Raw fed cats

SaraB

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#1
We made the switch! Well kind of... I want to say we are 1.5/2 as far as success goes. Maybe 1.75/2. Grover switched without a problem as I figured he would because he likes to constantly stuff his face with anything even remotely edible and a lot of things that arn't edible. He's on turkey and beef right now and I will be adding in hearts when I go and pick some up.

Remi being the spoiled little princess that she is will only touch her ground turkey if there is canned cat food squished in. The only efficient way to properly combine canned cat food and raw ground turkey is to knead it with your fingers. I do not enjoy this. However, it's working, she's getting mostly turkey with just a smidge of the canned food for smell right now and scarfing down every last morsel.

I am going to try whole pieces maybe some chicken wings or whatever I find when the time comes. I can't see that going over very well with the princess but maybe she'll love it by then!

Anyone else feed their cats raw? How'd the transition go?
 

SpringerLover

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#2
My cats would prefer to eat raw. Both of my cats are like Grover though, for the most part they eat whatever is put in front of them.
 
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#3
Over the last 10 years I have tried multiple times to switch my cats. They are brats and won't do it:/. Last time I thought it was working, then I found the corner where they has stashed it YUCK!
 

Maxy24

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#4
I fed Willie raw for 6-8 months but had to stop when I went to college and he stayed with my parents. He LOVED raw. He's never ever been enthusiastic about food, be it kibble or canned, but boy did he get pumped about raw food. unfortunately after we stopped giving it he started stealing food from our table, it's great :cool:

Switching him was easy. I started with the one food I knew he adored, precooked chickens from stop and shop. Ripped off a bunch of little pieces from that, cut a few little pieces of raw to intermingle with the cooked stuff and he accidentally ate them. I slowly made them more noticeable and he still ate them, then made them larger, threw more down for him, and he ate them just fine. Organs were the hard part. Never got him to like liver, had to sneak it into him.


Neko I could never switch. I think maybe if I'd tried putting it into a blender and mixing it with his wet, then slowly blending it coarser and coarser that could have worked. He has always been the opposite of Willie, meal time is the highlight of his day and he gets super excited for his meals, but never touched raw.

Keep up the good work, the teeth benefits are worth it by themselves. Brushing kitty teeth is way harder than brushing dog teeth!
 

StillandSilent

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I can't even get the fat to eat canned food, much less raw. I let people talk me out of starting her at 12 weeks old, when I should have, and I regret it now.

That said, my foster persian, Ezra, who had a face flatter then a piece of paper, had a fetish for chicken feet! He would see the package coming out, and his little mouth would start working like a suckerfish's.
 

seashells

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#6
My cats are raw-fed. I use the premades though (Primal and Natures Variety) because I was having issues with prep for the homemade stuff, and getting the cats to eat it. We do still have to mix a little canned in to get them to eat it, but thankfully that's easy with the premade.

Unfortunately my cats much prefer canned, and especially kibble (which they don't get at all). It seems like the less healthy the food is, the more they love it. But their health has been so much improved on the raw that I do my best to keep them eating it. One of them, Athena, had horrible digestive issues before, that even grain-free canned didn't fix. She's only okay if she gets at least half her meals in raw every day.
 

SizzleDog

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My cats love raw... I actually started them on raw way before I started the dogs. :)
 

Southpaw

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#8
Jinx is on ground raw. He was kind of prissy about it at first, which surprised me because he's normally not a finicky cat... usually he's good about just eating whatever we put in his bowl. The ground stuff he was so-so about it and for a while I had to mix in canned food to get him to eat it. But it just had to be a TINY amount of canned lol I don't even know how it actually made a difference to him.
He completely snarfs it up now though and gets sooooo excited when it's time to eat. He's worse than the dogs.

He will eat chunks of meat too, occasionally if we don't have stuff thawed out for him, it's pretty easy to find a thawed out chicken breast and cut it up. He's fine with that. But in general, ground works out way better for us. Plus I can't imagine him ever eating a bone.

I think the hardest part for all involved was putting a stop to free feeding. It amazes me that my cat now eats on a schedule and eats a set amount each day. Unreal.
 
