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Trying different foods and raw

babymeow

Senior Lairian
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So I decided to incorporate some raw into Nabi's diet. She has had good stool since I have gotten her so I was hoping she doesn't have allergies or a sensitive stomach. Just in case I started slow. She still has her kibble out to graze on during the day. I started with buying some air chilled chicken liver at Whole Foods. Since I only have 1 cat it is easier to portion so I just cut what she will eat for her meal and individually wrap them in foil and freeze it. I just cook the outside slightly and mix it into her wet food. She did good with the liver so then I started adding some sardine in unsalted water from Trader Joes. Those are pretty big so I just feed her one mixed into her wet food and put the rest in a mason jar. She also did well on that. Then I tried organic chicken and slightly cooked the outside only and mixed that into her wet food. I cut it with kitchen scissors into tiny bite size pieces. She also did well on that. Yesterday I gave her a very small amount (about 2 tablespoons) of goat milk pasteurized (I will get her raw next time since I see people say raw is better?). She surprisingly drank it and so far so good. So the reason I mix it into her wet food is to gradually get her to eat raw and I am also unsure about extra vitamins and stuff at the moment and looking into that. I rotate the raw foods so sometimes she gets liver mixed with wet, sometimes liver and sardine mixed with wet, sometimes chicken mixed with wet, etc. Nabi also likes to lick strawberries after I bite into it so she will lick the juices of the top of the strawberry that I don't eat. I will also give her a very very small amount as I eat it.

So I was hesitant to try raw at first because it seems hard to feed "balanced." I have been listening to some you tube videos of this guy Dr. Conor Brady. He also wrote a book for raw feeding for Dogs and did a lot of research. I'll probably read his book when I have some more time on my hands. Anyways, he makes feeding raw sound much better and also not as difficult as people make it seem. I am always scared about taurine amounts since cats cannot make taurine on their own. However, I learned from him that as long as they eat meat they are getting taurine. He said it became a big deal and pet food started adding taurine in because in the 70's a lot of pets were dying because pet foods had no real meat in their food and with a lot of cats dying they realized it was because they had no taurine because they were not getting meat. Other than taurine I learned from someone else that cats cannot make vitamin A on their own but I think liver has vitamin A. Anyways, I thought I would share so far Nabi has been tolerating all the foods well and loving it and I haven't died even tho I give her tons of kisses lol. I will slowly incorporate other types of food into her diet and see how she does. My goal is to slowly eliminate as much of processed food as possible. She eats kibble and freeze dried and wet food and I was feeding her air dried as well but decided to use my money for better meats for her raw diet. Only time will tell if feeding raw will be good for her since she's still a kitten and I also just recently started. Any suggestions from people who have been feeding raw would be greatly appreciated!
 
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Xandria

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@babymeow Your sphynxie is adorable!

Feeding a balanced raw diet is important insofar as our kitties receive enough and not too much of certain things. For instance, any excess taurine is expelled from their systems which is good. Too much protein can result in kidney issues.

I wrote this up years ago and it's still valid: https://www.xandria.ca/Max/RawCatFoodInformation-v2.4.pdf

You can thaw and refreeze any components used for cat food. I make large batches of food, freeze, and thaw as needed.

Be aware that dogs and cats have different dietary requirements -- cats are obligate carnivores. While vegetables won't harm cats, their bodies don't process any nutrients from vegetables. Mind, vegetables can make good filler when trying to get the weight off or when a kitty has kidney issues.

I hope that helps in some way! Cheers.
 

babymeow

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@Xandria thank you for the raw food information, I liked how you broke down the vitamins. This weekend I am going to try introducing chicken wings and see if she will gnaw at the bone. Other than being a carnivore, I saw a nutrition video where it said that a cat's cecum is really small which is the reason they can't really eat vegetables. She also said that a cat's stomach is the size of a ping pong and really small and in the wild they will eat 10-20 small meals per day and us feeding them 2-3 times a day is like us eating every other day. I work so I can't feed her multiple times a day but I thought that was interesting. So far I'm glad Nabi is able to eat chicken and chicken liver. I will keep her on chicken for a month and then introduce another meat source.
 
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