|  The
Feline Raw Meat Diet
This is really what I’d like to see all cats eating. Dry food
is convenient but is actually a far cry from what the cat is calling
out for evolutionarily. We really have an obligate carnivore in
a small body in the cat, one who wouldn’t eat dry food, cooked
food, nor corn. (This ingredient is prevalent in dry foods to get
them to stick together). I think part of the reason we are seeing
more cats with diabetes of late is the feeding of dry food that
has corn or corn gluten meal in it. [Another reason may be the increased
use of vaccines (see Vaccinations:
Safety)]. This small hunter would eat one main food: prey. This
diet comes closer to that natural food than any dry food, even a
healthy one, ever could.
This is a very simple way to feed your cat a balanced,
raw diet. The most difficult ones to convince of this will be those
cats over the age of 8-10 years, who’ve eaten only commercial
dry or canned foods. They may take one look at your lovely raw food
in the dish and give it the ultimate feline insult: burial! Nonetheless,
it’s worth the effort to get any cats you really care about
to eat it. They will clearly improve their health and longevity
by doing so.
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There are two ways to
make the switch to this diet: fasting and gradual transition.
Fasting
This is only for those cats who are not overweight. How to know?
If your cat has a fat pad in the groin area, or an ill-defined waist,
or looks pear-shaped from above, there’s weight above the
healthy norm. They can transition with the next method. For those
who are normal weighted, this is the best way to switch to new,
raw food. Why? There are several benefits from your cat’s
fasting for a few days:
- He or she will get a chance to cleanse the
toxins built up over the years of eating the old foods.
- The digestive system gets a chance to rest
and rejuvenate. This system is one of the hardest working in the
body.
- Your cat will develop something often lacking
in cats today, but so important for proper digestion: hunger.
(See The B+ Plan for
Cats for more details)
- This last benefit also leads to an increased
acceptance of something new! Finickiness becomes a distant memory
when hunger is there. “Oh, something new and different?
I’ll take it, thanks!”
To fast your cat, simply decrease the quantity of
food by half for a couple of days, and then offer only broth and
water for a few more days. If the pestering for food becomes difficult,
love your cat in other ways -- get the string toy out, have lots
of affection sessions, go for walks in the woods, and close doors
when you need to sleep! (See below about "gamblers" if
you begin to lose heart). When you break the fast, offer small meals
of the new food at first, and, after a few of these, offer all your
cat wants to eat at a sitting. There may be a brief period of overeating,
but this won’t last.
Cats will rarely overeat on this diet, and will tend
to normalize their weight, whether too heavy or too thin at the
outset.
Gradual Transition
This method, while not as deeply beneficial as fasting, will still
get some cats on to the new, raw diet. In this method, you simply
start adding the new food in small quantities to the existing food,
and gradually increase the proportions until it’s 100% new
food, and no old food. This can happen as quickly as 5-7 days, but
you may run into to a battle line when you come to a certain percentage
of the raw food in a fussy cat’s dish. Hold tight! You can
fall back to the fasting method if you reach this point of refusal,
and break the fast with nothing but the new food, as outlined above.
Points to Consider in Feeding
We can do a good job of feeding raw food to cats if we keep a couple
of simple points in mind:
- Cats would eat not just meat in the wild. They
eat the “whole mouse.” Or, raw meat is, by itself,
not complete food.
- The rawness is extremely valuable to the cat, as
evidenced by Dr. Pottenger’s work on hundreds of cats in
the 1930’s. See The
Missing Ingredient.
- The raw meat can
contain food-borne bacteria possibly harmful to humans, especially
immune-compromised humans. So careful sanitary practices in handling
it apply. This is not an issue for the cat, whose digestive system
is unchanged from the wild ancestors, and “knows”
how to digest bacteria. See Food
Safety and Raw Meat for more details.
- Cats are gamblers. If they are rewarded for a behavior
once in twenty times, they will repeat the behavior. That means
you have to be consistent in offering your food choices which
you know to be best, and not give in to the call for dry crunchy
food. While making the transition to a raw diet takes time and
patience, the greater your commitment and consistency, the smoother
and faster it will go.
*I recommend Standard Process whole food supplements
for my patients' diets.
These may
be ordered here
Mix and refrigerate, or freeze portions if you make
multiple batches. The average amount per meal is 1/4 cup, fed
at room temperature twice a day. If food is left over after
30 minutes, pick it up and save it for the next meal. It’s
OK and normal for a cat to miss a meal regularly, as they would
actually eat every 28 hours in the wild.
 Ah,
Puff, Get a Whiff of This! Mmmmm.
Food temperature is an important part of feeding cats. Your cat
depends on her nose to know what’s good to eat and what’s
not. Cold food will not smell like much, so is more easily overlooked
by your cat, especially if true hunger is missing. When reheating
cold food, just put the cold food in a baggie within a pan of warm
water (or leave in room air for a couple of hours if time allows).
The goal is not to cook it, just to bring it to room temperature.
Microwaves are too damaging to food to use for this purpose. If
you really have a fussy cat with trouble getting onto this diet,
you may lightly cook the serving before offering it. Just remember
this destroys valuable ingredients, as Dr.
Pottenger so clearly demonstrated. So, make light cooking only
a temporary aid to get your cat eating well, then go back to raw.
The Other End
Rarely, a cat will get somewhat constipated on this diet. Normal
would be to pass at least one stool per day, so if you see less
than this, you may add ground psyllium seed or wheat bran to the
recipe, so there's a 1/4 teaspoon per serving. |
