Enjoy your campfire! That's the beauty of electronic communication - it's there when it's convenient. 
ETA: Willowy posted while I was blathering on, and summed it up rather nicely. :lol3: But for a more lengthy version, read on...
:nod: I see no reason not to go straight to raw, :lol3:, but yeah, IMO no reason to just skip the kibble and go for the canned. We rescued for a long time, and still work with and TNR the ferals that turn up here. Trust me, starving cats recognize kibble as food. :nod:
I understand what you're asking about the supplements now.
Most people don't supplement much of anything for cats. Maybe digestive enzymes or probiotics. Those are most typical. There are supplements sold with anti-oxidants. I'd peruse the Mercola site for something if you feel better taking that type of precaution (though none of my cats liked their digestive enzymes, and others have had issues getting their cats to eat the Mercola probiotics. But they do have quality stuff: krill oil, ubiquinol and others). http://healthypets.mercola.com/ Let's face it - our pets are exposed to the same toxins we are, so they can probably benefit from some anti-oxidants. That's the reason Dr. Becker recommends some fruit/veggie mix in her raw diet recipes for cats. But most raw feeders do try to source more naturally, I think, and most try to avoid fruits & veggies, because they're not natural for cat systems to be digesting them.
For instance, flax is a popular omega 3 supplement. But cats lack the digestive enzymes necessary to convert the ALA in the flax seed into the usable EPA and DHA. Cats need EPA and DHA pre-formed - and that's salmon or krill oil. Krill oil seems to be more biovavailable for our pets needing an omega supplement for joint health (like my Flowerbelle). But krill oil, unlike salmon oil, has no vitamin D in it. So it really depends on what you're using the supplement for. If you're counting on vitamin D from the fish oil supplement, you need to use sardines or salmon oil, not krill oil. I provide krill oil only to my kitty that needs it for her joints, and give her sardines twice a week for the D.
Sorry, I keep blathering. Typically, supplements supplied to cats (outside of digestive enzymes or probiotics) are for omega 3s which are lacking in the diet. Also, including egg yolks and sardines to account for the parts of animals we're not feeding them when providing prey model raw - which is just a model, not the whole animal. But even commercial diets, if they don't contain eggs or egg yolks, are best supplemented with an omega 3 and egg yolks. Choline is just so good for cats - many benefits, among them helping to prevent dementia when they're older. :nod:
I have an FIV kitty and a cancer survivor, and I'm anal. So I've probably done more work on supplements than most. I do think the cats (mine are all older - they range in age from 6 or 7 years old to 11 years old), and while I think they might benefit from vitamin C, I haven't yet included it in any rotation. I do like to "pulse" the "additional" things like lactoferrin, rather than just using them all the time, which is how I use the ubiquinol and how I'd use the vitamin C. If you want to use some kind of spirulina thingy, it probably won't hurt. I see they do have something on the Mercola site. :nod:
But basically with cats... think "animal." Because that's what they're bodies are designed to use - animal parts. If it comes from veggies or fruits, it's not a natural component of their diet. That doesn't by definition make it "bad." You just have to do your research and decide to what extent you want to supplement with stuff outside of what their bodies would naturally use. It is, though, important not to think of cats as small dogs, because the way they function and metabolize food is very, very different. They NEED more fat than dogs, they cannot convert beta carotene into vitamin A, they can't convert certain fats into the usable forms; they need many things pre-formed, lacking the digestive enzymes necessary to convert them into stuff their bodies can use.
A good overview is this paper: http://journals.cambridge.org/actio...7588&fulltextType=RA&fileId=S0954422402000070 (The full study is available free)
And here's another one - shorter read, and kind of highlights the differences between cats and dogs, though the focus is on PUFAs: http://www.chiro.org/nutrition/FULL/The_Essential_PUFA_Guide.shtml
ETA: Willowy posted while I was blathering on, and summed it up rather nicely. :lol3: But for a more lengthy version, read on...
:nod: I see no reason not to go straight to raw, :lol3:, but yeah, IMO no reason to just skip the kibble and go for the canned. We rescued for a long time, and still work with and TNR the ferals that turn up here. Trust me, starving cats recognize kibble as food. :nod:
I understand what you're asking about the supplements now.
Most people don't supplement much of anything for cats. Maybe digestive enzymes or probiotics. Those are most typical. There are supplements sold with anti-oxidants. I'd peruse the Mercola site for something if you feel better taking that type of precaution (though none of my cats liked their digestive enzymes, and others have had issues getting their cats to eat the Mercola probiotics. But they do have quality stuff: krill oil, ubiquinol and others). http://healthypets.mercola.com/ Let's face it - our pets are exposed to the same toxins we are, so they can probably benefit from some anti-oxidants. That's the reason Dr. Becker recommends some fruit/veggie mix in her raw diet recipes for cats. But most raw feeders do try to source more naturally, I think, and most try to avoid fruits & veggies, because they're not natural for cat systems to be digesting them.
For instance, flax is a popular omega 3 supplement. But cats lack the digestive enzymes necessary to convert the ALA in the flax seed into the usable EPA and DHA. Cats need EPA and DHA pre-formed - and that's salmon or krill oil. Krill oil seems to be more biovavailable for our pets needing an omega supplement for joint health (like my Flowerbelle). But krill oil, unlike salmon oil, has no vitamin D in it. So it really depends on what you're using the supplement for. If you're counting on vitamin D from the fish oil supplement, you need to use sardines or salmon oil, not krill oil. I provide krill oil only to my kitty that needs it for her joints, and give her sardines twice a week for the D.
Sorry, I keep blathering.
Typically, supplements supplied to cats (outside of digestive enzymes or probiotics) are for omega 3s which are lacking in the diet. Also, including egg yolks and sardines to account for the parts of animals we're not feeding them when providing prey model raw - which is just a model, not the whole animal. But even commercial diets, if they don't contain eggs or egg yolks, are best supplemented with an omega 3 and egg yolks. Choline is just so good for cats - many benefits, among them helping to prevent dementia when they're older. :nod:I have an FIV kitty and a cancer survivor, and I'm anal. So I've probably done more work on supplements than most. I do think the cats (mine are all older - they range in age from 6 or 7 years old to 11 years old), and while I think they might benefit from vitamin C, I haven't yet included it in any rotation. I do like to "pulse" the "additional" things like lactoferrin, rather than just using them all the time, which is how I use the ubiquinol and how I'd use the vitamin C. If you want to use some kind of spirulina thingy, it probably won't hurt. I see they do have something on the Mercola site. :nod:
But basically with cats... think "animal." Because that's what they're bodies are designed to use - animal parts. If it comes from veggies or fruits, it's not a natural component of their diet. That doesn't by definition make it "bad." You just have to do your research and decide to what extent you want to supplement with stuff outside of what their bodies would naturally use. It is, though, important not to think of cats as small dogs, because the way they function and metabolize food is very, very different. They NEED more fat than dogs, they cannot convert beta carotene into vitamin A, they can't convert certain fats into the usable forms; they need many things pre-formed, lacking the digestive enzymes necessary to convert them into stuff their bodies can use.
A good overview is this paper: http://journals.cambridge.org/actio...7588&fulltextType=RA&fileId=S0954422402000070 (The full study is available free)
And here's another one - shorter read, and kind of highlights the differences between cats and dogs, though the focus is on PUFAs: http://www.chiro.org/nutrition/FULL/The_Essential_PUFA_Guide.shtml
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