The last blog entry covered my rant about the pet food industry and how Science Diet has ripped me, and many other pet owners off by leading us to believe that SD is the very best food we could feed our pets. My 14 year old female cat Allie is diabetic and overweight, even though she’s eaten SD all her life until recently. The raw food experiment is all about getting her insulin levels either greatly reduced or even eliminated altogether if that is possible for this kitty, who has been insulin dependant now for nearly six years.
To this end, I’ve been on Internet doing my homework. Found a wonderful site: www.catinfo.org written by a vet. She gives a great cat food recipe which I am now feeding. Allie missed her kibbles when I took them away because she was addicted to them. I believe she’s over that now, as she takes the raw meat very well. I mix in organ meat – chicken hearts for the taurine and chicken liver for other nutrients, plus brewers yeast and olive oil. I’ve been freezing them in serving sized containers which I figure she’ll eat in 24 hrs. She’s been eating a bit more than that, which is fine. I don’t want her to be hungry unnecessarily, but I’m getting her used to the idea of mealtimes. She was always a free-fed cat – food available 24/7. That has been much tougher than changing her food. She isn’t so far touching the small bones I’ve left in her food, so I am giving ground up eggshells to make sure she’s getting enough calcium. Sometimes I add pumpkin seed oil, to make sure she’s getting enough omega 6 fats too.
Her doctor says I need to keep a good eye on her, as we expect her insulin requirements will go down. We recently had to put her dosage up, as she wasn’t stable. This was just before I began feeding raw. Since then, I’ve noticed subtle changes in her. Her coat is healthier looking, her eyes are looking very clear and her walk has improved. Her walk was the typical walk of a cat who’s diabetes isn’t being controlled properly – it looks like they are walking on eggs. Now she still walks ‘carefully’, but not as bad as she was five days ago when I took the kibbles away.
I have learned that I need to leave some small chunks of muscle meat in her food so she must chew. This is good for her teeth as well as her jaw muscles. I learned that kibbles shatter when the cat eats them. The tiny pieces of kibble get caught between the teeth and sit there fermenting. This is the main cause of dental problems in cats. Muscle food doesn’t get caught between teeth designed to handle a diet of raw meat.
The other two cats aren’t taking the diet change so well. Ringo hunts and always has, so I’m not worried about him. He is totally addicted to his kibbles though – like a teenager to junk food. But I know he gets his nutritional requirements met, as he is eating the diet he was designed to eat: mice and small birds. He always eats his kill up – not wasting anything. But I am not giving him kibbles in spite of the fact he hunts because of the damage I see it has done to Allie. I don’t want Ringo’s health to suffer, and it eventually will if he is allowed to eat kibbles. Currently he’s in great shape, but no thanks to what I’ve been feeding him.
I am currently cat sitting for my daughter. Her cat, Jackson, will eat wet cat food, but won’t try raw food. He’s another kibble freak, but he has had to survive for 48 hours without kibbles now. I regularly offer him wet and raw food, but he is stubborn. He likes tuna, and even though fish isn’t all that good for cats, I broke down and gave him some. In spite of it not being that good to feed a cat, I figured it was still better than kibbles, and it would make him happy for awhile. He hunts, but will not eat his kill in spite of being shown how to do this by Ringo. I think perhaps he may change his mind over time. Where I live, hunting is easy.
I will continue to monitor Allie especially, but also the other two cats. I am glad to know the truth about these commercial kibbles, but it does make me angry. I spent all that extra money on SD, thinking I was doing the best thing for my cats, but instead I was slowly killing them. I can see the improvement in Allie after only five days of proper diet. The other two cats aren’t so quick to change, but I won’t give up. I’m pretty stubborn when I’m sure I’m right.
