Tonight I bought my cats some raw food from Jeffrey’s Natural Pet Food store. This is pretty much the best possible diet for a pet. The food is a puree of human-quality ground turkey, chicken backs, and other all-organic ingredients. It looks a bit like baby food. Simon liked it, Sasha wasn’t sure what to do.
The store sells the raw food frozen, and also sells frozen raw chicken backs and necks. Yes, it’s a bit more expensive, but I love my cats and I don’t have any human kids to buy the best food for… plus commercial cat food is pretty much garbage. The equivalent would be like feeding a child nothing but Happy Meals every day. Maybe I will switch to raw, we’ll see how it goes.
Brian set up the TiVo he got me for Valentine’s Day tonight. He’s amazing. It’s totally working. And it’s so cool!! Eeeeek. I can’t wait to play with it more tomorrow. I’m going to ask it to record anything with the words “Kurosawa,” then we’re going to Golden Gate Park.
We watched the DVD of “Winged Migration” tonight, followed by the “making of” special. A bit weird to find out afterward that the birds were all tame and the movie was 80% staged. Still — incredibly amazing and nonetheless a realistic portrayal of migration and bird behavior. The filmmakers wouldn’t have been able to make the same movie had they not imprinted on the birds first.
We just switched Gus and Maybelle to an all-raw food diet a few months ago. I think it’s a good thing to do, but it’s a huge pain in the ass, because they’re both very picky: the first batch, which was made with organic ground chuck, carrots and sprouts, Gus wouldn’t touch but Maybelle ate up, and the second, which was made with liver and corn, Gus loved, but Maybelle turned her nose up at it. We’re trying to find just the right mix of ingredients that both of them will eat so we don’t always have to make up two sets of ingredients.
Anyway, it’s a really great thing to do for your cats, and their health will definitely improve as long as they’re getting the right mix of nutrients. I highly recommend Anitra’s Vita-Mineral Mix (made by HALO); it’s got pretty much every nutrient they need so you can use it as a supplement and add it to pretty much any natural food mix.
If you want, I can send you the recipes we’ve been using.
You should post the recipes you are using. Or, you know, send them to me AND jane.
Thanks Leonard! That is so cool that you’re doing that. Hasn’t one of your cats been sick recently? How old are they?
I just fed my cats breakfast. Big fat Simon wolfed down his raw food mixed with a little Innova kibble (transition and whatnot). Poor Sasha just looked at his, paced around, went to see what Simon was eating, and then ate some kibbles out of the bowl. He’s very confused. Simon finished his, then jumped over to Sasha’s dish. So I had to lock Simon in my room. He was pissed.
Sasha nibbled at it some more, and I just put the rest in the fridge. Should I keep trying as he gets more hungry? I only got the smallest container of the ground turkey blend. Maybe he’d like beef better?
Yesplease post recipes! More info about supplements?
Too much protein in cat food is bad for the kidneys….this is something to consider.
Yes, but don’t felines naturally consume an all-meat diet? With some grass for digestion?
Too much protien is bad for HUMAN kidneys, yes, but we are omnivores. Cats are one of the purest carnivores in the mammal world, even more so than dogs.
Maybelle is 8, I think, and Gus is 7. Maybelle is the one who’s been sick lately; she has a recurring kidney problem so we have to make sure she gets just the right mix of nutrients.
Anyway, it’s smart to have a transitional period between feeding them regular food and feeding them natural food. Like, Gus took a while to get used to it and wasn’t eating anything at all, so we gave him kibble — it’s much worse for them not to eat than to eat stuff they shouldn’t. But once they get going on it and realize they’re not going to get the crappy canned food anymore, they’ll adjust to the new stuff.
Also, the “raw food” doesn’t neccesarily have to be raw. Some people will disagree with this, but other writers will say it’s okay to cook it. Raw meat isn’t as flavorful as cooked, so if you very lightly cook it — just so it loses a bit of redness, not enough to brown it. The more you cook it, the more nutrients it loses. Also, don’t cook it in oil or butter or anything…just cook it in pan by itself. The books I’ve read suggest “bribe foods” that will maybe get them to eat raw food, but I find it’s easier to just cook them lightly; one of the bribe foods is baby food (chicken or lamb or veal), which is cooked anyway.
