Real food for cats?

LolaLemon

I'm on my mobile so apologies if this has already been covered but I'm looking to understand more about what to buy my kitten to eat.
I know u can buy bones from the butchers for dogs, and would like to know what I can get for the cat that would be more closer to what they should get instead of packets of Goo that humans have decided they should eat.

If I buy fish, should it be cooked? (I hate cooking fish lol)

I had king ribs last night n she stole one!

Any help and advice is fully appreciated.

morg_monster

Hey, it's called raw feeding (well if the meat's raw, that is!) and you can either give them a small amount as an "extra" to normal canned food, or go the whole hog and feed completely raw - however this takes quite a bit of research as you have to make sure their diet is balanced enough etc with the right vitamins and minerals & other vital things. Although, there are some companies out there now that produce mince for cats which is all balanced so all you do is defrost it and stick it in their bowl.
There's loads of information on this thread of another forum.
http://www.petforums.co.uk/cat-health-nutrition/111455-thinking-about-raw-feeding-basic-guide.html
it can be fairly involved though!!

If your kitten is still a real kitten and you're not just calling her that (I call my fully grown cats kittens still...) then you might want to wait til she's full grown to introducing raw food; some people do feed kittens raw, it's certainly possible, but it takes even more care than for adults, as obviously any deficiency in their diet at the vital early stages is more serious. Also any issues of bacteria may not be dealt with so well as with an adult cat.

I supplement a diet of good quality canned food (ie 60%-100% meat; not whiskas etc) with treats like raw chicken wings, mince, beef heart, liver etc. If you feed less than 20% raw, then you don't have to worry about making sure it's balanced. So my cats get 2-3 meals a week raw. Bones are OK as long as they aren't cooked; but cats won't cope with much more than chicken bones. As for fish, I don't give them much fish due to my worries about the levels of pollutants etc. They usually just get fish as a small treat when I'm cooking it, rather than as a whole meal. They love prawns and any cooked fish.

if you don't have time for raw feeding but still want to give your cat good healthy food, then there are a lot better cat foods out there than the usual stuff available in the supermarket. Some of the whiskas varieties have CARROTS in! CARROTS! Why does a cat need carrots?!!! the mind boggles.

LolaLemon

Thank you for all that
I will be looking to supplement with raw food until I get to understand it all, just now MalleyCat is around 5 months old and is on whiskers pouches, I have tried to get her on to dry food, but she is very reluctant to change, and her birth home weaned her onto the pouches.

I'm even more miffed at the people who get cats and expect them to be vegetarian!

Really liking the idea of mince in the freezer for when I can't b bothered going shopping!.

morg_monster

I wouldn't put her on 100% dry food - it isn't great for them. There's a poster on that pets forum who knows a lot about nutrition and her opinion is better to eat the worst type of wet food than 100% dry. There are some really good dry foods with 80% or 100% meat, but just the very nature of their being dry can cause problems as many cats won't drink enough water to go along with it. I know people say dry is better for their teeth but I'm not sure that's true; it just doesn't make sense for me as my cats mostly gobble it down or maybe just crack the kibbles into 2. Munching on the raw chicken wings is supposed to be very good for their teeth, gnawing on the bone is supposed to clean all the plaque off.
If you want to change her from whiskas to better wet food before you get your head around raw, one available from pretty much all supermarkets is Classic cat food, it's made by Butchers. It has 50% meat I believe and also doesn't have any added sugars etc so better for their teeth. Moving her over from whiskas to another wet food should be easier than to dry. The texture is chunks in jelly.

VEGETARIAN CATS! don't even get me started!! do people not understand the word carnivore!

Fire_Fox

LolaLemon wrote: »

I'm on my mobile so apologies if this has already been covered but I'm looking to understand more about what to buy my kitten to eat.
I know u can buy bones from the butchers for dogs, and would like to know what I can get for the cat that would be more closer to what they should get instead of packets of Goo that humans have decided they should eat.

If I buy fish, should it be cooked? (I hate cooking fish lol) I had king ribs last night n she stole one! Any help and advice is fully appreciated.

Cats do not naturally eat fish - in fact too much fish can cause painful conditions such as steatitis (a saturated fat deficiency). Human fish should therefore be an occasional treat, and cat food fish preferably fed as a complete rather than complementary diet. This is an excellent article on feline nutrition, based in science and not angling for you to feed raw specifically. Read every raw feeding article or post with this one in mind.

Cats basically evolved to eat muscle meat, skin from a land animal (fats, especially saturated), organ meat (taurine and vitamins) and bone (for minerals). These should all be raw for the cat to get the most benefit, cooked bones can splinter, cooking denatures the meat proteins and destroys the taurine in heart. Sounds like you could have a little carnivore on your hands; my darling boy shot across the room when I opened his first pack of chicken wings, and purred for a raw meal thereafter.

The first question is really why do you want to feed raw? Some do so for the perceived health benefits, some for moneysaving, some to allow a cat to express natural behaviours, some so they know exactly what is in the food. :T Which reasons you have will help dictate the direction you take with raw feeding: I gave my last boy bone in meat plus chunks of offal because he enjoyed the process of ripping it apart. You will want to confine your kitten to a carpet-free place to eat, and purchase an antibacterial spray to clean the floor (please read the small print, some are not safe for pets).

LolaLemon wrote: »

Thank you for all that
I will be looking to supplement with raw food until I get to understand it all, just now MalleyCat is around 5 months old and is on whiskers pouches, I have tried to get her on to dry food, but she is very reluctant to change, and her birth home weaned her onto the pouches.

I'm even more miffed at the people who get cats and expect them to be vegetarian! Really liking the idea of mince in the freezer for when I can't b bothered going shopping!.

Most dry foods are high in grains, which felines have no nutritional need for (even less than carrots! ). It's generally considered to be easier to switch from wet to raw than from dry to raw anyway. Whiskas pouches are not as evil as many people suggest - it's the dry that is meat-flavoured corn flakes - but I do think they represent poor value for money. As Morg says, Classic is better value (cheaper, no grains or additives, not 50% meat it's derivatives) but IMO the best value is Bozita (90% meat, ~£1 for 360g). However, if you are going to introduce some raw I probably would not rock the boat with the familiar food as it could stress you both out.

You should store all of your cat's raw food in the freezer, in fact you are safest purchasing ready frozen because they will have been frozen when super fresh instead of sat in the chiller for a week. Minced meat will mean you are confident of your kitten getting all the nutrition in equal amounts, but has a greater surface area so will carry more bacteria. Having said that a good 'tester' is offering hungry kitty a tiny portion of raw mince when you are cooking anyway, or the blood from the bottom of a steak.

I mail ordered frozen minced raw food at the start, but would not make my own nor mail order refrigerated mince for this reason. I found it easiest and cheapest to buy frozen bone-in chicken thighs/ drumsticks and fresh offal which I froze in chunks on a baking sheet. You may want to start with chicken carcasses (meaty body/ ribs) and wings as they are easier for a kitten to tackle (see YouTube). I found a pair of poultry shears very useful - my boy needed the skin slit open to reveal the meat and bones chopped in two to reveal the marrow.

morg_monster: OBLIGATE CARNIVORE!!! :rotfl:

paddypaws101

http://www.naturalinstinct.com/categories/Cat-Food
http://www.daf-petfood.co.uk/wb/
http://www.woldsway.co.uk/
http://www.darlingsrealdogfood.com/ ( also sell cat food )

dehaani

Google: barf cat diet