Messy Raw fed long haired kitten

[melissa43lavender]

I am new to this site and new to raw feeding. I have done a lot of reading on the different websites for raw and decided to start feeding my Ragdoll kitten raw. He currently loves the Vital Essentials frozen raw, but still discovering new raw companies to try. The main reason I decided to switch to raw is that our new ragdoll kitten ( currently 6 months ) Nimbus had horrible runny smelly poops since we got him. It would get all over his fur and paws, besides having to give him butt baths almost every day I was worried about him becoming dehydrated. Took him to a vet who ran all the tests and did deworming. Everything came back normal and when asked what to do the vet didn’t have much to say except to use fortiflora and that some cats just have a sensitive stomachs. Several weeks later on fortiflora not much had changed and desperately wanting a solution I started researching raw. I decided to give it a try and within a couple days on 100% raw his poops became normal and his energy levels increased. The only problem I am having is that his long neck fur gets soaked with the blood from the raw food and while I am not scared of Nimbus getting sick from the commercial raw food it does make me worried for my family petting his fur and coming into contact with any Bacteria his neck fur picked up. I am trying to figure out how to solve this problem because it’s obvious how well Nimbus is doing on the raw food. My question is has anyone thought about this or experienced this or is my cat the only one who is so into his raw food that he comes away from the bowl looking like he really did kill his food. Thank you for any insights for a raw newbie.

 

[LTS3]

Commerical raw food doesn't have much blood when defrosted, at least not the brands I feed. You can try a small baby bib to keep raw food juice from getting on the fur during meal time. Elevating the bowl may help keep the kitten from stretching the neck down into the bowl and getting fur into the food.

 

[melissa43lavender]

Yea, I use hot water to take the chill out of the raw food for him and help with water intake. I think that is part of the problem. I was thinking little bibs might work, I didn’t think about elevating the bowl, that sounds like a great idea to try.