M

MyHorseMyRules

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Mine switched really easily! They'll eat just about anything. They're not huuuge fans of liver, but they'll eat it. Kidney, on the other hand, they love. As far as whole bits, the only thing I usually give them is chicken necks or whole quail. But they chow down on them like there's no tomorrow. A few times, Conan has even snagged a turkey neck set out to defrost for the dogs. He can't finish it off, but he just munches away on it until I take it away from him. They also chew on the dogs' shank bones and whatnot. Like I said, my cats have NO problem eating raw. lol
 

SaraB

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#10
I'll have to try chicken necks!

Remi ate her ground turkey without any canned food added! I went to grab the can from the fridge, turned around and she was already going to town on the plain raw. :D
 

Kilter

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Ours eats a bit of both, but if she doesn't have her kitty crack (kibble) she gets insane about getting into people food. She just has to have her carbs.

She will do just about anything, including moose if it's offered, and bones too.

But her all time FAVE treat is a frozen/thawed mouse from the pet store. Not sure how she knows when I've gotten one for her before I even get my shoes off but she gets quite vocal and almost attacks me to get her meal (which goes into a crate with her to eat, since mice need to be tossed quite a bit before being eaten).
 

Gypsydals

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For the most part Hazel switched over really well. I do need to get her some pet grind that has bones it it. Because she refuses to eat the bones. She will strip every bit of meat off of them, and then stash the bones in a corner. The best part I like about it, is the lack of nasty litterbox smell. I hate that smell.
 

PWCorgi

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#13
Whiskey is a convert. He thinks raw is WAY cooler than canned. Scarfs everything I've tried so far :)
 

Shai

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#14
By the way...Brie's eating half kibble/half raw right now. She's taken to ground raw really well. Haven't tried her on anything whole yet as I can't figure out where to feed her that sort of thing since she might drag it around. But yeah, yay for Brie. So far so good.
 

skittledoo

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#15
old thread, but figured it was better to revive this one than start a new one.

Anyways... As Lauren mentioned above, Whiskey is a raw convert. He is flying home to me on Friday and I'm going to continue with him eating raw. I bought him some Nature's Variety Instinct Raw today... (the medallions). It's premade for now, but I'll add more stuff in later. I don't have a kitchen which makes it hard to prepare a lot of raw myself.

My question though is the raw I bought said it's for both cats and dogs and on the back it gives the amount of medallions per weight size. Does anyone know how accurate their feeding amounts are? I know with the dry food I feed the dogs I tend to feed less than what the bag says or else my dogs would get fat. Not sure if the same rules apply with the raw for the cat. Also, does anyone know how high the taurine source is in the NV raw chicken bag? If it isn't high enough I can buy some heart to add more taurine into his diet, but wasn't sure if this bag of raw had a sufficient amount of taurine for a cat.

Here's the serving suggestion link I found for this bag of raw. I think he falls in the 5-15lb range unless Lauren states otherwise since he did have a vet appointment and was more than likely weighed today.
http://www.1800petmeds.com/Instinct+Raw+Frozen+Diet+Chicken+Medallions+6lb+-prod518144-617222.html?AFFID=GG&ID=413408180&gclid=CMuN0sDT17UCFULf4AodmD8AwA

I hate how overpriced premade is so I'm definitely aiming to start buying meat here and there when I can and as soon as I have a kitchen I won't do much premade probably.


Also... those of you that do feed cats raw... what other meat sources do you feed that are a little out of the ordinary? I'm hoping to eventually add squirrel, dove, rabbit etc.... stuff that I can hunt myself. I can also do frozen/thawed mice every so often as well. I know Lauren mentioned he wont touch beef so I'm trying to get an idea of other stuff I can try.
 

Kilter

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There are quite a few raw suppliers that might offer samples or smaller packages of food to try out. Our cat gets the odd meal of raw, some canned, some kibble too. At the kennel they had a bunch of 'expired' frozen that I brought home and she had no problem with pheasant, duck, beef, etc... and so on.
 

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