Tips for kitties that refuse to chew raw meat chunks?!

[chandra09]

I have started to add meat chunks in to my kitties raw ground food for them again... I went for a while with out doing so because one of my kitties, Penny, refuses to eat them! She will just eat around them and leave them in her bowl. My other two will chew them and seem to enjoy it.

I have checked out her teeth/mouth area and it seems to be perfectly fine, so I don't think it could be that she doesn't want to chew because it hurts her. Come to think of it, she does chew other things just fine, such as her l-lysine supplement chews, so I have no idea why she will not chew the raw meat chunks.

Oh and I have tried really small pieces, big pieces, etc., to no avail!

Anyone have any tips or pointers?!

 

[miagi's_mommy]

Can you cut them up maybe? My cat Tiger can't eat huge chunks of food either so I make them smaller. He's a dainty eater.

 

[vball91]

Have you tried thin long strips? I just went through this with my cat. She would not eat the chunks, so then I diced them which seemed to work better. Then I did ground for a while with limited success. One day I just randomly hand fed her some beef strips, and it worked for some reason. She now has no trouble eating strips of raw meat.

 

[chandra09]

Hmm, I have not tried long thin strips. Thanks for that suggestion! I will give it a shot!

So far I've tried everything in the range of very small chunks (dime sized) to the size of a whole chicken gizzard. Here's hoping the strips will work!

 

[chandra09]

Yay! Good news! Penny went for the long strips of meat! I'm so glad to have them all chewing again...Thanks for the idea vball91!

 

 

[vball91]

Hooray! I have no idea why long strips work for some cats, but I'm grateful too that it does.