease

Certain authorities are concerned with feeding cats raw food. They claim, without any good evidence, that this can lead to the infection of cats with pathogens that can pass to people. I believe that cats are able to cope with a certain low level of contamination of their food. I believe they can eat such food and not be more of a threat to human health than a cat fed on a commercial diet. Indeed, if a cat is fed regularly on a raw food diet, I believe they will be healthier and better able to cope with bugs transmissible to people. If you have any concerns, or have very young or very old or immuno—deficient people in your household, then your best advice would be to talk with your vet or other health professional.

It may appear difficult at first, but many people pick up the basics of natural feeding very soon after starting.

Give it a try; with the positive difference it will make to the health of your cat, they will thank you – for years and years to come.

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