transitioning to raw

Yesterday my cats ate their first raw food.  I gave them each one nugget of Primal beef n salmon.  They both ate it but then at breakfast today neither touched it.  Right after I mixed some wet food with it for my kitten (I had run out of the wet my other cat likes) but even with that the kitten didn't eat it and I haven't ever seem him pass on wet food.

I'm buying the wet food today that they both love (BFF) and I'll try mixing it in with that- maybe just half a nugget for each.

I thought the transitioning was more for their digestion because I assumed they would love the taste of raw.  Is it something they'll learn to like if I slowly add more and more of it to wet?

Any other advice?

Thank you!

One more note.. after posting this I read up some more and just learned that fish is very addictive and BFF is all fish. I'm wondering if that could be the problem.  I'll have to look for a wet food that doesn't have fish even though I ordered 40 cans of BFF before I decided to do raw.  I guess I'll keep those for a long time and use them sparingly.

beesto said:

I thought the transitioning was more for their digestion because I assumed they would love the taste of raw.  Is it something they'll learn to like if I slowly add more and more of it to wet?

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Transitioning is both to avoid tummy isses and acclimation. Some cats will readily eat raw food, others may snub raw at first and it may take awhile for them to even eat a little bit of raw. Don't forget that cats are finicky and may snub certain brands of food. My cats won't touch Rad Cat or Primal but love Nature's Variety.

Many people find that it's easiest to transition to raw food by starting with freeze dried raw instead of frozen raw. Freeze dried raw has more of a smell than frozen raw. Plus freeze dried raw food tend to have a texture similar to dry food but softer. You can feed freeze dried raw as is or crumble it up and sprinkle it into canned food. You can hide small amounts of frozen raw into the canned food with the crumbled freeze dried raw on top. I had to do this with my adopted rescue cat.

beesto said:

 
One more note.. after posting this I read up some more and just learned that fish is very addictive and BFF is all fish. I'm wondering if that could be the problem.  I'll have to look for a wet food that doesn't have fish even though I ordered 40 cans of BFF before I decided to do raw.  I guess I'll keep those for a long time and use them sparingly.

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The BFF can fed once in awhile as a meal or treat. Try the other brands made by the same company http://www.weruva.com/cat-cuisine.php There are non-seafood varieties. Also try Soulistic, which is made by the same company http://www.soulisticpet.com/

Thank you.  I just bought Weruva non-fish and like you said I'll use the BFF fish maybe once a week since I have a lot coming in the mail.

I have another question for you- as I keep reading (and now I'm going a little coo-coo with all the new info) ... I read on one of the resources under this forum that nuggets and such are not good for them because they need to chew and you really need to do raw from the butcher and get the bones and organs and not even a grinder.  And then the fear that they'll end up under anesthesia to clean their teeth.   In your opinion, is that just going overboard?  The fact that it's cheaper (I believe????) makes it tempting and now I'm thinking is this butcher thing without a grinder really something that I could do? and of course I question whether I'd be getting into something that truly is healthy for my cat??  I would definitely read up on it before I got into it and I wouldn't even begin to try to do this until the summer, but I'm wondering what you thought about it?

beesto said:

 
I have another question for you- as I keep reading (and now I'm going a little coo-coo with all the new info) ... I read on one of the resources under this forum that nuggets and such are not good for them because they need to chew and you really need to do raw from the butcher and get the bones and organs and not even a grinder.  And then the fear that they'll end up under anesthesia to clean their teeth.   In your opinion, is that just going overboard?  The fact that it's cheaper (I believe????) makes it tempting and now I'm thinking is this butcher thing without a grinder really something that I could do? and of course I question whether I'd be getting into something that truly is healthy for my cat??  I would definitely read up on it before I got into it and I wouldn't even begin to try to do this until the summer, but I'm wondering what you thought about it?

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I feed mainly commercial raw pet food and don't give any bones or organs to my cats for dental health. I brush their teeth Some people do give raw bones and organs and such to their raw fed cats for dental health. It's not an absolute must to give bones etc for dental health if you are feeding commercial raw food or homemade raw using a recipe, more like an option. Those who feed prey model raw already include bones etc as part of the main diet.

