Want to feed raw but have questions

[maxncole]

Hello. I am new to the site and I am hoping to get some advice. A little background information first, one of my cats was diagnosed with struvite crystals a few months ago and is now on the Science Diet c/d dry food. I don't like this food and I know many feel the same way. I have been trying to get him to eat canned food but it has been a struggle. I was getting him to eat a quarter of a 5.5oz can of By Nature Organics every day but lately he just won't eat it at all or will only take a few licks. Before he had the crystals he was eating some dry food (Orijen) and Stella & Chewy's freeze dried raw. He loved the S&C and it was the only "wet food" he would eat and it made me so happy he wasn't eating only dry food. After the crystals I wrote to the company to get the phosphorus and magnesium content and found out the magnesium content was high in the one he ate the most, the chicken, so I do not feel comfortable feeding him this food again.

Just recently I went out of town and was able to get 1 oz. samples of Rad Cat for him to try and he really liked the chicken and turkey and ate some of the lamb so after trying this and him liking the S&C freeze dried raw so much I am thinking that raw is the way to go to get him on a better diet with a lot of moisture. The problem is I don't know where to start exactly. I live in a small town so I would have to order any raw food I wanted to get. Rad Cat is a bit expensive for me to feed exclusively and I was hoping to get some advice on other options. I am not totally against making it at home but it makes me a little nervous I might do something wrong and I don't want to make my cat sick.

Any advice anyone could give me would be appreciated. Anyone who orders Rad Cat and knows where and how to get a good price or advice on other raw that can be ordered that is more budget friendly would be very helpful. Sorry this is so long, I tried to get to the point. Forgive me if I left anything out. Thank you so much for reading and I appreciate any advice I can get.

Also, my cat has Feline Herpes Virus and had a little flare up recently with his eye, do I need to be concerned about feeding raw to him because of the FHV?

 

[ritz]

Welcome to The Cat Site, and good for your for considering Raw.

Last question first:  no, you don't need to be concerned about feeding him raw because of the FHV.  Are you giving him L-lysine?

In lieu of ordering food, you could simply feed him (raw) meat/poultry ("protein"), liver and a non-secreting organ like kidney, and bone.

Alternatively, you can order 'commercial raw' (S&C and Rad Cat are just two of the commercial raw products).  Hare Today also sells ground protein with the appropriate amounts of organs and bones.  My Pet Carnivore is also a good place to get raw food.  Hare Today is based on the east coats; MPC, mid west.  Keep that in mind for shipping costs.

If you haven't aready done so, check out TCS' raw feeding resources . 

Also, check out http://www.catinfo.org/?link=cannedfoods#Commercial_Foods, which towards the end lists phosphorus and magnesium content for raw food.  For information on how to make your own food, see also www.catinfo.org.

Good luck and keep us posted on the progress.

 

[peaches08]

You could also look into premixes that you add to meat. Depending on which premix you buy, you may have to add liver. Just cut up meat, add premix and water, and freeze/serve.

Alnutrin, Better In The Raw, and TC Feline are good premixes.

 

[vball91]

One other easy (and fairly inexpensive depending on your meat costs) is to feed grocery bought meat (not pre-ground), slice it up, and add something like Wysong's Call of the Wild. That's assuming your cat will eat chunks/slices of meat, so you may want to try it first. As long as the raw is less than 15% of his total diet, you don't have to worry about balancing or supplementing it.

Are you testing his urine pH at home? If his urine pH is normal, then I personally wouldn't worry about the magnesium level too much, especially if you're going to be feeding the S&C in rotation with other foods. My research shows that higher magnesium is only a concern if urine pH is too high. If urine pH is normal, then lots of moisture is important to keep the system flushed out. Have you had a follow-up urinalysis done to see if the struvites have been dissolved and flushed yet?

Raw meat is a naturally acidifying diet. However, if his urine pH is still high, you could add methionine to his diet temporarily. That's the active ingredient in c/d and s/d that works for struvites. You would definitely need to test his pH at home though to ensure it doesn't go too low.

 

[ldg]

Hi and welcome to TCS!

One other easy (and fairly inexpensive depending on your meat costs) is to feed grocery bought meat (not pre-ground), slice it up, and add something like Wysong's Call of the Wild. That's assuming your cat will eat chunks/slices of meat, so you may want to try it first. As long as the raw is less than 15% of his total diet, you don't have to worry about balancing or supplementing it.

Are you testing his urine pH at home? If his urine pH is normal, then I personally wouldn't worry about the magnesium level too much, especially if you're going to be feeding the S&C in rotation with other foods. My research shows that higher magnesium is only a concern if urine pH is too high. If urine pH is normal, then lots of moisture is important to keep the system flushed out. Have you had a follow-up urinalysis done to see if the struvites have been dissolved and flushed yet?

Raw meat is a naturally acidifying diet. However, if his urine pH is still high, you could add methionine to his diet temporarily. That's the active ingredient in c/d and s/d that works for struvites. You would definitely need to test his pH at home though to ensure it doesn't go too low.

