New Cats New Diet

[sailfish]

We bought two cats from a breeder about a year ago and was introduced to Raw Diet. We fed them raw faithfully for about 8 months. Our cats were constantly sick. Today I don't blame the diet. I would rather think that the slob breeder we got the cats from was responsible for the gremlins that came along with the cats. Parasites were just one of the problems. We had to srynge medicine into the mouths of our cats over and over. This DID have a negative effect on the disposition of our cats. We bought a third cat from a different breeder that was fanatical about cleanliness. We had to scrub like a surgeon before entering the cattery. I was so impressed with the way thiings looked and smelled. When we got the kitten home the first thing I looked at was his stools. They were perfect.
A week later that all changed and the kittens health seemed to be going down the same road as the first two and now had to treat all three cats for parasites. This was the end of the road and something had to be done. We stopped the raw and fed with Wellness kibble. The cats had chronic diarea for weeks and weeks. I then switched out to grocery store food and the problem disapeared. It took us a full year to get it right. Our first two cats are 13 months and the kitten is 6 months. We now feed them Purina 1 in the morning and in the afternoon they get pan fried ground chicken or boiled chicken breast. We have 3 healthy cats today. Any thoughts on the new diet?

 

[jlphilli]

It seems like your cats didn't do well on raw. Were they getting any bones in their meals (source of calcium)? Were they getting a multi-vitamin or organ meat? If they weren't getting bones or organ meat (or vitamins) that could have been the culprit--it could have caused anemia which would make them suceptible to parasites, etc. But now that they are doing well on the dry, I would just stick with that

Foods like Purina One have stool hardeners (beet pulp) in them which is good for hardening stools with cats that are prone to diarrhea.

 

[sailfish]

Plenty of raw bone and organ meat in the Omas we fed them. The stools they had on the raw diet were to celebrate about. Tiny hard white non smelly stools. I don't think the raw diet was to blame for the parasites. I think they came with the sick cats we got. If I had to do it all over again I would have avoided the breeder with what I know today. Switching them off the raw was a desprite attempt to right a situation that seemed to be impossible. In an attempt to keep the cats on a holistic diet we went to the Wellness pellets. From what I can tell today these pellets were just too tough for the cats to digest. We tried giving them canned pumkin. It worked great. But as soon as we stopped the pumpkin it was back to loose stools. We give them fresh cooked chicken today to Halve the consumtion of kibble and to boost their intake of protien from animal. And they like it. We saute the ground chicken in EVOO with no salt. I guess my concern at this point is the chicken and EVOO ok for the cats?