Need Advice- Cat with allergies, lots of questions.

[kranek]

Hi! I was directed here from another site where I was asking questions about starting a raw diet for my cat Diana. They answered a couple of them, but then sent me over here.
To make it a little easier, I'm just going to copy my post from over there:

"Hi! I've been looking in to a raw diet for my cat Diana for awhile now, as she has a bunch of allergies, and I think I have things partially figured out but I'm unclear on a lot of it and I had a bunch of questions.
Sorry in advance if this ends up getting long- I had a bunch of stuff typed up on a word doc and I'm pretty much copying it over
To begin, I mainly did a comparison of the recipes from "feline-nutrition" and "catinfo." I made a chart of it here.
First, I had some questions about that "80% muscle meat, 5% secreting organ, 5% liver, and 10% bone ratio":

• What all does the 80% include? Just the actual meat, just the meat and heart, or can it include something else?
• Secreting organs- what all are they? I know kidneys and spleen, is there anything else?
  • Do I need to do a certain ratio of each- Ex: with the 5% and kidney + spleen would I need to do 2.5% of each, or could I just do more “random” numbers like 1% kidney and 4% spleen?

I also have some questions about substitutions:

• Diana is allergic to all poultry I’ve tried, so for an initial protein source I think I should start with rabbit, as it seems to be common for this. Her current food is salmon, so I can’t really do that.
• Substituting the rabbit for the chicken, can I just do the amounts directly? The FN recipe calls for 4.5 lbs of chicken, would I just use 4.5 lbs of rabbit meat instead? How would the bone/skin removal ratio work, like they have listed for chicken?
  • Same thing with the organs- Ex can I directly substitute 7oz of rabbit liver for chicken liver?
• Can I just leave out the egg? She has an egg sensitivity. Would I need to substitute anything?
• In making these substitutions, would any of the vitamin amounts change?

Also, with adding in other proteins (eventually):

• How would I eventually go from this being just a rabbit food to eventually being, say, a rabbit + beef food?
• For meat- do I just substitute part of it? Ex 80% rabbit - goes to 40% rabbit and 40% beef.
• Same thing with organs- could beef liver be substituted for rabbit liver directly? Can I split it? 5% rabbit liver goes to 2.5% rabbit and 2.5% beef?

Finally, I had a few other dumb questions:

• I really don’t eat much meat (and really don't understand how it works), so how exactly would I ask a butcher for these things?
  • Do I just say like “I need a rabbit with the liver, heart, (other stuff), etc”
  • I’m still looking at where I would source these things near me as well
• Help with cuts of meat- If I do eventually add beef in, I have literally no idea how cuts of meat work. Are certain cuts better for cats?

Sorry again for the long post! I've been trying to read around online but I keep seeing pretty much the same stuff. I'd also appreciate any other resources that so deeper in detail.
Thank you!!!"


Now, they did answer my question about the percentages, and said that the "80% is any kind of boneless meat. Breasts, thighs, chuck, brisket, loin, tongue, heart, etc etc. Secreting organs include kidneys, spleen, brain, thymus, testicles, ovaries etc."
That's about all I got, though. I'd appreciate any help with my million other questions (sorry this is so long) and any other resources you all have on hand.
Thank you so much!

 

[LTS3]

I feed commercial raw so can't really help with most of your questions.

Instead of a butcher shop, you can buy raw meat and organs for pet food use from a supplier such as Hare-Today.com Independent pet stores may sell chubs of raw meat that you can use as part of a raw recipe.

Some people find that using a pre-mix instead of using a recipe works best for them. Mix meat with the pre-mix and some water then serve or portion out and freeze. Some do contain egg yolk powder. TC Feline does not: https://tcfeline.com/ and has 3 different formulas: original, with beef liver, and with chicken liver.

Take a read through these TCS stickies for more info:

Raw Feeding Resources
Helpful Resources: Raw & Home-Cooked Cat Food Forum

 

[kranek]

I saw Hare-Today listed before, but I never really "trusted" the idea of sending meat through the mail. Turns out they're actually less than 2hrs away from me, and you can go there to pick it up instead of shipping. Neat!

That pre-mix also looks really helpful. I will definitely keep that open as an option.

thank you so much!

 

[Tobermory]

I saw Hare-Today listed before, but I never really "trusted" the idea of sending meat through the mail. Turns out they're actually less than 2hrs away from me, and you can go there to pick it up instead of shipping. Neat!

That pre-mix also looks really helpful. I will definitely keep that open as an option.

thank you so much!

Lucky you! Hare Today has high quality products and is an extremely conscientious and responsive business owner from my experience. I've ordered from them before and even when it's fairly warm out, stuff arrived pretty much frozen. But I'm on the other side of the U.S. and it's just a bit too much with shipping.

