2 months old eating only meat

Hi. So I have this tiny ball of fur of 2.5 months who is eating only meat, egg yolks and goat milk. But meat is what he eats consistently. 

I visited 3 vets since having him. The first two were absolutely fine with his diet. One even praised it, on the grounds that cats are carnivores anyway. The last one was absolutely horrified. He said I should abandon meat immediately and starve him, if need be, until he switches on dry food, or wet food. He even explained a method of putting the kibbles (!!!!) in front of the kitty, leaving it for 15 minutes, then waiting for him to go hungry a few hours and try again. His argument was that a diet high in protein is very dangerous for male cats - causes urinary tract problems, which have a high mortality rate. 

Needless to say, I feel very conflicted about what to feed him right now. While I might agree that his current diet is not the complete option, is seriously switching him to dry food gonna improve anything???

Thanks for reading. Opinions most welcome!

Are balancing the meat with a supplement?

Why have you visited 3 vets in a short amount of time? Just regular stuff or are there health problems.

First, a high animal protein diet does not cause urinary problems. In fact meat is a natural acidifier which helps keep urine pH near the norm. In fact high carbs i.e. carbs are the problem for many diseases such as obesity and diabetes, and urinary issues from lack of moisture. I think the diet you are feeding just needs to be tweaked to add calcium and secreting organs in proper ratios. When you say you are feeding meat, do you mean raw, cooked or both? If cooked, I would also add taurine. What kind of meat are we talking about, and we can help you balance/supplement it to make it nutritionally complete.

He's a smart kitty! But the meat does need to be balanced. You can buy balanced frozen raw food or learn how to balance the diet yourself. But, yes, cats are carnivores and meat is what they need. You don't see wild cats raiding the garden .

Thanks everyone for the answers.

I visited 3 different vets because I like to get second opinions. The thing he suffers from are ear mites, but we are on the second day of the treatment and he looks much better. The rest were just check-ups and the shots.

He eats the meet raw, because that's his favorite. I could have it boiled for him, but it will sit in the bowl a lot before he approaches it. As for types of meat he loves chicken the most, then turkey, duck, lamb, pork...I tried beef the other day and he didn't want it, but maybe it was a little too fatty for him, so I'm going to give it another try in a week or so.

It sounds like you have a good variety of proteins, but you are not feeding any bone or organs? The general rule of thumb is 83-85% muscle meat (which includes heart and gizzards)/5-7% bone/5% liver/5% other secreting organ such as kidney, spleen, pancreas, etc.

If you do not want to feed bone and organ, you can do what you're doing now but add a supplement that takes care of the other nutritional requirements. One that I (and others on this site) have used is Wysong Call of the Wild. It's easy to use. You just add 1 tsp of the powder to every 3 ounces of meat. Most cats like the flavor as well. There's also a product called Alnutrin which would work as well.

I've tried to restrain from making this post, but if there's a chance someone will learn something from it, here it goes. 

There's a lot of praise for raw feeding on this forum. I just want to say it's really dangerous for your kittens. Because of it, my 3 months old kitten developed Nutritional Secondary Hyperparathyroidism:

The cause of this nutritional bone disease is a diet consisting primarily of organ meats, such as hearts, livers, and kidneys. Such a diet is too high in phosphorus and too low in calcium and vitamin D. (Vitamin D is necessary for calcium to be absorbed from the small intestine.)

Kittens are at particular risk because they require large amounts of calcium for growth and development. When a kitten’s sole source of nourishment is meat, he’s getting too much phosphorus and not enough calcium. This results in overactivity of the parathyroid glands.

Symptoms appear after the kitten has been on a high-meat diet for about four weeks. Affected kittens are reluctant to move, and they develop an uncoordinated gait and lameness  in the back legs. The front legs are often bowed. Their thin bones are easily fractured. These fractures, often multiple, tend to heal rapidly and may even go unrecognized. Because the meat diet supplies adequate calories, kittens often appear well-nourished and have a healthy coat despite their metabolic bone disease.

So please, enough with trying to reinvent the wheel and just follow common sense and feed your cat what the experts agreed on.

Thank you for reading.

I'm sorry your cat is having this problem.

The vets were wrong:   a kitten/cat should not be fed exclusively meat, egg yolks and goat milk, nor should you ever starve a cat into submission; and cats have a high requirement for protein.  If a cat will only eat meat, then you MUST supplement with the appropriate vitamins and bone.  Since kittens are growing they require a large amount of meat/organs/etc. 

BTW:  heart is classified as a meat/protein, not organ.  Heart has a lot of taurine.

But what do "experts" agree on? :dk: And what's common sense? Wouldn't that be to feed a carnivore what carnivores are supposed to eat?

I'm sorry your little guy is sick . I hope he gets better soon. But, as was pointed out, a raw diet was not to blame for his illness. A severely unbalanced diet is to blame---bones (or calcium supplement) and organs are vital, just muscle meat will not be sufficient. If someone wishes to provide their cat with a homemade diet, they need to be very careful to make sure it provides all the proper nutrients. It's a shame your vets couldn't help you to come up with a balanced diet.

