# Raw fed cats?



## ciaBrysh (Dec 16, 2011)

I'm going to be changing my cats to a raw diet in time (once I am more comfortable with the dogs on raw) I was wondering if anyone had any reference links to help me get started? (sort of like the pmr site, that was REALLY helpful!_

Thanks!


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## DaneMama (Jun 27, 2008)

This is the best site I've found that goes in depth for cats only. Very informative and helpful! 

Raw Fed Cats


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## GoingPostal (Sep 5, 2011)

That one's a good site, it seems like a lot of the cat raw food people are big into grinding food for some reason. You don't have to switch cats slowly like dogs, but it's usually more work to get them to eat anything if they are die hard kibble junkies. I was really lucky in that my cat took to eating chunks and bones on her own right off the bat.


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## ciaBrysh (Dec 16, 2011)

How did you transition your cats?


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## GoingPostal (Sep 5, 2011)

Honestly my "transition" was pretty much just offering my cat whatever my ferrets were getting, figured out what she liked, what she can't/won't eat and went from there. There is times she won't start eating right off the bat, and I just ignore her, she'll eat it eventually if it's a protein she likes and that usually works, if she hasn't eaten it by next meal time it goes to the dogs or ferrets and I try again. She went on a rabbit strike for awhile and now is on a duck strike (doesn't like it from my grocery store but the hare today duck was fine). My cat was already on canned and used to scheduled eating time so didn't have to do that. She adores mice, but only because I breed them and she got to catch some for herself one day when some chewed their way out, she won't touch gerbils, rats, or any other whole prey. A lot of people swear by getting your cat off kibble and onto canned and then slowly adding meat, tiny ground amounts at first and work your way up to chunks and less canned. If I mix canned and raw she pukes, if I try to sneak freeze dried raw into canned, she won't eat it. I want mine to eat premade raw freeze dried or frozen for vacations but I think she will be staying on the occasional canned instead.


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## ciaBrysh (Dec 16, 2011)

cats are picky eaters it sounds like lol


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## naturalfeddogs (Jan 6, 2011)

I switched ours by mixing with kibble, then slowly backing off the kibble. Soon, he was eating just the raw and leaving the kibble. Thats when I took all kibble away.


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## brezofleur (Dec 30, 2011)

I hate that my first post is recommending a site, lol, but there it is...

I came here because I'm about to adopt a little yorkie from a rescue (SO EXCITED!!) and I've had my kitty for a year. He fully transitioned to raw after a month of his adoption.

I'm still learning the physiology of dogs, but cats I know pretty well. It's not really ideal to feed kibble and raw together because it takes longer for dry to digest. This can cause bacteria build up and other not-so-pleasant problems.

Odysseus came to us on Hills (shudder) Science Diet dry. I instantly transitioned him from dry to wet. He quickly accepted the wet, but didn't really eat as much as he was supposed to. After trying countless kinds, I gave up and gave him a chicken neck. And that was it. It was literally an overnight transition. 

Not all cats are that easy. I've heard of some that takes months. It just depends on the individual cat (just as with dogs).

Raw Food Diet - Cat Forum : Cat Discussion Forums This site helped me A LOT. (I have not read if external links are allowed. If not, my apologies. Just google catforum and find the raw section there). There are many knowledgeable members on there and will answer any questions you may have.


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## AveryandAudrey (Sep 20, 2010)

When I had my kitty, he was on raw. FelineNurtition forum is a good source of info. There is a requirment of Taurine (probably didnt spell that right) that cats needs. So check into that for sure. And


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## AveryandAudrey (Sep 20, 2010)

My transition was: I learned about the raw diet, threw out the kibble, put down the raw in the bowl.


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## Hillswei (Dec 5, 2011)

My cats went straight from whatever the breeder was feeding to raw and we had no problems.Chicken hearts are small,easily available and will help for getting in Taurine.Dark chicken meat(e.g. thigh) is higher in Taurine than white meat. Don't feel sorry for your cats and cut up chicken necks,my one cat gulped a piece down and chocked, thankfully when I was around.Once they get the hang of it you will be amazed at what they can crunch down on and how quickly it is all gone!