You're asking really good questions, but my suggestion is to keep it as simple as possible, at least as you're getting into it. It's a big big time commitment to make cat food so you want to know what you're getting into. So you can start small and work your way up.

One way to do that is to try commercial raw, either frozen or freeze-dried (which you then reconstitute with water). I've used Northwest Naturals, Stella & Chewy, and Primal. I like the ingredients in NW Naturals the best, plus the bone content is lower and less likely to cause constipation.

The second way is to buy the meat and add a pre-mix as LTS3 says. (I've used EZ Complete and Alnutrin with Calcium, neither of which need bone [all of my cats have problems with constipation so I stay away from bone]. The Alnutrin does require the addition of liver. But they both do have egg yolk powder in them.) You can buy the meat from Hare Today, or you can buy whole meat at the butcher and grind it yourself. It's not recommended that you buy pre-ground meat unless you're buying it from a place like HT. Too many surfaces for bacteria to grow when it sits in the case.

I rotate among three proteins for my cats: chicken, turkey, and pork. I've tried rabbit, but they didn't like it, although they ate it. It's too expensive for them to be all "meh" about it! Rabbit is quite lean, generally, so you'd need to be careful with fat content if that's all you feed. I haven't tried beef. No particular reason. Variety of proteins is good for several reasons: it gives you more flexibility if they suddenly decide they don't want a particular food and it helps give variety of fat content. Turkey is very lean, but I feed chicken thighs with some fat. And the pork is more fatty than the turkey.

I use the recipe from catinfo.org with one exception: I substitute homemade eggshell calcium for bone because of the constipation issues I mentioned before. Also, grinding bone takes a heavy duty grinder, and mine doesn't like it too much. According to that website, you can omit the eggs.

Make sure she'll eat raw meat. If she's allergic to poultry, try her on some small pieces of pork or beef. (Although an allergy to poultry doesn't always mean they're allergic to turkey; chicken is more common.) Here's some info about cuts of meat (I can't remember where I found this, so apologies to the author):

Pork butt, often very cheap and very fatty. I mix pork butt with lots of gizzards and chickens breast to lower the fat.​

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Pork loin chops very lean and cheap 2-3x per year. I usually add a little fatty meat, like chicken thighs with the skin.​

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Beef brisket, usually the cheapest beef, particularly Memorial Day and July 4th. It's also the highest fat cut of beef, so I use it sparingly and cut with chicken breast, gizzards and/or leaner beef cuts.​

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Leanest beef = eye of round roast. It's surprisingly low fat, so I'll use up a little chicken with skin or combine with brisket.​

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Also with beef, the grade usually indicates fat content: Select beef is usually low fat, Choice has a little more fat running through the meat, and Prime beef is usually well-marbled with fat. So what we humans like, Prime beef, is most expensive because all the fat tenderizes the meat and adds flavor. Select meat is tougher, chewier, leaner and cheaper...great for kitties!​

Make sure any meat you buy doesn't have preservatives added. Read labels carefully. (A source like HT won't have that problem.) And watch sodium content. If the amount of sodium per serving is less than 100mg, that's safe for your cat. If the amount of sodium per serving is more than that, it will have too much salt for your kitty.

I hope some of this info was helpful! I know I didn't answer a lot of your specific questions, but I've kept my raw feeding pretty simple over the years.

 

[kranek]

I actually have looked at commercial raw in the past, but pretty much every brand has something she's sensitive to in it (just trust me on this- I've been doing the elimination diet thing with her for years now- it's ""fun""). NN has egg and kelp, S&C has pumkin seed, Primal has a whole ton of stuff. Thanks for the suggestion though, I just have a ""difficult"" cat.
That's really why I want to go raw for her- pretty much start over on a clean slate, with a novel protein, and go from there to get her situated. At this point, HT + a pre-mix seems like my best option.

Luckily she's not very picky, with all the food changes I've done throughout her life. She's also the type to "hound" you while you're cooking, so I'm pretty sure she'd be thrilled to finally get some "people food." I do plan to add in a couple more proteins after I get started, though, just in case.

Thanks for all the meat info! Like I said, I eat very little- that cleared some stuff up.

And thanks again for everything- this whole process has been a bit of a journey but everywhere I've asked questions has been really helpful

 

[Tobermory]

I think HT and a pre-mix is a great choice. If I didn’t live on the other side of the country, that’s the way I would have gone. Or you could buy HT and add your own individual supplements, essentially your own pre-mix. Cuts down on the cost and is easy to do. I bought my supplements online from Vitacost, but a lot of people order from iherb. The girls love their homemade food, and the vet always comments on how well they’re doing.