Frankenprey raw is cheaper in the long run. A butcher shop will have most of the things you need: raw meat, organs, liver, bone, etc. A lot of people here order their raw food supplies from Hare-Today.com and other online raw pet food web sites. I know Hare Today sells whole carcasses, ground meats (bone and organs included), boneless organless meats, chunks of boneless meats, various organs, and other things. Some people grind up their meat, others just chop it into easy to eat pieces. A grinder isn't necessary but makes the work a lot easier.

Thank you.  Interesting that a grinder makes it easier- I was picturing the other way around.  Well I think I'll stick to commercial for awhile and learn how to brush my cat's teeth. Cat care forum here I come.

LTS3 said:

 
My cats won't touch Rad Cat or Primal but love Nature's Variety.

Many people find that it's easiest to transition to raw food by starting with freeze dried raw instead of frozen raw. Freeze dried raw has more of a smell than frozen raw. Plus freeze dried raw food tend to have a texture similar to dry food but softer. You can feed freeze dried raw as is or crumble it up and sprinkle it into canned food. You can hide small amounts of frozen raw into the canned food with the crumbled freeze dried raw on top. I had to do this with my adopted rescue cat.

The BFF can fed once in awhile as a meal or treat. Try the other brands made by the same company http://www.weruva.com/cat-cuisine.php There are non-seafood varieties. Also try Soulistic, which is made by the same company http://www.soulisticpet.com/

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LTS3, I selected a few points from your post...

It's funny how different cats can be! Our cats love Rad Cat and Primal but hate Nature's Variety. And our cats went for the frozen Primal before the freeze-dried but have now settled solidly on freeze-dried. What's most frustrating is that it can take some time to figure out what combinations and/or individual foods individual cats prefer. Cats!

That's a good thought on Weruva's other lines rather than BFF. I wonder if the Cats in the Kitchen food "Funk in the Trunk" might help... it has chicken listed before tuna so might be a way to start transitioning the fish addict to more chicken and less fish. I've bought a couple of the Cats in the Kitchen cans with fish by mistake and the cats absolutely loved them. Their only fish is the little that's in their Primal chicken and beef and an occasional can of Tiki's chicken/salmon food. Both cats love that food so it's a nice treat for them.
Our vet sells CET toothbrush and toothpaste kits. The cats love the seafood flavor -- it's like a treat for them every night. They come in and jump up on the bathroom sink for it and have even gotten so they allow me to brush their back teeth (that's their problem area) a little every day so we're making progress.

LisaHE said:

 
Our vet sells CET toothbrush and toothpaste kits. The cats love the seafood flavor -- it's like a treat for them every night. They come in and jump up on the bathroom sink for it and have even gotten so they allow me to brush their back teeth (that's their problem area) a little every day so we're making progress.

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You brush their teeth, good for you!  How did you get them to accept tooth brushing? I read on Dr. Pierson's site, or rather, I saw the video she posted from Cornell Vet School re: the four week program to get cats used to teeth brushing (rather than just begin from day 1, prying their mouths open with a toothbrush - a recipe for failure)!  But I never got past stage 1 - or as close to it as putting CET chicken flavor and having one sometimes lick it off. I must begin again anew .... Do you think CET fish flavor may yield greater success than the chicken?

LisaMarie12 said:

 
You brush their teeth, good for you!  How did you get them to accept tooth brushing? I read on Dr. Pierson's site, or rather, I saw the video she posted from Cornell Vet School re: the four week program to get cats used to teeth brushing (rather than just begin from day 1, prying their mouths open with a toothbrush - a recipe for failure)!  But I never got past stage 1 - or as close to it as putting CET chicken flavor and having one sometimes lick it off. I must begin again anew .... Do you think CET fish flavor may yield greater success than the chicken?