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## tricia beaver (Jul 16, 2011)

my older cat pretty much refused when I first switched them. she would chew it, then walk away. "too much work" lol
I had to change her over slowly. I read somewhere that its better to change over slowly anyway because cats who refuse to eat for a couple days can actually die. don't remember where I read it but better safe then sorry.


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## MollyWoppy (Mar 19, 2010)

I'm afraid I just go with; what Windy wants, Windy gets. Sometimes she wants kibble, sometimes she wants raw. So, every night she gets offered both and she eats what she wants to eat.
Thats ok by me, I'm just thankful she's eating a great kibble (heaps better than the crap she was eating when I first got her), and I'm even more thankful that she is slowly taking to some raw. Some is better than none in my book. Maybe by the time she's 18, she'll be on raw full time.
I have to say, that for the first time in the 18 months she and I have been together, I looked at her in the sunlight the other day, and her fur is starting to glisten. I had given up hope, but something appears to definitely be agreeing with her.


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## CorgiPaws (Mar 31, 2009)

I have the absolute worst luck with raw fed cats ever.

Our shelter kitty is a total kibble junkie. She won't touch canned food, pre made raw, cooked meat... Nothing but kibble. Every now and then she will surprise me and eat something better for her, but never consistently. :-( I'm glad she will eat high quality kibble, a lot of cats won't and get hooked on the junk. 
So, when Natalie gave me Ironclad, I was super excited to have a raw fed kitty!! He is the best eater and would probably eat cement if I in any way made him think I wanted to eat it. He's one of THOSE cats. But, apparently I ruined him because he slowly stopped eating bones with consistently, and constantly had loose stools all the time. For the record, cats need far less bone than dogs. 

So, for him we feed chicken hearts, chunks off of whatever the dogs are eating, and then about 50% of his diet is the primal meat, bone, and organ grinds. He has been eating this way for about 9 months now and is perfectly healthy. He regularly gets beef head meat, chunks of mackerel, chicken, turkey, mice, duck, lamb, and I have found a half eaten mouse or two in the basement.

I guess my point is some cats are easy to transition, and some aren't, and some people, like me, just suck at it apparently. You can't fast them like you can with dogs, so just start offering things and hope they like it. you can also try to trick them into eating things by mixing it with the stuff they will eat. But my cats are smarter than me


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## ciaBrysh (Dec 16, 2011)

I gave the cats a piece of chicken scrap from the dogs meal yesterday and well...they sniffed it...licked it...and then walked away... ::sigh:: I'm going to keep trying!


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## MollyWoppy (Mar 19, 2010)

Keep offering them pieces every night. For example, Windy will only eat a tiny bit of chicken, now and then and she was offered pieces every single night. She loves cornish hen though and its the only thing she'll eat regularly. It only took her, oh, a year or so. 
It was like trying to get her off the crappiest of the crappy kibbles, it took forever and I was beginning to despair. I'm a loser when it comes to cats though.
One thing I did discover was that Windy loves chicken blood, so even if she doesn't eat the chicken or cornish hen itself, she will drink the blood if I put it in a saucer. I add a bit of water to it sometimes as I think the more liquid I can get into her, the better off she'll be.
Good luck, and I mean it, good luck.


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## mischiefgrrl (Oct 28, 2010)

I'm switching mine to raw next week. My daughter moved with her cat to Washington last August and is coming back on Tuesday. He had his pre-flight exam the other day and since August has lost two teeth and gained 4 lbs. He's only 3 years old so raw it is....


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## doggoblin (Jun 6, 2011)

How to Transition Your Cat to a Raw Diet is another site


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## ciaBrysh (Dec 16, 2011)

ugh so it's official, Mozart is.....a kibble freakin junkie

Ran out of kibble so we went to the store to go pick some more and of course...they were out of the TOTW...great. so I had the genious plan of "you know what...lets try starting them on raw" soooo we picked up some canned food instead to see how they would do.
Well...Malice loves the canned food. Mozart wouldnt freakin touch it all last night...and all day today. So it is now 2 am and Mozart hasnt eaten since 8 am yesterday....crap.
So I just sent my boyfriend out to go buy whatever kibble they sell at walgreens...and I am going to keep trying. 
any advice? I've tried warming it up...that didnt help. I even tried dipping his paw into it so the had to lick the juices off...no go...

