Switched Cats from Raw to Canned Food

Since we’ll be traveling cross-country and the food supply in Pennsylvania is uncertain, I’ve been switching my cats to Wellness canned food. I added one can to three pounds raw. Then went to two cans and two pounds raw, and so on.

Everyone loved it but Sophie and Arthur. When Sophie first stuck her nose to the food she pulled back, somewhat startled. Then she ran to her sister’s Agnes’s bowl hoping to find food there. But the same awful smell greeted her. She turned in a circle and tried her bowl again. (Imagine how you would react if you put your nose to a hot stove.) A few more circles and eventually she began eating, slowly. I had to lock her in a cat carrier because she took so long to eat and Agnes would finish before her and try to eat her food.

Arthur refused to eat it. Especially the beef and chicken mixture. He eventually gave in and ate the turkey but still doesn’t devour it like he did the raw food. He’s making up for it by eating as many mice as possible. He caught another one yesterday. The poor thing fought for its life with a flap of flesh hanging off. Two days ago I smashed Arthur’s second mouse’s head in with a rock because I couldn’t stand to see it suffer. I would have set it free but it had a broken leg.

Why do cats have to play with their food? That and spraying are two things about cats that are troubling to me as a human.

TipToe is in heaven again. She went from leisurely dining on raw to voracious inhalation. Put dry food in front of her and you’ll see her turn into a starving beast! She used to be obese, and it took me a year to get her slimmed down. But she now has a hellacious case of diarrhea.

The raw food I buy comes in frozen two pound chubs (plastic tubes) and includes bone. I have to thaw the meat and then I put it in a pot on a very low setting to warm, being careful not to cook it. (When I had only six cats I put the meat in baggies and warmed it in hot water.) I add pureed organic vegetables, such as broccoli, cabbage, carrot, zucchini, lettuce and maybe add some fish oil, granulated seaweed or digestive enzymes. Every week or so I include a can of sardines or some raw egg yolks. A couple times a week I add chopped organ meat, like chicken livers and giblets, beef kidneys or heart, turkey giblets. It’s a lot of work and it takes about half an hour every night.

Opening a few cans of cat food and partioning it into bowls is so much easier and quicker. I love it. But I hate the smell. Canned cat food is offensive. Raw meat has practically no smell. And now every week I have a serious collection of empty cans.

And when the canned food comes out the back end of the cat? Yuck. I’ve been feeding raw for seven years now and I’ve gotten used to not knowing when my cats are having bowel movements. A raw food turd is like a compacted, solid piece of powder, often light in color, and it turns white in the sun. I can pick it up (yes, with gloves or a paper towel) and smell only a slight odor. If I break it, it crumbles into a powder.

The feces now are oily looking and dark brown. I found one in the backyard and poked at it with a pinecone. Then I smelled it. I gagged and wretched, it was so bad. I can only imagine what the cats’ stomachs and intestines feel like with this putrefying mass of protein inside. When the cats are finished eating I pick them up and lock them in the sunroom so everyone still eating is unmolested. Just about every cat’s stomach makes noice and they belch.

Cooked proteins are not the same as raw proteins. Their molecules have been rearranged and damaged. I’m assuming much of this protein is not being metabolized and is thus putrefying. Meat was never meant to be cooked. Nothing was, really. Some benefits of cooking food have allowed our species to cover the globe and live in inhospitable climates. But we pay a price every time we cook our food.

The cats are consuming a lot of water now, too. When they were on raw, I could leave a bowl of water out and it could sit for a week if I let it without much loss. Now I have to fill the bowl every day. It was even worse when I added a little dry food to the raw. I added one cup of high quality dry food to three pounds raw and the cats emptied the water bowl in less than a day. I have vowed never to feed them dry food because of that.

When I get to Pennsylvania, I may just put them on raw food again, despite the cost and time, if I can find a good source of meat. I’ve even thought of raising my own mice. I told someone that I didn’t know how to kill such a thing. She suggested putting them in a jar of water and shaking really hard. I don’t know about that. I also considered raising rabbits. Nobody can live on rabbits because they’re too lean. But they’d work for half the diet. But a friend tells me I better not because I’ll end up with fifty pet rabbits.

For the first time in my life I see the value of roadkill. I used to think it impossible for anyone to view roadkill as anything other than pathetic loss of life. It’s sad, yes, especially when the animal rots unused, but when it comes to feeding my family, that roadkill’s looking pretty tempting.

There’s nothing like a good dose of unemployment and pending poverty to put things into perspective for haughty, self-righteous people like me. I needed this experience. It’s allowed me to see another side.

Wal-Mart is starting to look good. Organic growers are viewed as greedy. How fresh is that roadkill? I have new respect for hunters. Not the ones who pose for the camera with a big smile and their foot on a fresh kill, but the ones who feed their family an entire year on a deer or two. I’m going to learn to fish and hunt with a bow. It seems more honest to me to kill my own meat than rely on someone else to do the dirty work.