4 months - October 22, 2008

Prior to going into this entry I would like to say a huge thank you to Jayne of Snoocoons Maine Coons for her invaluable help and advice. I did have some questions and Jayne very kindly answered them. Thanks ever so much Jayne, you're a star :).

This is now the start of the 4 month stage and we have had a couple of changes yet again with the first change being that the fur family are starting to look like their normal, svelte, elegant selves again. I have been very firm with myself with all portions, so much so that when we are moving cats around i.e. having some upstairs at night, and some downstairs, that I now have my weight chart and calculator living in the kitchen next to the scales. Every single meal is measured and I am not going more than 10 grams over the daily allowance. It hasn't been easy as I'm still suffering that guilty feeling that the children are starving which they most definitely are not. In fact, even now I am still seeing such contentment amongst the fur family because their little tummies are full and they are just so very satisfied. Even now when breakfast is served, they take their time about strolling to the trays to tuck into their thighs, well not their own thighs obviously, chicken and turkey thighs :) and their wings. Breakfast meals are still so funny though because once everyone has been served breakky, I will then have a coffee and check my emails and as I sit here at my desk in the next room, I can hear the happy crunching of bones, tearing of meat, and some super possessive growls emanating from the kids like Nocello and Afrikoko who are so very possessive over their raw diet. Everyone is just so happy at meals times and they are still deriving such a huge amount of pleasure from eating the raw and it's wonderful to just stand back and watch them enjoy their food so much.

I have now decided what I am going to do with regards to kitten families and sending them home with food samples. Up until going raw, we have always sent home the usual JW biscuits, Hi Life, Tesco's Finest, Natures Menu, and other food samples but I can't do that now. As our forthcoming litter (should the pregnancy be successful), the babies will be raw fed. I had thought perhaps about making up little raw meals, freezing them, and sending them home with the families in the same way that we have previously sent them home with their packed lunch. But.............how many kitten families are going to want to open a container of chicken wings, or turkey thigh chunks and not only handle the meat but then feed it? To be fair to kitten families, raw feeding is certainly not for everyone, especially where the convenience side comes into it because we all know how much easier it is to open a packet of biscuits and pour them into a bowl, or to open a pouch and put that in a bowl. In today's busy world, it's not always so easy to find time to prepare raw meals so..........................I've come up with a possible solution. For the past week and a half I have been going to the Prize Choice web site and visiting that, then I popped into our local Pets At Home to discover that yes they do stock the Prize Choice foods. I thought I'd give it a go.................................

There is quite a huge variety, one in particular that includes liver which is a bonus for people like myself who even now are still struggling to get the fur kids to eat offal and I ended up buying a few of the 450 gram packs. I have to say that I was extremely impressed with the price, it was a lot cheaper than I thought it would be and 2 of those 450 gram packs is equal to half a daily meal allowance for the downstairs people. Now in case you're wondering if I've decided to stop feeding raw meats and bones and just feed the Prize Choice, then the answer is no however, I am certainly going to be including now quite a few times a week. The meal times which consist of raw meat foods and mince only are now having the PrIze choice meats included. Not at every meal but certainly at least 4 out of 7 evening meals. Although I have contacted the company as I had a query and am waiting to hopefully hear back from them.

For anyone who would like to feed raw but does not feel they have the necessary time then perhaps the Prize Choice foods would be a great way to start. The packs simply get placed in a bowl of warm water, when they are defrosted, you simply put it in a bowl in the same way you would a pouch of commercial food. I do believe however that it is still essential to also feed bones such as chicken wings, as well as the dark meats of chicken and turkey due to the taurine content that cats do need as part of their diet. But if our kittens are used to the Prize Choice foods, then these can be sent home with their new families as I don't know that anyone could object to simply opening one up and putting it in a bowl? For those families who want to put their kittens onto commercial foods, then by using the Prize Choice and by slowly, over a period of time, adding their chosen commercial foods, this should hopefully prevent any tummy upsets due to sudden change of diet from raw to commercial.

