The search for the best nutrition ,,

[buteman]

My wife and I have a new family member ,, Henrietta, a ten week old female Ragdoll. As her caregiver I plan to provide her with the very best of care, cost will never be a factor when it comes to her health and nutrition.

Nutrition ,,, one could spend a lifetime trying to digest ( pardon the pun ) all that has been written regarding nutrition for our feline companions. So many varied opinions from vets. and lay persons and trying to find a " middle of the road " scenario that I would be comfortable with is very difficult indeed.

At this writing I have made some decisions that I do feel comfortable with regarding her food, no milk of course, absolutely no kibble,and no canned cat food that contains by-products.

I took her to the local vet's clinic last week, while waiting to see the doctor the receptionist showed us the line of " premium feline food ", Hill's " Science Diet " that the office sold. I know the product and quite simply it's garbage ,, a bit of a strong word perhaps but that is my opinion.

Pork by-products, that was listed first in the canned kitten food ,, I have almost fifty years in the meat trade industry and I can assure you that I'm quite familiar with " animal by-products ".

In case you may be interested meat by-products in canned pet food contain mechanically deboned meat ,, disgusting product that is processed by a centrifuge machine that extracts all meat and body fluids from animal waste.

Also meat by-products can include, stomach, spleen, spinal cords and fluids, brain matter and certain other parts.

I have to much respect for my little cuddly Ragdoll to feed her food with the aforementioned ingredients.

At this time we feed her the highest quality canned food we can obtain and we also make sure she has a regular supply of fresh bottled water.

I am most interested in hearing from anyone who has their cat on the raw diet that so many are recommending these days.

Thank you.

 

[peaches08]

I'm a raw feeder and wish I could get things like spleen, thymus, heart, and etc. For now, I feed according to www.catinfo.org using the chicken thighs recipe. My cats look and feel great!

I've added beef in the past and hope to try pork next. I'm a poor nursing student so I do what I can and when I can. However, feeding just thighs as far as a meat source isn't the worst thing in the world.

 

[lilin]

Is that her in your avatar? What a cutie! More pictures?

It's awesome that you're so dedicated to doing the best for her. Awesome, and welcome!

Believe it or not, your kitty may well like and need some of those weird body parts in by-products. The issue, to me, is more than it's not a balanced food for cats, it's cooked, and it's probably coming from a very unhealthy animal and a very unhealthy process.

Cats need the whole animal when eating raw: meat, organ, and bones, in the correct proportion. If one of those things is missing, there will be nutritional deficiencies. Even if all of them are there, the wrong kinds of pray can also cause problems (for example, it's not good for a cat to eat nothing but rabbit because it doesn't have enough taurine, or tons fish, which many cats have allergy and toxicity problems with.).

I worry more than some of the people here about contamination, given that human meat handling is so different from wild-caught prey, and also about my own ability to get everything in the right proportion in a home-made diet. Also, I'm simply pressed for time, as a single adult.

So for me, the best of all possible worlds was feeding commercially prepared raw food that's been treated with HPP (pressurizing, which kills bacteria but leaves nutrients intact).

I use Primal and Nature's Variety frozen raw. The majority of their foods have relatively high fat to protein ratios in the typical batch, so I keep rabbit as one of the staples, which has very high protein and low fat, in order to balance everything out. I also feed chicken, pheasant, quail, and once in a while, a bit of beef, simply because she likes it. But I try to stick to animals that she might naturally be able to catch and eat herself (and beef is the only "unnatural" meat that she will eat).

And as surprising as this may seem, this is actually cheaper than top-of-the-line wet foods. Overall, the cost of feeding her these is about the same as a mid-range wet food, like Fancy Feast.

Pia was a healthy cat to begin with, but I've noticed since she's been on raw, her feces don't really smell, and her coat is less oily. She also just plain likes it better than she ever liked wet food.

 

[ldg]

Welcome to TCS, and congrats on your beautiful new kitty! I wish I'd done my research on feline nutrition rather than just listening to the vet when we rescued our first cat. I love him dearly, he is awesome. ...but not when it comes to cat nutrition. But what's done is done, and here we are. :rub:

I didn't get involved in cat nutrition until we rescued one very sick kitty and our traditional vets couldn't help resolve his horrible diarrhea. We found a holistic vet, who recommended we put him on a raw diet. Well, I wasn't having any of that, I was scared of pathogens and didn't think I could afford commercial raw for 8 cats. It took me a year of research and a kitty with cancer before I decided to feed raw. And then, like Lilin, I used the commercial raw foods treated with High Pressure Processing. At first.

