About Raw Food Diets for Cats and Dogs

THE RAW FOOD DIET
The first thing I want to stress here is that my experiences are in NO way meant to tell you what to do in providing care for your furry family members.  I am relaying what has worked for me and my purpose is only to get you to realize there are always other options and do some research!

Even as a child I felt there was something not quite right with feeding cats and dogs food from a bag that was made of mostly corn.  To be honest I grew up on a farm and our cats and dogs, of which there were many, were fed a “kibble” but the main part of their diet was table-scraps, and the various meat items that become available when one lives on a large farm.  My Dad also hunted and they were get the “leftovers” from that as well.  So I would say they lived on a 50% raw diet along with he veggies and such that “fell from the table” and the kibble.  Our cats and dogs were always healthy, and very long-lived.

As an adult with cats and dogs, even though I still didn’t like the idea of kibble, for what I perceived to be convenience or financial reason I continued to feed it.  I justified it by buying what I thought was a “good quality” food and supplemented with table-scraps.

Thankfully all my furry friends have been healthy, until recently.  About a year ago my kitty, Moses, started to decline in health.  He was very lethargic, started loosing his hair, biting himself, loosing weight, and just seemed generally miserable.  He had also gotten a strange look about his belly area, where it almost seemed full of fluid.  I took him to my vet, and after checking him over thoroughly, and trying antibiotics and steroids,  he was at a loss as well.

This is when I decided to try other avenues.  I am familiar with using herbal remedies for humans.  And figured it should work with animals as well.  After all, being a nature lover I am well aware of how animals will self-medicate in the wild.  But I had no idea where to start.  So I headed to amazon.com and started looking at books to purchase.   I started with a book called “The Natural Cat” by Anitra Frazier (http://www.thenaturalcat.net/).  Wonderful information.  I was already familiar with a raw meat and bones diet for dogs, as I volunteered for many years at a “shelter” that specified in wolf-dogs (as well as 2 wolves).  The owner of that establishment used mostly chicken.  For my cat, however, I leaned more towards beef.

Here are some links to get you started as well:
http://www.rawfed.com/
http://www.caninecaviar.com/raw_meat_diets.aspx
http://www.alt4animals.com/nutrition_feline.htm

There are risks, however, to a raw meat diet, as shown here: http://www.hilltopanimalhospital.com/raw%20meat%20diets.htm

Of course precautions must be made when handling any raw meat, and I would never ever use meat that wasn’t safe for human consumption.  A raw meat diet does take more time to prepare than opening a bag of kibble and dumping it in a bowl.  You also need to become a minor nutritionist and be prepared to learn about minerals and other nutrients and how they play together.  For example: Calcium and phosphorous need to be in the right ratios to ensure the calcium is absorbed.  But add to that if there are too many oxalates in the food that can also inhibit calcium absorption.  

Both cats and dogs will benefit if a small amount of plant matter is included in the diet.  I prefer to cook the veggies as it does make it easier to digest.  I cook them in a small amount of water and use the water in the food mix as well so no nutrients are lost.  Including bones is a good thing, but depending on how much, you may need to add a bone meal for added calcium.  I also choose cuts of meat that did contain some fat, if you use only lean meats you may need to add some fats, you can use unsalted butter for this (but not much!)  And don’t forget to include some organ meats as well.

I will never forget the night my husband came home after work and he walks into the kitchen to see me mixing ground beef, and a London broil cut up into 1” cubes in a bowl, next to a second bowl that had cooked broccoli and pumpkin in it (waiting to be mashed) along with an odd assortment of herbs, and he says to me “ohhhh that looks good what are we having for dinner?” and I respond, “we are having spaghetti. This is for the cat!”  

I will say that within months of changing my darling Moses to a raw diet, he gained some weight, stopped biting himself sore, and his hair grew back.  And that mushy belly went away after about a month or two on the raw diet.  We kept up the raw diet for about a year, and now we have gone back to kibble, but supplement it with raw meats, including liver, and he still gets his herbs.  The one thing I changed about his kibble is I only use bagged food that has NO meat by-products, uses only human grade meat, has no fillers, no corn or other grains, and no preservatives.  He occasionally still gets a few dry itchy areas, and I treat those with a calendula hydrosol or oil and it helps.  I will at times switch back to an all raw diet for a few days, then go back to the kibble and raw mix.  He is doing well on it and I am happy.  

The raw diet actually seemed less expensive than kibble as you need to feed less as they digest more of the food, as well as the litter box did not need cleaning as often and smelled a lot less!

So do your research, and do what is best for you and your furry friend.  There are pros and cons to each and every diet.  A word about vets…while I will always ask a vet for an opinion or observations from experience, they do not receive as much nutritional education in animal diets a you would think.  Much of the information they do get comes from the pet food industry who wants them to market their food. This is in no way meant to degrade vets in any way.    But remember that there is always another perspective, and it is best to stay closer to what nature would do, in my humble opinion.