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We had a lot of incentive to brush the cats' teeth: they had to have full dental cleanings at less than two years old! There may have been extenuating circumstances: Siamese (and mixes) tend to have tooth issues plus the vet had them tested for Bartonella, which they tested positive for. Bartonella can apparently cause tooth/mouth problems; they've already taken the antibiotics for it. They'll get retested in June to see if it worked.

As for the tooth brushing itself! I forget what the stages are in the Cornell program but I followed that, too, but quickly skipped ahead because the cats so enjoyed the toothpaste itself and chewing on the toothbrush that I combined toothbrush and toothpaste, then took the opportunity to brush when they chewed on the brush. The only teeth they really let me brush are in the back of their mouths, but that's where their problems were the biggest anyway. Every now and then someone gets ornery about brushing; then I just skip it. Edwina, who had the worst build-up and gingivitis (though still just moderate), sometimes acts like she's going to be resistant but then she almost always lets me do a decent brush, probably knowing she'll get another dab of that tasty toothpaste and then her night food. It's taken a few months to get to this point.

As for your situation, well, some Cat Site users say even just giving their cats toothpaste has helped their teeth, so you might want to just keep doing that, even if it's as far as you can get. I wouldn't hesitate to second-guess any cat's taste so don't know if you might want to try the fish flavor. I got that for our cats because we don't feed them much fish so maybe they really do see it as a treat! They really do lap it up.

LisaHE said:

 
We had a lot of incentive to brush the cats' teeth: they had to have full dental cleanings at less than two years old! There may have been extenuating circumstances: Siamese (and mixes) tend to have tooth issues plus the vet had them tested for Bartonella, which they tested positive for. Bartonella can apparently cause tooth/mouth problems; they've already taken the antibiotics for it. They'll get retested in June to see if it worked.

As for the tooth brushing itself! I forget what the stages are in the Cornell program but I followed that, too, but quickly skipped ahead because the cats so enjoyed the toothpaste itself and chewing on the toothbrush that I combined toothbrush and toothpaste, then took the opportunity to brush when they chewed on the brush. The only teeth they really let me brush are in the back of their mouths, but that's where their problems were the biggest anyway. Every now and then someone gets ornery about brushing; then I just skip it. Edwina, who had the worst build-up and gingivitis (though still just moderate), sometimes acts like she's going to be resistant but then she almost always lets me do a decent brush, probably knowing she'll get another dab of that tasty toothpaste and then her night food. It's taken a few months to get to this point.

As for your situation, well, some Cat Site users say even just giving their cats toothpaste has helped their teeth, so you might want to just keep doing that, even if it's as far as you can get. I wouldn't hesitate to second-guess any cat's taste so don't know if you might want to try the fish flavor. I got that for our cats because we don't feed them much fish so maybe they really do see it as a treat! They really do lap it up.

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Thanks for the feedback.  We don't do fish either and it would seem the toothpaste is a mere compromise and minimal as well, I think I will give the fish flavor a try, maybe I'll have better luck. I'll start again from step 1 .... thanks LisaHE!

LisaMarie12 said:

 
Thanks for the feedback.  We don't do fish either and it would seem the toothpaste is a mere compromise and minimal as well, I think I will give the fish flavor a try, maybe I'll have better luck. I'll start again from step 1 .... thanks LisaHE!

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You're welcome! Correct, they just get the bit of salmon that's in Primal plus an occasional can of Tiki's chicken/salmon (or salmon/chicken?) so fish is definitely unusual for them. Good luck!

My kitten at first ate Primal nuggets beef and chicken no problem.  But then in trying to get my 1 year old cat to eat the nuggets I was putting wet by it which didn't work, so then wet with a few crushed treats on it.  Even though the kitten had eaten the 2 nuggets it would still go for this second helping and now he's not eating just the raw.  I know I have to be patient but I feel discouraged with backwards steps.

I saw someone say you could let them not eat for 18 hours.  I'm making sure they eat 3 times a day (thus adding other food with the raw) if they don't eat.  Is this also part of the problem.  Should I let them skip a meal.  I'm having a hard time with that - thinking they'll be in an awful mood or develop food issues.