In the "wild" a cat would hunt a bird or mouse.  It would eat the entire prey not just the meat.  You caused a serious issue not the raw diet.  Research BEFORE jumping into something this major. 

Switching to dry only is not that great either. THAT has a higher chance of urinary issues or kidney issues due to a CONSTANT state of dehydration.  If BALANCED raw is out DO NOT go to all dry.  Find a decent canned food.

TheTigerDen said:

I've tried to restrain from making this post, but if there's a chance someone will learn something from it, here it goes. 

There's a lot of praise for raw feeding on this forum. I just want to say it's really dangerous for your kittens. Because of it, my 3 months old kitten developed Nutritional Secondary Hyperparathyroidism:

The cause of this nutritional bone disease is a diet consisting primarily of organ meats, such as hearts, livers, and kidneys. Such a diet is too high in phosphorus and too low in calcium and vitamin D. (Vitamin D is necessary for calcium to be absorbed from the small intestine.)

Kittens are at particular risk because they require large amounts of calcium for growth and development. When a kitten’s sole source of nourishment is meat, he’s getting too much phosphorus and not enough calcium. This results in overactivity of the parathyroid glands.

Symptoms appear after the kitten has been on a high-meat diet for about four weeks. Affected kittens are reluctant to move, and they develop an uncoordinated gait and lameness  in the back legs. The front legs are often bowed. Their thin bones are easily fractured. These fractures, often multiple, tend to heal rapidly and may even go unrecognized. Because the meat diet supplies adequate calories, kittens often appear well-nourished and have a healthy coat despite their metabolic bone disease.

So please, enough with trying to reinvent the wheel and just follow common sense and feed your cat what the experts agreed on.

Thank you for reading.

Click to expand...

The story to be learned here is not that a homemade diet shouldn't be fed to a pet but rather that anyone doing so *must* learn how to do it properly. You obviously did not do that.

I'm sorry that you have learned lesson the hard way but please be honest about where the blame belongs.

mschauer said:

The story to be learned here is not that a homemade diet shouldn't be fed to a pet but rather that anyone doing so *must* learn how to do it properly. You obviously did not do that.

I'm sorry that you have learned lesson the hard way but please be honest about where the blame belongs.

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100%

mschauer said:

The story to be learned here is not that a homemade diet shouldn't be fed to a pet but rather that anyone doing so *must* learn how to do it properly. You obviously did not do that.

I'm sorry that you have learned lesson the hard way but please be honest about where the blame belongs.

Click to expand...

Agree 100 percent. If you want to feed your cat a proper diet read catinfo.org which is written by a vet very informed in nutrition.

I hope you do not start feeding a dry diet which does cause a lot of problems in cats including uti's, diabetes and obeseity. Read catinfo which will give you all the information on a balanced diet which can consist of balanced raw, cooked or canned food. I feed a balanced raw and canned diet to my cats and balanced raw to my dog who is 16 years old!

It s so so sad to see that the op has been around since April.... We have a great raw forum where much could have been learned about properly balancing meals.... And this issue would easily been avoided by simply posting there for questions.... Or reading the resources threads....
for the little one

I completely agree with Carolina. The fist post in this thead asks if the diet is balanced and the second warns that the diet stated needs more calcium. If the op had listened to the responses I think there would have been a different outcome

TheTigerDen said:

Hi. So I have this tiny ball of fur of 2.5 months who is eating only meat, egg yolks and goat milk. But meat is what he eats consistently. 

I visited 3 vets since having him. The first two were absolutely fine with his diet.


Thanks for reading. Opinions most welcome!

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Sadly, you apparently took none of the advice provided. I don't know if you went into detail with your vets about the diet you were feeding, but I find it highly unlikely that they understood you were feeding almost no calcium to your kitty and yet praised the diet.

As has been pointed out, the problem is not the format of the feeding, it is that it was not done correctly. Sadly, many vets unless they have done additional research or have had specific training, know little about how to properly balance a raw diet. But I'm quite sure that based just on common sense that they would understand that if you were providing no bone or calcium supplement that your kitten was not getting enough of this crucial mineral.

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TheTigerDen said:

I've tried to restrain from making this post, but if there's a chance someone will learn something from it, here it goes.


There's a lot of praise for raw feeding on this forum. I just want to say it's really dangerous for your kittens.

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I'm so sorry your kitty is suffering. :heart2: But at TCS, those of us that feed raw and are active on the forums are very focused on helping people feed raw correctly. We are quick to tell people that if they cannot properly balance their homemade raw food, you're better off feeding commercially prepared food - whether raw or canned.

Kitten or adult cat, it is dangerous to feed raw food that is not properly balanced.

I agree with mschauer 100% as well.

mschauer said:

The story to be learned here is not that a homemade diet shouldn't be fed to a pet but rather that anyone doing so *must* learn how to do it properly. You obviously did not do that.

I'm sorry that you have learned lesson the hard way but please be honest about where the blame belongs.

Click to expand...

I also agree.  I do not feed all raw, but instead feed mostly wet, because I know myself and that I wouldn't be able to adequately feed raw at this time in my life.  I am very very sorry this happened to you, though.