Paleo Pets Revisited
 

My parents had a stray cat come and visit them. Nearly starving to death in the wild, Callow obviously had been someone's pet and really wanted a home. My parents nursed her back to health and then she came to live with me. She still was rather thin and constantly hungry. I began feeding Callow canned cat food and supplementing her diet with raw chicken livers and egg yolks. I've had her for about a month and she now will only pick at any canned food. She wants fresh meat, period.

Anyway, just thought I'd share that my pet is a convert.

Shazzer,

That's great! When I got my cat he was in the same condition. He was 4 months old, and was very sickly! That was a year ago. A few weeks ago, I ground up raw chicken (including skin, bones, organs - hearts, kidneys, gizzards, livers), whole eggs (shells and all), bison heart, and ground bison to make raw cat food for my cat. I added lots of chunks of raw chicken muscle meat that I cut off before grinding (good for his teeth to chew these pieces). I froze a couple dozen mason jars of this food for him. He loves it. He also loves to eat whole raw chicken gizzards (great for his teeth) and raw egg yolk. I also have been feeding him live baby mice and live crickets. He loves crickets! He is SO healthy! His coat is extremely soft and luxurious!

Dean

I was just scanning posts and found this one,

Dean, your cat looks like MINE!... except that mine is a cymrick... so no tail... looks like in the pic your kitty has a tail...

Tiffany

How long did it take your kitty to get used to a raw diet? Am thiking of trying to convert mine, but afraid of diahrrea. Judy

It took my cats several months to get used to a raw meat diet and now they prefer raw over canned. A local holistic veterinarian sells raw dog and cat food and it's got all the nutrients the cats need. I supplement this food with raw liver, hamburger and stir fry beef whenever I thaw it out for my family's supper and the cats just vacuum it up. I have had no problems with them experiencing any digestive or intestinal ailments because I no longer give them poisonous dry cat food. What do farmers give cattle to fatten them up for slaughter: grain and corn. Most commercial dry cat foods contain mostly corn and grain. Very bad for their health. Raw food also leaves cat's teeth clean and healthy and their stools do not smell nor do they have gas. Give it a try.

Just out of interest, for those of you who don't feed your cats live mice etc., how do you compensate for the nutrients that they would normally get from the stomach contents of mice?

Stomachs of mice contain mostly grains. No great loss.

How do you know that it's no great loss for the cat? If it's part of their natural diet, surely it has some function (fiber/vitamins)? Or am I missing the point of why you choose to feed your cat this way?

Cats are carnivores and their digestive systems cannot properly digest grains. There is far more nutrition in meat and bone than there is in grain.

Hmm... maybe I should try that. I'm sure my cats would be thrilled.

One thing, though: does the raw food cause any kind of problems with their teeth? I know that canned food does, which is why I prefer to feed my cats dry food, but what about fresh raw food - how does that affect the teeth?

One of the worst things you can do for any cat is feed them dry cat food. Listed below are three web sites picked at random that give you insights into feeding cats raw food.

http://www.felinefuture.com/

http://www.blakkatz.com/dryfood.html

http://www.lowcarbluxury.com/atkins-cats.html

You can do your own searches as well.
Contrary to popular belief dry food is bad for cats' teeth because it does contain a lot of grain thereby causing tooth decay. This also applies to dogs. Also since cats do not like to drink much water, the dry cat food, which is travelling slowly through their digestive tract (because cats digestive tracts cannot handle grains), expands to a point where it can cause blockages (this happened to my younger cat and I had to take him to a vet to clear it). Now I feed my cats only canned and raw food. Canned because sometimes I can't get to the holistic veterinarian to buy the raw food. The raw food contains nutritional bone meal, ground bones, organ meats and other nutrients that usually comprise a cat's natural diet. With the exception of pork, all meats, poultry, etc and raw egg yolks can be fed to cats without worrying about them getting any diseases. Their stomach acids and enzymes will kill any bacteria that can be found in the food they eat. That's how they evolved.

Thanks for the info, Hellistile. I've tried searching for Feline Future, but it's not available in my country. The Atkins page completely put me off, that reminded me too much of the vegetarians who want their cats to be vegetarians too.

I want to feed my cats well, but I don't want them to eat canned food since it has caused them problems with their teeth in the past, which they don't get with the dried food, but I can see that it's not very good to feed them dried food because of the high content of grain.

Do you know of any other brands similar to Feline Future?

Sorry the only two brands of raw cat and dog food I am aware of are located in western Canada. I'm fortunate in that my home town has a raw cat food manufacturer. If I were you I would feed my cats soft canned cat food with raw meat including chicken plus a raw egg yolk daily. The raw meat, especially in small chunk form (diced) will clean their teeth as long as the chunks arn't too big. I would stay away from the dry food and continue searching for local sources of raw food.

Thanks for the info!

I fed my last cat a couple of eggs a week, canned food, occasional chicken and no dried food. He lived to 23 years old but only had one tooth left. Not sure what any of that means!