Bonnie

I'm not quite clear on what, exactly, you're feeding your two cats at each meal -- is a meal just raw, just canned, or both -- but can say that we started our cats on raw food with one small meal of raw a day, the rest canned. I never mixed raw and canned when we were getting them started. (They cats get between four and six small meals a day.) They now get Primal in the morning, a canned snack, a Rad Cat snack, Primal for dinner, and a canned bedtime meal. The two Primal meals are slightly different blends of Primal's four freeze-dried foods, plus a little Stella & Chewy's; each Primal meal is a bit more than the equivalent of one Primal nugget. These little cats eat a lot!

The good news is that your cats like -- or at least liked and ate! -- the Primal. I didn't face much resistance to introducing raw food so my advice may be bad... but I'd suggest continuing to offer three meals a day (particularly since you have a kitten), somehow working Primal into the schedule, whether as a small meal or as a snack, and gradually increasing the amounts. It may take your cats some time to get used to it. Blending the different flavors (and even frozen with freeze-dried) has been key for us: the cats don't like it as much if it's just one kind of meat. 

Good luck!

I feed a mix of ground meat, pieces of meat and whole bones. It usually takes a while for the cats  to learn to eat bones, I started 100 % feeding commercial  (meat, liver, bones .....), but switched to home made raw quite fast. It took my cat 4 monte to get the technique to eat bones, and now she eats ribs! Some cats nerver learn or enjoy eating bones that way. A few times a bone has got stuck between her teeth, but she usually solves that by herself. 

Many cats don´t see raw meat as food, it does not smell like "food". You could try to mix raw and wet, pour the gravy of the wet food onto the raw, add some tuna-juice, sprinkle something that you know that they like on it..... The IG-tract can react to the new food, to new bacteria, to new eating habits. Give it time, and go slowly towards 100 % raw. It´s so worth it! My cat leaps for joy when it it feeding time, and she growls at me it I look like I´m intending to remove that tasty bone from her.

LisaHE said:

 
I'm not quite clear on what, exactly, you're feeding your two cats at each meal -- is a meal just raw, just canned, or both -- 

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It has been both raw and wet as I try to transition and then there's the dry for my other cat who is not eating the raw at all unless it's mixed with wet, but she quickly took to eating the wet now. To be honest I bought  4 bags of raw (to get a deal) and had bought online 40 cans of fish wet which I now want to use once a week after reading that fish is not good, so I'm out of money to buy too much more of the other wet for now so I'm trying to use it sparingly.  To afford this eventually I'm going to have to learn how to make my own.

The kitten gets the raw on it's own and then if he leaves some I mix a little wet with the last of it.  Maybe I should just put it back and not give him the wet mixed in?  I'm going to return my bag of rabbit which he doesn't seem to like and get a bag of freeze dried.

cicoccabim said:

Many cats don´t see raw meat as food, it does not smell like "food". You could try to mix raw and wet, pour the gravy of the wet food onto the raw, add some tuna-juice, sprinkle something that you know that they like on it..... The IG-tract can react to the new food, to new bacteria, to new eating habits. Give it time, and go slowly towards 100 % raw. It´s so worth it! My cat leaps for joy when it it feeding time, and she growls at me it I look like I´m intending to remove that tasty bone from her.

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I'm reading about home made and specifically the bones thing is making me nervous, especially about the teeth.  And do they carry the bones around the house?  And then there's the grind or not grind.  So many different opinions.

I´ve taught my cat to eat bones on a special mat/towel. If the bone is removed from that mat I place it there  and says "wheeere is the bone supposed to be" (with a very silly voice.... ). After a few times when she tried to remove the bone from the mat- I removed the bone to the fridge! She got it back the next meal. She realized very fast that if she wanted to keep the bone- it had to stay on the mat. I can leave a big bone overnight, and I still find it in the right place!

Start feeding chicken bones- they are soft, and most cats can eat them without problem. If you are scared in the beginning- you can hold the bone while the cat is eating. Then supervise when you know what your cat can handle. As long as you feed raw bones, there is really nothing to be scared of. But I´ve been there too........ know the feeling!

