Starting homemade raw diet

[Baya08]

I have an almost sixteen year old with IBD that has very likely progressed to lymphoma. She's also toothless now. She was suffering through painful tooth resorption for a couple of years that came to a head last fall when she wouldn't eat her canned anymore and the only way I could keep her eating until her dentist appointment (because her vets no longer wanted to work with her remaining teeth and insisted I take her to a dental specialist) was homemade raw. I bought a manual grinder off Amazon for $40 so I don't have to worry about jaw strength or dental health for that matter.

When I was making turkey, I would use thigh meat, liver, and heart. To that, I added seaweed calcium since she can't do bone meal or eggshell. I also add vitamin E, kelp powder (iodine), taurine, and gelatin which helps make it a slurpable texture and also provides lots of gut-healing collagens. I have since switched her to rabbit because she wasn't digesting turkey very well anymore.

With rabbit, I use thigh meat, liver, and kidneys. For some reason, the fryers I buy don't have hearts. It takes two fryer rabbits to get one pound of leg meat. That's so expensive that she doesn't get this full-time. I portion it out to fat ounce bags (about 30'ish grams per bag) and I get about 20 bags out of a 1 lb batch. 1 bag would be about a day's worth or two half ounce meals.

But right now, I can't get gloves and the box that I was finally able to get off Amazon needs to be conserved for her chemotherapy medicine. Butchering rabbits and making food uses a surprisingly large number of gloves to prevent cross-contamination for an immune-suppressed cat. Any time I touch a surface that's not the rabbits or the knives (or the cutting board), those gloves are done and need to be changed.

Because she's old and her digestion doesn't work like it used to and because she has IBD and/or lymphoma robbing her of calories, she gets two 5.5 oz cans of Rawz Rabbit Pate (not low quality or price) per day split across 8 meals--a little more than an ounce of food (35 - 37 grams) every three hours except on the overnight where I put out timed feeders so that I can get some sleep. There's no way I could keep up with 11 oz of raw per day. Well, more like 10 oz. Because she's toothless, the plate keeps its share and so does the carpet.

Wow that seems like alot of work bravo to you! I hope your kitty will be alright,wishing you both an even longer happier life together

 

[everariana]

I jumped right in the first time and made the recipe exactly as one of the sites said to. Krista couldn't be bothered with it after one bite.

From that point, I made several micro-batches (1 lbs at a time) starting with one ingredient at a time. Obviously she likes the meat because I'd cut her off slices while I was processing it. The first micro-batch was meat, liver, and calcium supplement. She liked that. And I staged in one ingredient at a time. I came to learn two things. First, she has a definite preference for leg meat, specifically thigh meat. But more importantly, she does not like the B vitamins that smell like feet. I can get maybe 1/4 of a B-50 into 1 lbs of meat before she turns away. But my homemade raw has never been a majority of her diet (except for a few weeks last year when she wouldn't eat anything else until her dentist appointment.)

Count on it being a refinement process trying to stick as close to the recipe as your furkids will accept. This is why I recommend keeping canned in the majority until you know the recipe that they like. You may have to keep some canned in anyway to balance out what they don't like. I can't give Krista eggs because she has an allergy to them and she doesn't like the B's. So, if I can ever get a regular supply of gloves again, the homemade for her will be treat meals once or twice a day with canned filling out the rest of her diet.

I 100% agree regarding keeping canned in their diet. I've had a few recipes/meats that just weren't successful with my cats, so having them still on canned (their normal diet is raw for breakfast & dinner, canned for lunch) made it easy to make sure they ate some food during the nights when they refused raw. For example, I've been transitioning my cats from chicken to raw, supplemented boneless turkey thigh & organs for the past couple of weeks. They would always eat up the turkey first. But a few days after I stopped transitioning them and they were eating full turkey meals, one of my cats refused to eat the turkey after days of loving it. I had no other raw meat left but he's been eating his canned as a replacement with no issue. And that also let me know that he still had an appetite, and not a health issue that had a symptom of him not eating.

 

[Baya08]

I 100% agree regarding keeping canned in their diet. I've had a few recipes/meats that just weren't successful with my cats, so having them still on canned (their normal diet is raw for breakfast & dinner, canned for lunch) made it easy to make sure they ate some food during the nights when they refused raw. For example, I've been transitioning my cats from chicken to raw, supplemented boneless turkey thigh & organs for the past couple of weeks. They would always eat up the turkey first. But a few days after I stopped transitioning them and they were eating full turkey meals, one of my cats refused to eat the turkey after days of loving it. I had no other raw meat left but he's been eating his canned as a replacement with no issue. And that also let me know that he still had an appetite, and not a health issue that had a symptom of him not eating.

