- Joined
- Jun 18, 2013
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- 30
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We have two and a half cats - the half pint is a kitten we rescued last week, about 5 - 6 weeks old now.
I live in a small town in India - cats here are not generally considered as house pets yet, although that is probably changing. So because of this, cat supplies are almost impossible to find, even online. Try asking for taurine or cat supplements and they will look at you blankly.
The one thing we do get here is cat food, dry and wet. Brands - Whiskas, Royal Canin and Iams, Drools, Kitekat, Meow. Of these, I always buy Royal Canin.
An online store ships Taste of the Wild feline food, which I think is very good, however, they only ship in sizes of 15 lbs(!!), and I don't think it's good to store that much for that long.
For the past two years, we've been feeding the older two a mixture of beef and beef offal (we've tried chicken, which they will not even smell, and rabbit, which is too expensive here to be sustainable) mixed with dry kibble and some additions (fish oil, a bit of psyllium husk).
How this came about: we fed them only wet Royal Canin food at first. I started reading about the raw diet earlier, and decided to try it. Like I mentioned, they took to beef right away. I know chicken is closer to their natural diet, but they will not eat chicken even if they haven't eaten the whole day, and I usually cave in before the day is over and feed them what they like.
They are extremely fussy eaters, and will eat only lean beef. I always have to ask the butcher to be sure not to get any fat in anywhere. I put the meat in some warm water and wash, then roughly grind with kibble and fish oil in a food processor.
Their favourite is dry Royal Canin kibble. There was a point where my female cat starved herself for two days, eating maybe a mouthful of fresh sardines, in order to be fed kibble - again, I caved in, after trying just about everything else available to me.
My concern is calcium/phosphorus content - which I recently read about. They refuse to eat even the smallest bones (unless in fish, which we do not feed them more than once a month), and will turn away if they get boney meat. Should I give them supplements? I also searched around for bone meal, which strangely enough does not seem to be available anywhere here.
Any suggestions? They are (touch wood) healthy, with the most amazingly soft and shiny coats, plenty of energy (unless it's summer and too hot), strong clean teeth, and poop very healthily (about once a day or once every 36 hours, soft yet firm bullets, yellowish brown). The big boy weighs 12 lbs, the girl about 7 lbs and the littlest guy (who we are feeding KMR and wet Royal Canin food now) weighs just 1 lb (he was starved and malnutritioned when he found him, and has gained 9 ounces in the past one week).
I live in a small town in India - cats here are not generally considered as house pets yet, although that is probably changing. So because of this, cat supplies are almost impossible to find, even online. Try asking for taurine or cat supplements and they will look at you blankly.
The one thing we do get here is cat food, dry and wet. Brands - Whiskas, Royal Canin and Iams, Drools, Kitekat, Meow. Of these, I always buy Royal Canin.
An online store ships Taste of the Wild feline food, which I think is very good, however, they only ship in sizes of 15 lbs(!!), and I don't think it's good to store that much for that long.
For the past two years, we've been feeding the older two a mixture of beef and beef offal (we've tried chicken, which they will not even smell, and rabbit, which is too expensive here to be sustainable) mixed with dry kibble and some additions (fish oil, a bit of psyllium husk).
How this came about: we fed them only wet Royal Canin food at first. I started reading about the raw diet earlier, and decided to try it. Like I mentioned, they took to beef right away. I know chicken is closer to their natural diet, but they will not eat chicken even if they haven't eaten the whole day, and I usually cave in before the day is over and feed them what they like.
They are extremely fussy eaters, and will eat only lean beef. I always have to ask the butcher to be sure not to get any fat in anywhere. I put the meat in some warm water and wash, then roughly grind with kibble and fish oil in a food processor.
Their favourite is dry Royal Canin kibble. There was a point where my female cat starved herself for two days, eating maybe a mouthful of fresh sardines, in order to be fed kibble - again, I caved in, after trying just about everything else available to me.
My concern is calcium/phosphorus content - which I recently read about. They refuse to eat even the smallest bones (unless in fish, which we do not feed them more than once a month), and will turn away if they get boney meat. Should I give them supplements? I also searched around for bone meal, which strangely enough does not seem to be available anywhere here.
Any suggestions? They are (touch wood) healthy, with the most amazingly soft and shiny coats, plenty of energy (unless it's summer and too hot), strong clean teeth, and poop very healthily (about once a day or once every 36 hours, soft yet firm bullets, yellowish brown). The big boy weighs 12 lbs, the girl about 7 lbs and the littlest guy (who we are feeding KMR and wet Royal Canin food now) weighs just 1 lb (he was starved and malnutritioned when he found him, and has gained 9 ounces in the past one week).