There is one other bonus for me with this Prize Choice food and that is that it will make my life a tad easier on show days. When we're showing it means leaving the house anywhere between 5 and 6am, this in turn means getting up at least an hour and a half before that to do litter trays, put the washing in, get the equipment in the car, and prepare the raw breakfast for everyone. So what I may do now is serve up the Prize Choice foods for breakfast on show days as it will be quick and easy and I can also take it with me for whoever I am showing that particular day. The one problem with the raw diet is what on earth you take along for your cat to eat during the show as I am certain that other exhibitors do not want to see my cats eating chicken wings and chunks of meat in their pens :) Whereas a bowl of some Prize Choice food should not really bother anyone.

This past week has been spent devising an actual menu so that I will know what the cats are eating each day. The reason for this is that because I shop daily for the cats, I would stand there for 20 minutes trying to remember what they had been fed the past few days so that I could ensure they were not getting too much of one thing or not enough of another. It dawned on me that I would be much better off having a set menu that includes meat chunks and bones, (in the form of chicken, turkey, game, rabbit, beef, lamb), oily fish, goats milk yoghurt, egg yolks, offal, Prize Choice.

As for our own cat family and their raw diet, even now I still find it hard to believe that in such a very short space of time we have eradicated all commercial foods from the home. When I first started this I truly thought it would be at least 6 months before every single cat would be happy to eat raw foods. Cacao was the hardest person to convince, but then she will be 6 years old in just 2 weeks' time and while she was so hesitant at the start, she loves her raw food now.

The raw diet has also made collecting poo's from the cat run a heck of a lot easier. In our cat run, there is a small patch of dirt that we deliberately kept there for those kids who wanted to do their business outside rather than in the litter trays and the little poo's are so incredibly firm and hard and easy to scoop up. Prior to raw feeding I would have to dig up half the dirt just to remove any traces of soft, runny stools so I can say that it is now a huge pleasure to scoop up poo from the cat run on a twice daily basis.

I have noticed that our cat family are drinking far less water now than they did when they were on commercial foods but then biscuits really don't have moisture content as such and because we used to have biscuits out all of the time the cats were constantly going to the water bowls to drink. As for teeth, well, I am delighted with the state of the teeth and gums of every single fur child. Their "fangs" are a beautiful, bright white colour, their gums are a lovely colour and I couldn't be more pleased.

In summary, I have come to the conclusion that if what I've been seeing with our cat family for the past 2 months is the result of the raw feeding and Feline Combination Nosodes, then I am 200% convinced that a natural diet was the right choice to make.

4 months - November 6, 2008

Another small update with just a couple of things..............................

I do feel the need here to comment on the customer service from Anglian Meat Products (Prize Choice) during my recent correspondence with them. More often than not in today's world, many companies and organisations just do not care about the "little people" however this is not the case with Prize Choice. You may remember in my previous entry that we had just started using their products and I had a query so had contacted the company? My query was regarding Taurine content in their products as this is not currently listed on the company web site. I was delighted to receive a reply that offered helpful advice AND was told that whilst they do not currently have a breakdown of the Taurine content, some samples would be sent away for testing so that this information could be made available. What an amazing response! Obviously it will take some time for the testing to be done and the results to come through but hopefully when they do, they will either be published on the Prize Choice web site or perhaps I will be permitted to publish them in the raw feeding diary. As for our own cats and the Prize Choice foods, they are still totally loving them. There is only one very small issue that I have with them....................sometimes I am too impatient for them to thaw out so when they are sitting in a bowl of warm water I start to squeeze and poke the bags to "help them" thaw a bit quicker. I would advise that you don't do this because I squeezed too hard and the bag split inside the bowl of water :) :)

Our pregnant lady is doing extremely well on her raw diet and I'm still quite excited and apprehensive about our first raw pregnant mummy and babies. She is positively blooming and looks so amazing and the children inside her appear to be quite active bless them. Just like pregnant women, she does have certain cravings, one of which being entire raw quails which we are more than happy to feed to her.

I do still have some days where I groan at the thought of having to prepare the raw meals, particularly on days where I am really busy. Even though I am already seeing the benefits of feeding raw, there are times when it really is a chore and I do have to motivate myself to stand in the kitchen for ages warming up food and then hacking away at bones and raw meat. The only "easy" raw meals obviously are the Prize Choice ones. Mind you, doing their one meal per week of scrambled eggs and tinned fish is not much better! I bet you can't guess how many eggs it takes to make scrambled eggs for our cat family :)

Energy levels amongst the cat family are still the best they have ever been. It's amazing the difference a raw diet can make and the fur kids, even the older ones, all think they are kittens again.