That is exactly what i did, raw for breakfast and dinner,canned as a snack,i’m not only doing it for the meals variety and balance but for their constipation..one of my cats passes stool every 2 days but the other one is on day 4 with no stool today and i’m pretty sure it’s related to the new raw diet because everything else (pee,activity level,appetite) is absolutly normal hopefully the canned food and extra water will help her go

 

[daftcat75]

That is exactly what i did, raw for breakfast and dinner,canned as a snack,i’m not only doing it for the meals variety and balance but for their constipation..one of my cats passes stool every 2 days but the other one is on day 4 with no stool today and i’m pretty sure it’s related to the new raw diet because everything else (pee,activity level,appetite) is absolutly normal hopefully the canned food and extra water will help her go

I add a small amount of psyllium to Krista's canned food. About 1/16th tsp (the "pinch" spoon in the smidgen-pinch-dash set) per 5.5 oz. I transfer the can to another container and then mix the psyllium directly into a can's worth before portioning. You could try adding psyllium to the raw. Psyllium will add stool bulk which may or may not be desirable. You can also try Miralax which is a mild osmotic laxative. It brings water with it into the stool to soften the stool and make it easier to pass. I would try one or the other but not both at the same time. At least not until you have seen how your cats react to each. Search google or thecatsite for dosage recommendations.

 

[SpecterOhPossum]

You're adding water to each serving right? If not, do that!

 

[Baya08]

You're adding water to each serving right? If not, do that!

Yes of course! Everything they eat is always with extra water,my cat was never a big pooper even on canned food and water lol but since switching to raw i noticed her trips to the litter box are alot less frequent unless its for peeing

 

[Baya08]

I add a small amount of psyllium to Krista's canned food. About 1/16th tsp (the "pinch" spoon in the smidgen-pinch-dash set) per 5.5 oz. I transfer the can to another container and then mix the psyllium directly into a can's worth before portioning. You could try adding psyllium to the raw. Psyllium will add stool bulk which may or may not be desirable. You can also try Miralax which is a mild osmotic laxative. It brings water with it into the stool to soften the stool and make it easier to pass. I would try one or the other but not both at the same time. At least not until you have seen how your cats react to each. Search google or thecatsite for dosage recommendations.

Couldn’t find psyllium at my local store unfortuntly and even plain pumpkin is nowhere to be found (people went crazy these days i swear) and i know the sweetened kind is a big no no
I read that plain yogurt in small amounts can help so i tried that for her today,vet recommended a bit of warm milk which i’m too scared to try because i know cats can’t handle lt.
I will get some miralax tomorrow and give it to her if she doesn’t go today

 

[furmonster mom]

Miralax is a common quick remedy, but probably not great for long term.
You can order psyllium online, which is what I had to do recently.

Yeah... definitely stay away from the spiced/sweetened pumpkin.
In lieu of plain canned pumpkin, maybe home steamed acorn squash?

Also, the cats and milk thing is kinda hit or miss. A lot depends on the individual cat. Much like not all humans are lactose intolerant, neither are all cats. Some people point to farm cats that drink milk all the time, but that is usually raw milk that hasn't had the lactase cooked out of it. Lactase is the enzyme that balances out lactulose in raw milk. It gets cooked out during pasteurization, leaving the lactose to run amok and wreak havoc on some peoples (and cats) systems.

 

[Baya08]

Miralax is a common quick remedy, but probably not great for long term.
You can order psyllium online, which is what I had to do recently.

Yeah... definitely stay away from the spiced/sweetened pumpkin.
In lieu of plain canned pumpkin, maybe home steamed acorn squash?

Also, the cats and milk thing is kinda hit or miss. A lot depends on the individual cat. Much like not all humans are lactose intolerant, neither are all cats. Some people point to farm cats that drink milk all the time, but that is usually raw milk that hasn't had the lactase cooked out of it. Lactase is the enzyme that balances out lactulose in raw milk. It gets cooked out during pasteurization, leaving the lactose to run amok and wreak havoc on some peoples (and cats) systems.

Online orders are restricted in my area because of the lockdown but i’ll look into it once it’s over for sure!
I didn’t know about the steamed acorn squash! My cat already passed stool a few hours after i gave her the plain yogurt but if it ever happens again i’ll give it a try
Also,i know that not all cats are lactose intolerant i just didn’t wanna push my luck in case i get a bad case of diarrhea while trying to cure constipation kinda leaving it as a last resort