So great...now I go from feeding them a decent kibble...to TRYING to do whats best and failing completely to now feeding a sub-par food just to avoid my cat from getting sick (Since I had no way to get to the store tomorrow morning so he would have gone almost 3 whole days without eating)

ugh anyway...mini rant over... I am going to start over again in the am


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## hmbutler (Aug 4, 2011)

I'm currently getting Nala to eat raw, but I leave her a little bit of kibble too for when she doesnt like/want the raw (luckily for me she is chosing to go to the raw before the kibble - she only eats the kibble when I try to entice her with lamb heart or something yummy like that lol)

When I tried to switch her a few months ago, she wouldnt have a bar of it. She wanted her kibble (which was crappy kibble too, real junk food kibble) and nothing else. Or, if there was ever an exception, it would be a tiny bit of canned sardines, but not enough to constitute a meal. So instead, I switched her kibble to felidae grain free (one of only two grain free options I have found in Australia - the other is EVO and costs more than double). She ate the felidae fine, but she's always been a free-feeder and never over eats, so she wasnt eating a LOT of it, but she was eating. I reckon if I still had her on crappy kibble, she probably wouldnt eat the raw, because of the additives in the kibble that made her a bit of a junkie lol. 

I decided to try again with switching her to raw after she jumped on the bench and stole some bacon off the chopping board while I was cooking. This is coming from a cat who has NEVER in her life stolen our food, and I do let her sit on the other end of the bench while I'm cooking (she likes to watch me cook) but she has never come that close to our food before. Also she was picking our leftovers off our plates when we had finished a meal and still had it on the plate. Very abnormal behaviour for my cat, so I decided she must've been trying to tell me she was over kibble, and wanted real food :tongue:

I started by chopping up chicken necks. The first time I heard her crunching on it, I was so excited lol. I also left it out in the main living area, instead of away in the laundry where her food usually is. I kept it out so she had easy access to it and I could see when she was eating. I stuck with chicken necks for a while, she was eating some but not enough for her weight (she was prob eating about 1% of her weight), then I started chopping up wings too, and she got through those fine as well. Then from there it was easy to add in boneless chicken, and now she eats turkey as well. I've also stopped chopping up the necks - I gave her a whole neck last night, had a look later and she'd eaten half of it, then by the morning she'd finished it. The pieces of turkey I gave her were bigger than a mouthful, she has had no problems chewing.

The main problem I'm having is getting her to eat red meat. I may need to start on boneless pork from roasts, rather than heart. She sniffs it and then leaves it sitting there. I soaked some chicken neck in the heart blood, and she ate the necks, but still wont go near the heart. I might try a cheap cut of steak or something next, and try getting her onto red meat that way. From some of the stories I've heard, Nala has probably been easier to switch than most cats. Unfortunately, cats are so stubborn that they WILL starve themselves in order to eat the food they want, and you CANT tough it out like you can with dogs, because they can, and usually will, get sick. It sucks that cats will always win the stubborn game, because we're not stubborn enough to let them kill themselves, and they know it lol.

The hardest time I've had with her so far was a week ago - she had been vomitting a bit, but when it started, I thought it was just coz she ate some tinsel off the xmas tree (BAD I know, I wont put any on there next year), so she was throwing up tinsel most days. I didnt think much of it because of the tinsel. Then after I packed up the xmas tree and she had no tinsel left to throw up, she was just throwing up bile or whatever she had eaten recently. She kept throwing up on average ionce every day or two for about a week. She wouldnt touch her food, that was when I decided to give her back her kibble, which she ate a little bit of, because I couldnt have her starving herself. So I took her to the vet, and it turned out she had a kidney infection, and one of her kidneys was very swollen. The vet said the normal reaction to a swollen kidney, for both animals and humans, is to gag or throw up, so thats why she was throwing up, even when she wasnt eating. He gave her an anti-inflammatory and injected antiobiotics, and it has been nearly 6 days and she is happy and eating like a trooper, and hasnt thrown up since. I'm not sure what caused the kidney infection (he said the protein levels in her urine were very high - I dont know if that was a cause or a symptom of the infection, so I dont know if it was raw related), but she appears to be better now she we're in the clear.