This is how I manage Spooky's FLUTD. I keep track of her urine pH with these test strips:
They're the only ones that track in 0.25 increments.

Whenever her urine pH bumps up, I use a little Solgar L-Methionine (I buy the 500mg capsules, and sprinkle 1/4 capsule on her late night meal, because that's the meal that is longest until she eats again). If that doesn't take care of it after a day or two, I bump that to twice a day. When she was at her worst, I gave her the vet recommended amount (which we proved DOES dissolve struvite stones!), 500mg three times a day (which was convenient, because we feed 3x a day).

I have three boys that blocked at one time or another, and before switching to raw, everyone was eating c/d dry and wet. They loved it, but we then rescued a kitty that couldn't tolerate the food. His vet insisted we go to all canned, grain-free food, and that's when I started learning about feline nutrition. So the first thing we did was move to timed meals, all wet food. My cats also hated the higher end canned foods.

For us, the hardest part, actually, was the switch to timed meals, and pulling the dry they grazed on. I did it in stages - I pulled the dry food bowls during the day at first. I had to feed them many small meals at first (thank goodness I work from home), and then slowly drop a meal, and gradually increase the amount per meal. Used to grazing, they just didn't eat enough at any one meal at first.

Anyway, the boys with crystal/blockage problems previously had no issues with crystals on the low-carb wet food (grain free) only diet. (It' s not just grain-free that matters, the food also has to be low carb, because carbs increase urine pH. And once they're producing struvites, the struvites themselves keep the pH higher. ). And they're doing great on raw. FYI, they were still drinking a little bit of water when on canned. They pretty much all stopped drinking water on raw, but their urine output is still more than it was on canned. (And their poop volume is a LOT less on raw - with no smell at all).

So they ate canned food only for about a year, and then we transitioned to raw.

But as vball91 says, the raw diet helps target the proper urine pH, so I never worried about the phosphorus or magnesium in the diet.

Spooky was the exception. But she's very highly strung, so her body making struvites isn't so much food related as it is stress-related. Here is her journey - starting from shortly after we switched to raw: http://www.thecatsite.com/t/255176/spookys-crystals-cystitis-back-at-the-vet


*************************************

I feed my kitties a mix of ground meat/bone/organs (whole animal without the guts) from Hare Today ( https://www.hare-today.com/index.php?cPath=21 ) and mostly homemade boneless prey model raw. I use eggshell powder to balance the meat with calcium; I use liver and kidney for organs; and I feed them egg yolk (mixed into the ground food) and sardines to round out the diet.

I don't know where you live, but the Hare Today meat/bone/organ ground animal frozen raw foods mixed with alnutrin are quite inexpensive - even with shipping to most places in the U.S. - compared to something like Rad Cat.

 

[maxncole]

Welcome to The Cat Site, and good for your for considering Raw.

Last question first:  no, you don't need to be concerned about feeding him raw because of the FHV.  Are you giving him L-lysine?

In lieu of ordering food, you could simply feed him (raw) meat/poultry ("protein"), liver and a non-secreting organ like kidney, and bone.

Alternatively, you can order 'commercial raw' (S&C and Rad Cat are just two of the commercial raw products).  Hare Today also sells ground protein with the appropriate amounts of organs and bones.  My Pet Carnivore is also a good place to get raw food.  Hare Today is based on the east coats; MPC, mid west.  Keep that in mind for shipping costs.

If you haven't aready done so, check out TCS' raw feeding resources . 

Also, check out http://www.catinfo.org/?link=cannedfoods#Commercial_Foods, which towards the end lists phosphorus and magnesium content for raw food.  For information on how to make your own food, see also www.catinfo.org.

Good luck and keep us posted on the progress.

Thank you for replying. I am giving him L-lysine and boosted it up recently because of his eye. I will be checking out all of the links. I see Hare Today is in PA and I am in PA so that sounds like an option. Thank you for all the links.

You could also look into premixes that you add to meat. Depending on which premix you buy, you may have to add liver. Just cut up meat, add premix and water, and freeze/serve.

Alnutrin, Better In The Raw, and TC Feline are good premixes.

Thank you for your reply. I will look into those.

One other easy (and fairly inexpensive depending on your meat costs) is to feed grocery bought meat (not pre-ground), slice it up, and add something like Wysong's Call of the Wild. That's assuming your cat will eat chunks/slices of meat, so you may want to try it first. As long as the raw is less than 15% of his total diet, you don't have to worry about balancing or supplementing it.

Are you testing his urine pH at home? If his urine pH is normal, then I personally wouldn't worry about the magnesium level too much, especially if you're going to be feeding the S&C in rotation with other foods. My research shows that higher magnesium is only a concern if urine pH is too high. If urine pH is normal, then lots of moisture is important to keep the system flushed out. Have you had a follow-up urinalysis done to see if the struvites have been dissolved and flushed yet?

Raw meat is a naturally acidifying diet. However, if his urine pH is still high, you could add methionine to his diet temporarily. That's the active ingredient in c/d and s/d that works for struvites. You would definitely need to test his pH at home though to ensure it doesn't go too low.