So, here’s the main recipe we’ve been using:
– 6 parts protein: use raw or lightly cooked ground chuck (this is what we use), raw chicken, cooked chicken, cooked turkey or cooked lamb. Make sure there’s no cooked poulty bones in the mix. Some of the books suggest using raw egg yolk, cooked egg white or tofu, but other books say you should stay away from vegetarian diets and I’m inclined to agree with them.
– 2 parts vegetable: use raw zucchini, raw carrot, chopped alfalfa sprouts; lightly steamed broccoli, carrot or corn; or baked winter squash, yam or sweet potato. We’ve been using raw carrot or alfalfa sprouts, and they seem to like the sprouts better than the carrot.
– 2 parts grain: use soaked oat bran; cooked barley, millet or brown rice; corn; or mashed potato. We’ve been using corn, which they really seem to like. (Make sure if you buy canned corn, that it’s got no salt added — you don’t want any extra sodium in their food at all.)
– Supplements: we just buy Anitra’s Vita-Mineral mix by HALO. You put in about a teaspoon for each serving of food you made; we make about a week’s worth at a time, so we add about 2 tablespoons. You should be able to get this at pet food stores or natural food supermarkets. If you can’t find it, here’s how to approximate it:
Mix 1 1/2 cups brewer’s yeast, 1/4 cup kelp powder, 1 cup lecithin granules, 2 cups wheat bran, and 2 cups bone meal. Refrigerate it in a sealed container. Like I said, if you can find the Vita-Mineral Mix, it’s a lot easier — this stuff is expensive, perishable and hard to find all on its own.
(cont’d.)
Okay! So, here’s what we do:
We lightly cook the ground chuck (a pound or so of organic ground chuck isn’t too expensive and will feed two cats for a week). Then we put it in a food processor along with sprouts, corn and the nutrient mix, and pulverize it — the more you break it down and make it mushy and pasty, the easier it is for them to eat it. Then you just serve it to them as you would normal canned food. Sometimes they’ll be more excited to eat it if you heat it in the microwave for about 30 seconds before serving it, but you don’t have to do this.
Once a week you should give them some Vitamin E. Buy a bottle of 400-units, and make sure it’s alpha-tocopherol; cats can’t digest mixed tocopherols. You should also get a bottle of 10,000-unit A & 400-unit D vitamins. Once a week, just puncture one capsule and mix it with their food; our cats don’t seem to notice it.
Finally, if you need to mix in “bribe food” to encourage them to eat it, I’ve found that creamed corn (make sure it’s no-salt-added), liver, or baby food lamb or veal is good. Liver is especially good, because it’s very nutritious.
Whew! That’s a lot, but it’s pretty easy once you get them into the routine. You can also get away with feeding them a lot less with the raw food diet, because it’s not mostly junk and filler, and they get more nutrition from less food. It’s been working out okay for our two cats, although they’re super-finicky.
I hope this helps! If you have any other questions just ask, and I can also tell you about the books we’ve read and some useful websites. We ran these recipes past our vet to make sure they were okay, and you might wanna do the same. Let me know how it works!
All great stuff, Leonard, thanks! I am going to print that all out when I get to work Monday.
When Simon was a baby I totally did the Vitamin E capsules and organic baby food to help him grow up all healthy. Also it was awesome that I could buy the baby food with food stamps! IN YOUR FACE, UNCLE “SAM”!
I fed him Iams for awhile before they got bought out and sold out. Now I’ve been feeding my cats Innova, which is high quality, though I spose nothing is as high-quality as good ol’ meat.
The portion I am going to try to get to is something the size of — naturally — a fat mouse.
Do you make big batches of the food and then freeze week-sized portions? It would seem more economical.