Raw Feeding Cats/Kittens Starter Guide
Cats, are obligate carnivores which means they are strict meat eaters, they need meat to survive. Commercial wet cat foods can contain as little as 4% meat (which is actually meat derivatives and the company probably cannot tell you what animal the meat derivatives come from).
Kittens are easy to get transitioned onto a raw diet – it’s pretty impossible to overfeed a kitten. Kittens have a high activity level and therefore they use of a lot of energy which then means they need lots of food to replace this. You should feed a kitten as much as it will eat over a number of different meal times. If your kitten is less active then you will need to feed less.
Changing cats to a raw diet can take time. A lot of perseverance and patience is needed with the majority of cats. However, you could be very lucky and your cat will eat a raw bit of chicken straight away (or perhaps has stolen some from the dogs bowl, which is why you’re here!).
Transitioning a cat to raw is completely different to transitioning a dog, a dog will eat when he is hungry, therefore you can fast until he eats what has been put in front of him.
With cats you CANNOT fast them, do not go cold turkey, tough love is absolutely not an option! Cats have to eat otherwise they will start breaking down their own body protein – this is dangerous so please take the time to read below on transitioning and be prepared to have some patience – it will be worth it in the end!
What are you feeding now?
24 hour kibble buffet? If you have an all you can eat 24 hour buffet the first step you will need to take is to stop the buffet and have set meal times.
This does not necessarily mean you should stop feeding kibble altogether at this current moment, instead this means that you should let your cat have limited access to the bowl at set times/ timescales per day, this will make the switch easier as your cat will have times when he is hungry.
(If your cat has taken to raw straight away then you don’t need to follow these steps!) Once you have got the meal times sorted, the next step would be to gradually get your cat switched to eating a high quality wet food. Again, this can take time so please be patient!!!!
The reasoning behind this is because kibble and raw are completely different textures, so changing to something with a similar texture will make the change to raw a bit easier once your cat is fully fed on wet food.
The diet should be made up of 80% meat 10% bone and 10% offal (5% must be liver). All of my cats enjoy chicken wings, pork loin, chicken thighs, beef, turkey and if you are feeling brave they also have whole prey such as day old chicks and day old ducklings.
They can have lots of different proteins, my cats genuinely have what I can get my hands on – chicken, beef, lamb, duck, goat, rabbit, pheasant, pigeon, partridge, pork, oily fish, boar, to name just a few, they also have raw eggs.
REMEMBER: slow introductions are key when introducing new meats and lots of variety.
There are only 2 major differences when it comes to feeding cats raw. The first one is that there is no need to feed fruit or veg and secondly, cats need taurine in their diet in order to survive.
How much do i feed?
Again, every cat is different and you will need to take into consideration your cats activity level, age, weight but general guidelines are to feed about 3-5% of your cats body weight. If your cat is overweight you will need to reduce this accordingly.
A load of poo Ok, so hopefully after getting this far, you won’t think this article is a load of poo. Poo is a great indication of knowing that we are getting it right.
If you have a hard white crumbly poo, this is an indication that you are feeding too much bone, on the other hand, if you get a runny poo, you could be feeding too much offal.
Use your cats poo to use as a guideline.