Keep at it, but with Mozart I would suggest maybe skip the canned and try going straight to raw? I never gave Nala canned food... the two or three times I have tried over 4 and a half years, she sticks her nose up at it and doesnt touch it at all. But raw, she loves it (to a frustrating degree haha)

Makes ya wish they had the stomach of a lab sometimes hey? Duke steals liver and kidney and gulps it down haha dunno how I will EVER get Nala to even SNIFF it lol


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## Mia (Oct 4, 2010)

I have six cats. Two older ones and four younger ones. Raw feeding was quite the tranisition for the my older kiddos. They cannot tolerate cow heart. They barf it up. But my younger kittens have no issues scarfing down anything. How I started was I used grain free canned cat food. You can get it at Pet Smart. No kibble what so ever. After the older ones were on that for a few days I would slowly add a protien. Every two weeks for my older guys. The kittens I did every four days. As long as they were okay. I feed alot of turkey hearts. Tons of it. I cut up cow hearts for them as well. Bone is grounded mixed with chicken. Too much bone can make them seriousily conspicated. They don't alot of bone content (like a flat quarter size slice of chicken necks) . Organ is the same. I feed bone every fourth meal and organ same. You just have to be really consisitent and patient.


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## Mia (Oct 4, 2010)

tricia beaver said:


> my older cat pretty much refused when I first switched them. she would chew it, then walk away. "too much work" lol
> I had to change her over slowly. I read somewhere that its better to change over slowly anyway because cats who refuse to eat for a couple days can actually die. don't remember where I read it but better safe then sorry.


Yes. Exactly.


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## wolfsnaps88 (Jan 2, 2012)

Maybe try grinding kibble and pouring it into the raw for Mozart. I use tuna juice on raw to get my kitten to eat it. This way their nose is telling them that this is food. Cats have a window of time early in life where they learn what is food. After that window, it is a lot more difficult to convince them otherwise. With Otis, my kitten, I am exposing her to everything early on so she understands what she can eat. Maybe I exposed her to too much though (cats don't eat peanut butter and jelly sandwiches! But now everytime we make one, here she comes!)

If that works, slowly take out the kibble powder. Thats what I am doing with the tuna juice,

Eh, worth a shot.


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## KittyKat (Feb 11, 2011)

Well this xmas i tried to transition my 2 cats. Chloe will have nothing to do with it. I'm not surprised, she turns her nose up at most things. She likes fish... cooked. That is about it of the "real stuff". Well, she DID surprise me at xmas... she ate the cooked turkey. AND WANTED IT. She MEOWED for it. I got all excited thinking this was a break-though. It wasn't. 

Twitch will eat it on days that he wants to. If he rubs against me and meows for it, he'll eat it. Otherwise he gives me weird looks. A step in the right direction I guess.


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## MollyWoppy (Mar 19, 2010)

Yeah, thats what I find so weird about cats. They'll eat something you want them to, so you are thrilled and you're busy congratulating yourself on what a great cat owner you are. Then the very next meal they look at the exact same food then look at you as if you're a moronic nutcase expecting them to eat it. 
Why on earth are they like that? I just don't understand.


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## hmbutler (Aug 4, 2011)

MollyWoppy said:


> Yeah, thats what I find so weird about cats. They'll eat something you want them to, so you are thrilled and you're busy congratulating yourself on what a great cat owner you are. Then the very next meal they look at the exact same food then look at you as if you're a moronic nutcase expecting them to eat it.
> Why on earth are they like that? I just don't understand.


that's exactly what Nala is doing... she has decided today she no longer likes turkey, chicken or sardines... and she still doesnt like anything else, either... bloody cats, drive ya freaking insane...


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## werecatrising (Oct 15, 2010)

MollyWoppy said:


> Yeah, thats what I find so weird about cats. They'll eat something you want them to, so you are thrilled and you're busy congratulating yourself on what a great cat owner you are. Then the very next meal they look at the exact same food then look at you as if you're a moronic nutcase expecting them to eat it.
> Why on earth are they like that? I just don't understand.


That's what mine like to do. Only they wait until I go out and buy a bunch of whatever it is they are eating- then they hate it. They were on a chicken neck kick recently. When I ran out they looked at their bowls like "where are they" and meowed. As soon as I stocked up they decided they weren't so great anymore.


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