But in our case, the Nature's Variety turned out to have too much bone in it for our cats (they target 15%). (Too much bone makes kitties constipated - though what is "too much" varies for each cat). They hated Primal and they hated Nature's Menu foods, and they weren't big fans of Vital Essentials (which now has rabbit!) So NV was it. If you can afford shipping, there are a LOT of options. :nod:

I decided to feed them a meal of plain meat to "thin out" the bone content of the NV (on the advice of TCS members). I wasn't as scared of "raw" and "pathogens" at that point... I fed them a meal of just chicken breast. They loved it, and several of my boys had no more interest in ground food at that point. So I had to scramble quickly to learn how to feed prey model raw. (Honestly, it really isn't that difficult, and you also have time to learn as you go, because nutritional deficiencies take time to develop, and if someone decides to feed PMR, you'll figure it out before anything dire happens, certainly. One thing I've learned through all of this - cats are not delicate creatures that "break" easily!) ...but I was still scared of feeding them bones, so I followed in the footsteps of another TCS member, and devised a "boneless" prey model raw diet. She did it because her cats have IBD and were sensitive to bone (including bone meal for one of them). Of course, I later introduced bones, and they do just fine with them. They love crunching them, and they'd been chewing chunks of meat for a while, so I knew their jaw strength was better than when they were just licking up canned food....

At this point I feed my cats a real hodge podge of raw. :lol3: They eat a wide variety of proteins (chicken breast, chicken thigh, chicken hearts, turkey breast, turkey thigh, turkey hearts, goat, rabbit, whole quail, cornish hens & innards, duck hearts, beef - various cuts, beef kidney, sometimes beef pancreas, lamb - various cuts, llama, pork - various cuts - they've even had ground mouse and ground cavie (guinea pig)... I've tried others, but they don't like duck meat or pheasant). So they get a lot of different proteins and a lot of different parts of those animals. Variety really is the key to feeding homemade raw. And if using commercial, I still advocate for variety, and recommend people rotate different brands. :nod:

I feed them bone; I also use eggshell as a source of calcium, and I use freeze dried bone as a source of calcium. I do this by mainly feeding boneless PMR, but providing a couple of bone-in meals a week. I alternate between eggshell and freeze dried bone every two weeks.

I feed them boneless prey model raw; a few bone-in meals, and whole ground animal at four meals a week.

My kitties get variety in everything. :lol3:

I buy whole ground animal from http://www.hare-today.com. I want to source some organs from http://www.mypetcarnivore.com, but their shipping is a little prohibitive to where I live. Many people use these suppliers exclusively, and add the supplement Alnutrin to make the whole ground animal mixes complete and balanced - just to account for loss of nutrients from grinding, freezeing, dethawing, refreezing, etc.

For me, I like using it as only part of their diet, because I like them chewing "whole" food - they love it and it's good for their teeth and gums. :nod: (And several of my boys are really picky about ground food now. ). So I don't want ground to be all they get. But I like using the ground whole animal, because then they get the whole animal, which means they get all the stuff they'd be missing with using exclusively PMR. And I can't get all those organs into them otherwise. The organs I can easily source are liver and kidney, and I prefer that they get more than just that. (The PMR guidelines are 80% meat, 10% bone, 5% liver, and 5% other secreting organ).

My cancer survivor doesn't like any organs, so he doesn't get any. He gets just meat balanced with the supplement by Wysong, Call of the Wild. It makes just meat complete and balanced. He's almost 15 months into remission after completing chemotherapy for a "massive mass" (large cell lymphoma) in his stomach (when diagnosed, he was given 4 weeks to live). Oh - FYI, average length of remission is nine months. Obviously I believe his carbohydrate-free, minimally processed, fresh food diet has contributed to his long remission, knock wood. :heart2: :cross:

As most of them don't like green tripe, I provide them daily probiotics. I give them omega 3s in the form of salmon or krill oil. They also get canned sardines as a "treat" (though it's an essential part of their diet for vitamin D and the omega 3s). I also use the whole ground animal mixes to get egg yolks in them (part of their hairball prevention; egg yolks are also very nutritious, and provide choline, vitamin D, and more omega 3s).