Thank you for your reply. I'll have to try out some sliced up chicken with him since I just bought some. So far the only raw he has had is the Rad Cat. Is grocery bought meat fine as long as it is not ground? I could probably try turkey or beef as well. Might be able to find something else.

I haven't tested his pH lately but I was regularly right after he was diagnosed with the crystals. I have had two follow-ups done and the second one showed the crystals had been dissolved and flushed out completely. Although he is due for one now to make sure he is still crystal free, but he has been urinating fine. Sometimes he can be difficult with not wanting to use the litter box in front of me but I've been giving him treats and praising him when he does and he's been doing it more often so hopefully I'll be able to start collecting some urine from him again to test.

Hi and welcome to TCS!

This is how I manage Spooky's FLUTD. I keep track of her urine pH with these test strips:
They're the only ones that track in 0.25 increments.

Whenever her urine pH bumps up, I use a little Solgar L-Methionine (I buy the 500mg capsules, and sprinkle 1/4 capsule on her late night meal, because that's the meal that is longest until she eats again). If that doesn't take care of it after a day or two, I bump that to twice a day. When she was at her worst, I gave her the vet recommended amount (which we proved DOES dissolve struvite stones!), 500mg three times a day (which was convenient, because we feed 3x a day).

I have three boys that blocked at one time or another, and before switching to raw, everyone was eating c/d dry and wet. They loved it, but we then rescued a kitty that couldn't tolerate the food. His vet insisted we go to all canned, grain-free food, and that's when I started learning about feline nutrition. So the first thing we did was move to timed meals, all wet food. My cats also hated the higher end canned foods.

For us, the hardest part, actually, was the switch to timed meals, and pulling the dry they grazed on. I did it in stages - I pulled the dry food bowls during the day at first. I had to feed them many small meals at first (thank goodness I work from home), and then slowly drop a meal, and gradually increase the amount per meal. Used to grazing, they just didn't eat enough at any one meal at first.

Anyway, the boys with crystal/blockage problems previously had no issues with crystals on the low-carb wet food (grain free) only diet. (It' s not just grain-free that matters, the food also has to be low carb, because carbs increase urine pH. And once they're producing struvites, the struvites themselves keep the pH higher.

). And they're doing great on raw. FYI, they were still drinking a little bit of water when on canned. They pretty much all stopped drinking water on raw, but their urine output is still more than it was on canned. (And their poop volume is a LOT less on raw - with no smell at all).

So they ate canned food only for about a year, and then we transitioned to raw.

But as vball91 says, the raw diet helps target the proper urine pH, so I never worried about the phosphorus or magnesium in the diet.

Spooky was the exception. But she's very highly strung, so her body making struvites isn't so much food related as it is stress-related. Here is her journey - starting from shortly after we switched to raw: http://www.thecatsite.com/t/255176/spookys-crystals-cystitis-back-at-the-vet


*************************************

I feed my kitties a mix of ground meat/bone/organs (whole animal without the guts) from Hare Today ( https://www.hare-today.com/index.php?cPath=21 ) and mostly homemade boneless prey model raw. I use eggshell powder to balance the meat with calcium; I use liver and kidney for organs; and I feed them egg yolk (mixed into the ground food) and sardines to round out the diet.

I don't know where you live, but the Hare Today meat/bone/organ ground animal frozen raw foods mixed with alnutrin are quite inexpensive - even with shipping to most places in the U.S. - compared to something like Rad Cat.

Thank you for replying and all of the detailed information. I will have to get some of those test strips as the ones I have are now expired and those look better.

He doesn't get dry food to graze on, only a certain amount at specific times but the wet food is left out in hopes he'll eat it but lately he hasn't.

I briefly looked at the Hare Today website and that looks like a great place to get ground meat. Also, I'm in PA so that is good.

Are there any meats that seem to go over well with most cats? I know all cats are different but was wondering if some things seem to go over better than others.

 

[vball91]

You can use any grocery meat as long as it's not pre-ground or enhanced with a flavor/sodium solution (you can tell because sodium content will be less than 100mg per serving).

Most cats seem to like pork, except for my picky eater, so it's really hard to say. Some cats love chicken. Some love beef. You will have to try it and see, but don't get discouraged if he doesn't eat it at first. Sometimes it takes a while to recognize raw as good food although if he likes Rad Cat, you might not have an issue with meat chunks/strips. Good luck!

 

[pinkman]

Most cats seem to like pork, except for my picky eater, so it's really hard to say. Some cats love chicken. Some love beef. You will have to try it and see, but don't get discouraged if he doesn't eat it at first. Sometimes it takes a while to recognize raw as good food although if he likes Rad Cat, you might not have an issue with meat chunks/strips. Good luck!

I'm pretty sure this has been said already, but just chiming in that using a topper can go a long way! Also, when I first fed my cat meat chunks I lightly seared it before giving it to her. She was hooked!

Good luck.

 

[maxncole]

Thank you for all of the replies. I am going to keep looking into this and see what he will eat. Hopefully it works out.