Week 6 - August 14, 2008

Into Week 6 now and I have to say that the biggest change overall is..........................poo! Never, at least not that I can remember, have we been seeing such amazing poo's from the entire feline family. The raw feeding has made a tremendous difference. Even the cats who have always had perfectly normal stools now have smaller stools that are less smelly. It is Tuaca that the feeding has had the largest effect on when stools are concerned. Prior to having him neutered he developed the most awful diarrhoea, so bad that he was dripping. Unfortunately, the medication he was given for this actually made it even worse. Now that he has been on the raw diet for a few weeks, there has been no "dripping" or "leaking" in ages, I am not having to constantly scrub everything and he feels so very much better in himself now. We are even getting formed stools from him which is just fantastic, for us, and for him.

The other cat who has always had incredibly soft stools (almost ever since we have had her actually) is Toussaint. She had never actually had diarrhoea, but her poo has never been well formed. If that isn't bad enough however, for the past 12 months Toussaint had taken to going to the toilet in the corners of the floor which has been a nightmare as you can imagine. Since being on the raw food, her stools are becoming slightly firmer, although she has a long way to go, she has not been to the toilet in any inappropriate place for over 2 weeks now.

Even if these were the only changes the raw feeding had on the cats, then for that alone, it has been more than worthwhile.

You may remember me mentioning in Week 5 about the fact that I had been feeding them slightly more than the recommended daily allowance? Well a few days ago I very stupidly realised that I have been feeding over double the amount each day. When I originally worked out last week the amounts/weights of cats/daily allowances, I did not take into account that I am feeding our cats raw twice a day. So for each meal, they were receiving just a tad more than 3% of their bodyweight. So basically, I have been feeding approximately 7% per day instead of 3% and yes I did feel rather daft. (Told you that maths has never been my strong point.) It certainly explained why there was always so much food left over as well!

I've also made the decision that I am feeding far too much in the way of chicken wings. During my research of the raw feeding, I kept reading that the cats should be fed chicken wings/bones, etc. twice a week. I have been including chicken wings once per day <sigh> which is madness really when you consider that at least 3 times per week they also get whole quails and they eat every single part of the quail including the bones. Now, I am going to cut down on chicken wings and have much more of the larger chunks of meat and they love these anyway so that will not be a problem.

I am still including mince in quite a few of their meals and I still insist that it does them no harm at all because they are still using their teeth and jaws daily on the chunks of meat and the bones.

Cacao is now enjoying the raw as much as everyone else and Ashanti of course, is most irate with me if I don't take his raw meals up to his room on time bless him. It's so funny because he absolutely loves attention, and demands it from me in the way that only a cat as good as he can, yet now he is torn between wanting attention and eating. This usually ends up with me stroking him while he is chewing on chunks of raw meat :)

Everyone else is doing bloody well on the raw diet. We have always been so very proud of tour cat's condition and have always had people comment on how wonderful they look and how soft their coats are but now, they look the best I have ever seen them look and I am just totally amazed and how sleek, shiny, soft, and energetic they all are. Let us hope that within the next few weeks I will have balanced out the meals and portions better so that I will hopefully have it down to a fine art.

Week 6 - August 15, 2008

I had not been planning on another entry so soon after the last one but wanted to share a couple of things. I woke up this morning, made coffee, prepared the cats' breakfast, fed the cats and made a start on litter trays. Not only was the floor in the back room quite messy, but the litter trays themselves were not particularly pleasant in that the majority of the poo's in all the trays was very dark and like tar. I could not understand it at all, particularly as everything had been going wonderfully well in the poo department. After a few minutes of racking my brain it dawned on me why I was seeing (and smelling) such odd deposits.

When I fed the cats their dinner last night, I included some black pudding, something that I will not eat myself, not in a million years, however we had some in the fridge and it seemed a good idea at the time. Never again! It was the black pudding that was the cause of the weird looking poo's so let's say I learnt a very good lesson there :)

Having now worked out the feeding proportions and feeling quite pleased with myself about it all, after dinner last night, within a one hour time frame, every single scrap of raw meat had been eaten. There was nothing left at all and this was extremely unusual. I had given them just slightly more than half their daily allowance (remembering they had the other half that morning for breakfast), so they should have all been feeling incredibly full and content. Me, being me of course, felt desperately sorry for them as they had eaten all the food so I went back into the kitchen, warmed up some more raw, and then gave them to them 20 minutes later. Is it any surprise that they only ate a quarter of it?

A couple of friends have asked me about the cost of feeding raw in comparison to feeding commercial biscuits and wet food. I'm not sure to be honest. In our home, with the amount of cats that we have, I can say that the raw feeding is actually working out just as expensive as the JW biscuits, home cooking, and wet foods were costing us. This could be because we buy fresh meat only for the cats, from the supermarket, they are not given any pet quality meats at all, nor do we buy bulk frozen meats. I know some other breeders do buy frozen meat in bulk from excellent suppliers but I don't want to do this as one thing that I had been reading is that once meat is frozen, the taurine content does decrease so fresh meat has a much higher taurine content than frozen. I guess, possibly, if someone just had one or two cats, then it may work out cheaper than commercial foods but I really do not know.