Since starting raw, they are HAPPIER. I wasn't expecting that. I have 8 rescued feral cats living in a small space (an RV). They're indoor only. They all get along pretty well - but within just a few days of switching to raw, they all seemed less... cranky. :lol3: Their coats are so silky soft, it's hard to keep our hands off them. Even the regular local vet - who isn't pro raw or anti-raw - noticed the difference (and they'd been on a high quality canned food diet for a year prior to switching to raw). They have more energy. The 11 year old kitty that sleeps most of the day is a kitty that isn't on raw. :lol3: So yes, they take more work on raw food from that perspective. We do have to play with them more.

They no longer drink water - yet their pee volume went up. :nod: The vet always marvels at how hydrated they are. Basically, our bodies need water to perform all its internal functions. Her theory is that not only is the moisture content of the diet so much higher, because it is all so bioavailable to them, it requires less water to process everything. :dk:

...and that's why they have such small volume of stool that has no smell. Even the difference between canned and raw stool is stark. :nod:

So if you want a happy, no-smell, low-volume pooping, high-volume peeing, energetic, healthy kitty that will likely have less problems with her teeth and gums, will likely not have problems with her bladder, and later in life be more likely to have healthy liver and kidneys, I would definitely suggest exploring a raw diet.

BTW - there's no need to choose one or the other. Many people feed canned with some raw. Or raw with some canned meals. You can also feed canned and just give her some chicken wings or gizzards to chomp occasionally for her teeth. Anything fed under 15% of her total diet doesn't need to be supplemented - so you can also just treat her to raw "treats."

 

[mrsgreenjeens]

Gosh, what can I add to Laurie's post, except, come on over to our Raw Forum!  It's here:  http://www.thecatsite.com/f/65/raw-feeding-for-cats

Even those of us who feed raw still have questions, or just want reassurances (me!

), so we have our own forum.  Here's another thread that can keep you busy for weeks learning all about raw:  http://www.thecatsite.com/t/240809/raw-feeding-resource-thread

Just wanted to add that my own little Callie was initially called Henrietta when we first adopted her, but we changed her name.   Your little one is only the 2nd cat I've ever heard of with that name.  She's adorable

 

[buteman]

Rewarding reading all the replies, I'm most grateful for everyone's input, I just had to mention a wee bit from the past regarding our kitten's name.

As a wee boy growing up on a small island off the west coast of Scotland life was simply carefree and wonderful. So much to see and do and a beautiful island very rich in history that I spent so much time exploring.

It was a sheltered place with a very mild climate ,, cats ,, well we had quite a few of them but one in particular was a beautiful black and white tabby, for whatever reason that lovely cat never did have a name.

My Mum called her " hen " which back in my native Scotland is a term of endearment for females ,, as we here in North America use the term " honey ".

And Hen, was quite amazing ,, a very affectionate cat ,, loved everyone ,, my Mum gave her a little food ( mostly fish ) and plenty of milk ( which Hen loved ). In the evening, at bedtime out went Hen to spend the night hunting and early the next morning she would be sitting on the window sill tapping the window to come in.

There was no vet on the island, Hen was never dewormed nor did she ever have any shots, I remember her so well, her coat was so soft and shiny and she purred so loud when you cuddled her.

Of course there was nobody telling you milk was " bad " for cats or they " must be dewormed and have shots " dear old Hen lived to quite an old age ,, she went out one night and never returned.

I spent the longest time hiking through the woods behind our home calling her but we never saw her again.

The island was so rich in wildlife I'm of the opinion that a fox took Hen ,, anyway we decided that our lovely wee Ragdoll should be named Henrietta ,,, around our home my wife and I call her " Hen " ,,

 

[mrsgreenjeens]

What a lovely tribute to the original Hen! 

 

[ldg]

:heart2: I love that story - though I can just imagine the heartbreak at her disappearance.

I agree with Sally, what a lovely tribute. :heart3: