Feeding raw when you're away from home all day?

[sarahhalen]

Hi there!  I'm potentially going to switch my baby to a raw diet (maybe RadCat) but I'm concerned with how I'll manage to feed her raw when I start back to working in an office 8-6pm every day.  Currently she eats Wellness canned food and she eats multiple times throughout the day (since I've been working from home, feeding her tiny amounts all day has been easy).  

Since you can't leave the raw food out for more than 30 mins - 1 hour, I can't leave a portion out for her to graze on throughout the day while I'm gone.  

I thought potentially I could start feeding her raw in the morning, then leave a tiny amount of Wellness canned out for her until I can return home at lunch to give her another portion of raw.  Repeat that same routine for the afternoon until I make it home in the evening.  

She has a sensitive tummy so I don't know if the switch from raw to canned to raw to canned throughout the day will wreak havoc on her system. 

How do you manage feeding raw when you're going to be away from home for most of the day? Any advice is greatly appreciated!

 

[Columbine]

I feed a mix of raw and high quality canned food, as do several other members here. So long as your girl is fine with each of the foods in you're rotation there shouldn't be any problem. Another option would be to leave out a little unrehydrated freeze dried raw during the day. You'd have to take measures to increase her fluid intake to compensate for the dryness, but that is very easy to do. This question has come up before. If I'm remembering correctly, its possible to get insulated timed feeders that will keep the food cool throughout the day. If you used this combined with undefrosted food, it should be just about ready to eat by the time the feeder opens up. I find that small cubes (roughly 1cmsq by 0.5cm deep) defrost at room temparature (17degrees C ish) in around 2 hours. 

Hope some of that helps 

 

[LTS3]

 
How do you manage feeding raw when you're going to be away from home for most of the day? Any advice is greatly appreciated!

Honestly, I don't leave any food out during the day. My cats are fine with going 12-15 hours between breakfast and dinner. Obviously they're hungry and anxious for food when I get home. Being hungry means they have a good appetite and will eat all of their food.

You can leave canned food or freeze dried raw or air dried raw for your cat. Cats can handle both canned and raw food. Use a programmable timed feeder if you dont' want your cat to gobble up all of the food at once and be hungrylater on.

 

[cicoccabim]

I feed my cat twice (three times if I´m at home all day) a day. In the morning and before going to bed. 

One method that works well during the warm seasons is to place the bowl on a "freezer cube" (frozen plastic thing filled with water that you store in the freezer and put in a cooling bag..... don´t know the english word for it). Keep a tray underneath the freezing cube- to protect the floors. Then the food will keep fresh a long time! 

Kittens needs to eat more often than grown cats. Kittens 4-5 times a day (morning, before going to work, lunch, coming home from work, before bedtime), adolescent cat 2-3 times a day. 

Theories claim that it is better for the cat to have meals and mealtimes rather than free feeding- the body then have time to take care of "repair work" rather than digesting food all the time. Since cats have gluconeogenesis (energy is stored after meals and released slowly during the day) they don´t suffer from low blood sugar as we do.  

 

[Columbine]

 
I feed my cat twice (three times if I´m at home all day) a day. In the morning and before going to bed. 

One method that works well during the warm seasons is to place the bowl on a "freezer cube" (frozen plastic thing filled with water that you store in the freezer and put in a cooling bag..... don´t know the english word for it). Keep a tray underneath the freezing cube- to protect the floors. Then the food will keep fresh a long time! 

Kittens needs to eat more often than grown cats. Kittens 4-5 times a day (morning, before going to work, lunch, coming home from work, before bedtime), adolescent cat 2-3 times a day. 

Theories claim that it is better for the cat to have meals and mealtimes rather than free feeding- the body then have time to take care of "repair work" rather than digesting food all the time. Since cats have gluconeogenesis (energy is stored after meals and released slowly during the day) they don´t suffer from low blood sugar as we do.  

I think you're referring to a 'cool pack' or 'ice pack' - Great idea 

 You might want to stick a towel under it though, to keep the floor from getting soaked as it defrosts.

 

[cicoccabim]

It might be good to put a towel around  the ice pack, so that the bowl is standing on a non slippery surface as well. I made that mistake once....... messy mistake....

 

[sophie1]

I leave out raw food for my cats using the ice pack method. I actually got the Frostybowlz for convenience, because it lasts longer and it's easy to set up.  A towel around an ice pack works fine though.  I also bought a styrofoam round shape from a plant store to put under the dish, and that helped a lot because floors in apartments or in summer can get quite warm.

The food stays nice and cool, doesn't dry out, and it's not so different from meat on display in a grocery store.  It's fine for a good 24 hours or even a bit longer.  However, I prefer to do this only with HPP foods or meats bought from places like Hare Today, where it's frozen immediately after processing and hasn't already spent several days on display.

That said, I'm thinking about switching to timed meals because one of my cats has developed a tendency to scarf down food and then hork it up on the carpet.  It helps to put small bowls upside down in the dish but that's such a pain.  The problem is that I'd have to feed them three times a day to keep the portions small enough to prevent regurgitation, and that's nearly impossible to do regularly because I travel a lot.  No easy answers!

 

[abbyntim]

Like some of the others, we are gone all day but don't leave food out. Tim would scarf it all up and leave nothing for Abby and nothing for later. We feed timed meals three times a day: 1) when we get up in the morning, 2) when we arrive home in the evening (the first one to arrive does the feeding), and 3) a small snack right before bed.

If we know we won't be able to provide the evening meal for more than 13 hours or so after the morning meal, we set up timed feeders with ice packs. This requires some planning, as we need to measure out the portions and freeze them. Where I live, it's warm pretty much all year and setting food out in the morning frozen makes me feel better. We use two CatMate 20 feeders and set them to open at about the time we would normally arrive home. We do have to separate the cats, however, otherwise Tim would eat it all.

I am not sure what we would do if we left the cats just overnight. When we fed dry, it was no problem. We've talked about options and I think I would use the CatMate 20 feeders and put frozen raw in one side for dinner and unrehydrated freeze-dried raw in the other side for breakfast the next day. I would make sure to extra-hydrate the cats' food before and after. I would not want to board for one night. And Tim is so shy I don't think he would come out from under the bed for a pet-sitter, though we haven't ruled out trying that for just overnight.