Feed big bones that the at can´t eat- it will keep them occupied quite a while once they realize how to get the food on the bone. I use this trick new-years eve, when there´s a lot of new thing going on, when she´s hyperactive ........ it activates her mind and her teeth and keeps her calm. There´s no time to get nervous- she´s got a juicy bone!

Many choices, yes. Start feeding ground meat and bone, and try feeding whole bone when you feel comfortable. The cats can then adjust to eating raw in their own pace. And you can figure out if you/the cats prefer pieces /ground meat. It is also easier to make sure that the cat gets all the nutrients it needs every meal if you start with ground mixes- when you know that the cat eats everything it needs to- then you can consider feeding in bigger pieces (or the cat gets all it needs in 2 -3 days- everything has to be eaten). That was the thing I was most afraid of regarding feeding raw- what if the cat don´t get all it needs- then it really is up to me. No big brand company to blame....

I feed pieces of meat and heart. I make a slurry of the liver and the additives needed in a regular mixer, and pour it over the meat. I make it into portions, freeze it (silicone moulds), pop it out and store it in big ziplock bags. Easy to take one days worth each night and thaw in the fridge. Eatable bone is added every other day. 

But feeding raw is the best decision I´ve made for her. Her fur is soooo soft, the stools smells nothing, she loves the food, the breath does´t smell, she keeps the weight and she is ever more nosy and energetic than she was on kibble. A bit more work for me, but definitive worth it! 

That was great info.  I'm going to try it.  On catinfo.org that many people refer to the recipe calls for partly cooked.  Is that what many people do?  It seems to make sense from what I read that cats are not likely to get any poisoning we would get because of their short intestines.  I mean always feed fresh food, but beyond that is it important to very slights cook some meats like on catinfo.org.

To my reading, Lisa Pierson's partial cooking method has to be followed by finely grinding the bones.  There's a note on the catsite info page that says don't feed cooked bone even if ground, but apparently that's not a problem as long as you have a good grinder and are careful about not letting large pieces slip through.

One of my cats turned up with gingivitis by his first birthday so I feed at least some meat chunks every day and bone once a week, AND brush teeth.  Thankfully this has worked, even though I'm not sure how effective my brushing is.  I'm right handed and I find it really hard to brush the cats' left side.  It took a LONG time for them to get used to brushing, and one cat still isn't entirely with the program - I have to get him when he's relaxed and sleepy.  The trouble is he's not very food motivated.  The other one loves it so much he starts meowing at me when it's close to toothbrush time.  And sometimes he opens his mouth and tries to rub his back teeth on the brush for me!  I think he was easy to train because he loves the toothpaste and also gets bits of treats (kitty crack) in between brushes and afterwards.  And I found that it's easy to brush too hard which probably is uncomfortable, when I lightened up they got more cooperative.

Cicoccabim, how did you get your cat to gnaw on big boned items?  Mine are kinda lazy...they'll eat portions cut from chicken ribs & necks, but I couldn't interest them in wings or drumsticks.

I got a freeze dried today and didn't think I mixed it up right with the water.  Just put less than half of the amount of nuggets of warm water and stirred.  Should I be breaking up the pieces?  Is it supposed to sort of have a "wet cat food" consistency. It looked more like the pellets absorbed a little water but were more just floating in the water.

My cat started licking the bones, trying to get the meat and fat on it. She figured it out on her own. But there are many that has tied the bone in a rope and dragged it around like a toy to let the hunting instinct do it´s work. Messy- yes, but it seems to work. 

I started feeding the bones as a "starter", and since she is always hungry, she wanted the little food there was on it. Now I usually feed it as a snack. Eatable bones is included in the meal, and she normally eats is last, after all the easy-to-eat food. 

Love the part about the toothpaste! She does the same, jumps up in my lap and licks her mouth as soon as she smells the toothpaste! 

The last bone she got..... 
  kept her busy for three days!    Her tail shivers and she purrs loudly when given a bone