Thoughts on Natural Instinct Raw Food

Fridaycat

So, here's an update for you if you're interested

I still find that my cats surprise me, you would think I'd be used to all their little idiosyncrasies after all these years of keeping cats :rotfl:

I bought some turkey mince from Sainsbury's for their tea.

Took it out of the fridge for half an hour or so before feeding so that it was more or less at room temperature and put it into their 5 bowls.

The two Bengals who I thought would love it, turned their noses up and looked at me like I was deeply offending them, expecting them to eat that!

Harry moggy wasn't impressed that I woke him up from his afternoon nap and he too turned his nose up at it.

Friday moggy who is quite an easy going cat, loved it.

Robbie moggy, who I struggle to get to eat any sort of wet food at all and is most definitely the dry cat food king, loved it! In fact, when I put some dry food down for the three that weren't eating the raw, he had a look in the bowl, but went back to the raw, and Friday carried on eating the raw too.

So, not sure what to do now regarding the Nature's Instinct. Might see what there is in the freezers in Pets at Home, now I've read on another thread that they do raw there.

paddypaws101

The raw meat that they sell at PAH is Prize Choice ....it is a poor quality, disgusting slurry of the worst variety! Oh, and it is not complete/balanced for feeding to cats who have very specific dietary needs.
Seriously, if you are anything like me you will not rest until you have tried the Natural Instinct one now you have a bee in your bonnet about it!
With 5 cats in the household the chances are that someone will eat it, so go on, put the order in and stop fretting!
BTW....one of mine likes his raw topped with crushed freeze dried fish....now THAT you can buy at PAH, same as the Thrive brand.

Fridaycat

paddypaws101 wrote: »

The raw meat that they sell at PAH is Prize Choice ....it is a poor quality, disgusting slurry of the worst variety! Oh, and it is not complete/balanced for feeding to cats who have very specific dietary needs.
Seriously, if you are anything like me you will not rest until you have tried the Natural Instinct one now you have a bee in your bonnet about it!
With 5 cats in the household the chances are that someone will eat it, so go on, put the order in and stop fretting!
BTW....one of mine likes his raw topped with crushed freeze dried fish....now THAT you can buy at PAH, same as the Thrive brand.

OK, so perhaps I won't get the stuff from PAH then!

Being as I won £10 on the lottery last night, I shall treat them to some Nature's Instinct

I'm a vegetarian myself, but if they don't like it, do you think I could cook some up for my husband? :rotfl::rotfl: (I am joking)

Fridaycat

Just thought I'd update this thread, in case anyone else is thinking of feeding raw to their cats.

Before getting any Natural Instinct, I had tried my cats on minced turkey and beef mince, as per the excellent tips given here. Of my 5 cats, only two would eat either of these - Robbie and Friday. They definitely preferred the turkey over the beef.

I was fortunate enough to get a couple of free containers of Natural Instinct at the Supreme Cat Show on Saturday, so tried it out on my cats tonight.

The two that liked the raw turkey liked the Natural Instinct, the other three gave it a sniff and walked away, giving me a filthy look for not feeding them their usual Grau :rotfl:.

So, from my experience, as a tip for those of you who are considering this food - bearing in mind the minimum order value if ordering online - I would completely recommend trying out raw mince first. If your cats like this, I think there is a strong likelihood they will like Natural Instinct. If they don't then there is a strong likelihood they won't.

I am pleased that I didn't spend nearly £30 on Natural Instinct as, although I think it is good quality stuff, there is not enough interest amongst my lot to justify buying it.

I hope this helps someone somewhere

jashe

We have 2 Norwegian Forest Cats who were fed on Natural Instinct by the breeder from an early age.
What we found is that they LOVE some of the flavours, but simply won't eat others...very difficult to fathom why or which to choose, so you can only realistically do trial and error.
Ours LOVE chicken&beef and venison, they LIKE chicken&lamb and really hate the game bird. We haven't tried them on the rabbit yet, but an order is on the way.
What we've found is that it's best to get a mix of them all (except game bird) as they are happy when they have a bit of variety.
Small tubs (500g) are definitely the best and stay fresh in the fridge for 3-4 days (depends on your fridge I guess).
The quality of the food is amazing and works out at about 75p for the equivalent of an 85g feed, so is no more expensive than normal cat food.
However, we do always keep a few cans of junk food for them (all the main brands of cat food) and feed them a tin every couple of days for variety. By far the best is Sainsbury's own brand complete cat food 85g tins...if you have a look at the ingredients, there is nothing but good stuff in there. They do chicken breast, chicken breast & duck, tuna & salmon and prawn & something else.

I would thoroughly recommend Natural Instinct, but bear in mind as with any food, the cats will inexplicably go off it for a week so keep some normal food to supplement.
Hope this helps.

kerri_dfw

I know this is an old thread but as it came up in G00gle I thought I'd throw in my 2cents.

I've been feeding my bengal and siamese Natural Instinct for about 3 months now. I tried all the best brands of cat food, even the ones that are 90% meat content. My bengal got a dodgy tummy with most of them. They're now completely raw fed cats including chicken wings.
To start with I bought a variety of tubs and found they don't like rabbit, but they will eat all the chicken varieties and the wild game bird. I haven't tried venison as they might not eat it. I can fit 12 500g portions (or 6 packs) in a single drawer in our freezer, which is a freezer/fridge combi with just 2 freezer drawers. I take the frozen meat out the packs and store in ziplock bags stacked together. The tubs are saved for when I want to take one block out.

Currently my 13 month bengal and my 8 month siamese are both on 125g a day with chicken wing treats about once a week. I don't give them too many bone treats as they cause them to be constipated and they cry in the litter box.

They are both thriving, people have commented how soft their fur is, they're muscular and have so much energy they really are little terrors.

GoldenShadow

Just in case anyone who feeds NI is interested:

http://www.petbusinessworld.co.uk/news/feed/parting-of-the-ways-at-raw-pet-food-company

Hope they don't go like Fish4Dogs Still good but no way near as good...

toontastic

GoldenShadow wrote: »

Just in case anyone who feeds NI is interested:

http://www.petbusinessworld.co.uk/news/feed/parting-of-the-ways-at-raw-pet-food-company

Hope they don't go like Fish4Dogs Still good but no way near as good...

Just to add to this after also returning a search on google. The couple have now launched a new company http://www.nutriment.co/

mountainofdebt

toontastic wrote: »

Just to add to this after also returning a search on google. The couple have now launched a new company http://www.nutriment.co/

I have to admit we used to feed mutt nature instinct but tried nutriment last month.

Both are very similar (in fact I challenge anyone to tell the difference) but we found nutriment's tubs a little more convenient to store due to size (in fact they make really great tubs to store batch cooking in lol)

The only other thing is that you can order more with nature instinct (min 12kg and the tubs come in 1kg tubs) than nutriment (min 10kg tubs being 500g)

JencParker

I used to use Natural Instinct and raised a litter on it, but it is expensive and now use raw minces from DAF as well as offal, fish, lamb bones and chicken carcasses.
I was also concerned that although it claimed to be a complete food, there was not enough offal in it.