If you raw feed your car, can you talk me through the practicalities?

[frostymornings]

Increasingly thinking this is the route I need to go down for my 7 year ild rescue moggies. Had them for 4 years and they've always been happy with a mix of wet food (Felix AGAIL) and dry food. However lately they have become very very fussy, buzzing round me for food but not wanting what I put down. Current routine is wet food for breakfast, more for tea then some biscuits last thing at night.
Any advice on how to make the swap, routines, what to feed etc very gratefully received, thank you

My two were raw fed by their breeder and we’ve carried on. They have purrform frozen tubs. It’s not cheap but it goes down well (rabbit flavours only for my fussies).

Added bonus is that their poo is firm and not smelly 😸😸

How much does each cat get through in a day @MyTwoBengals?.

I would be extremely careful as most raw foods are not nutritionally balanced, some have been associated with TB in cats and all significantly increase the risk of your cat becoming a carrier of E. coli, salmonella, campylobacter etc. You should not raw feed if you have children, elderly or immunosuppressed people in the home

icatcare.org/tb-in-uk-cats-fed-a-commercial-raw-food-diet/

www.vin.com/apputil/content/defaultadv1.aspx?pId=20539&id=8506279

www.vettimes.co.uk/news/raw-diet-pros-and-cons-reviewed/

@frostymornings you'd eve better off providing a good quality complete food and considering feeding your cats more creatively. 2 set meals a day is a very unnatural feeding regime for most cats

icatcare.org/feeding-cats-creatively/

You do need to watch out for taurine deficiency, a lot of cats used to get very unwell with it before commercial cat food.

@Fluffycloudland77 I’m not sure how much Purrform they eat, as we feed them little and often. I think it’s less than a tub (which is 450g) per day.
They also have a pouch of Sainsbury’s delicious recipes (high meat, no cereal) between them for pre-breakfast and occasionally dh will give them more during the day because he spoils them.
They are both female, not sure how much they weigh, but they are quite muscular.

So they were probably right when they said 200g per day, I’d eat more if I was living on junk I suppose.

Vetinaris articles put me off through, I couldn’t live with myself if i gave a cat TB.

That article was about TB in wild venison. I don’t think TB is an issue for farmed rabbits?

@MyTwoBengals

That article was about TB in wild venison. I don’t think TB is an issue for farmed rabbits?

Farmed venison.

The point is that the quality controls for raw food are poor and it poses a public health and malnutrition risk

What would you recommend for optimum nutrition @Veterinari?.

I think we all just want the best for them don’t we?. I wouldn’t be comfortable feeding dry all the time, a lot of bengals can’t digest cereals well, mine had Arden grange as a snack.

I looked into a raw food diet, but as everyone has said it’s trying to get the taurine level right. Our breeder recommended feeding kibble and roast chicken, but it was seriously inconvenient just roasting chicken or poaching a fish fillet for her. Nothing better than the smell of poached pollock before breakfast

So I feed my furbaby Blink. It’s usually about 50% meat/fish and then broth or veggies (no grain). It’s completely different to what you think of as cat food, as in, DH would probably eat it. It’s human grade and chicken looks like chicken.

She loves it. We’ve tried applaws, Sheba, republic of cats, royal canin, wainwright’s and it always comes back to Blink.

She also enjoys mackerel fillets, roast chicken, Chinese duck, shortbread biscuits, frazzles and liver sticks.

M&S shortbread or will she accept supermarket? @Spandang.

Our cat loved butter but only lurpak. Anything else got a flick of the eyes that said “seriously”.

One of my bengals loves cheese.
I have to beat her off with a big stick if I’m making cheese sandwiches
(that’s an exaggeration BTW. I do not beat my cats).

@Fluffycloudland77 any to be fair. She does love butter though, if you’ve got crumpets you can bet the cat will be around to lick the plate after.