Blog
The Inspiration
I started making food for my cats because I used to read ingredient lists on commercially available pet food, often disappointed. My vet had informed me that plants, whether vegetables or grains, are not part of a cat’s natural diet. To get slightly more technical, cats are obligate carnivores – they need to eat meat to survive. Although they can process plants to some degree, evolutionarily their need to do this has been limited to processing the little bit of partially digested plant matter in their prey’s stomachs after a fresh kill. If you think of a mouse stomach, the amount of grain or plants in there is minuscule. And if you don’t, you can move right along to the next paragraph.
Where were we? Ah, right, plants. When you feed a cat a diet containing plants, her white blood cell count goes up. Her immune system goes on alert. Inflammation is the end result. A lifetime of inflammation can lead to various diseases. Vets can measure a cat’s white blood cell count with a blood sample. Comparing blood samples of a cat on a raw-meat diet against the same cat eating more processed foods frequently shows an elevated white blood cell count while the cat is on a processed, carbohydrate-laden diet. But you might never know it.
Sadly, many vets overlook diet. For one thing, most vets are not specifically trained in nutrition. For another, follow the money. Big pet food companies (I won’t name names; you can) sell food stuffed with carbohydrates because it is cheaper, i.e., better for their profit margins. These same companies contribute to vet schools, sponsoring speeches to soon-to-be vets and even employing faculty members. New vets become old vets and the cycle continues.
Dry kibble food is never – NEVER – bio-appropriate for cats. Why? Well, the kibble-making process cannot mimic nature. Kibble is extruded from a tube to form little pellets – pelletlets, if you will – and you just can’t produce perfectly formed pelletlets without using a hefty helping of starch. Think about fibrous meat tissue. No, really, think about it, I’ll wait. You picturing it now? There’s no way you’re getting that sinewy glob of meat into a neat pellet shape, are you?
I’ll stop picking on kibble. When you feed your cat kibble, wet food, or even raw food that contains plants, they are getting more carbohydrates than their bodies have evolved to handle. Cats have been living indoors for less than 100 years. We didn’t even have cat litter before 1940. Before we moved cats indoors, their main purpose for us was to control rodent populations. This means that for the vast majority of their evolution, cats have been living outdoors, eating meat. Maybe cats will evolve to tolerate plants in the distant future if we keep feeding them plants, but today is not that day. No species can change that fast.
Cats do adapt, of course. At this point in the evolutionary history, they can’t digest plants, so the plants simply go through them, undigested. If you take the plants out your cat’s diet, you won’t just have a happier, healthier cat, you’ll have less poop to scoop.
About Our Food
Raw Cat Food Club has a lot to be grateful for. One of those things is the Feline Nutrition Foundation. In fact, we used their recipe to help formulate all of ours. The reason our food is not labeled “Complete and Balanced for All Stages of Life” is because the lab tests to prove it cost close to $4000 per recipe. The “For Supplemental and Intermittent Feeding Only” label shaves a zero or two off. As a small startup, I need to be clean-shaven, at least where labeling is concerned.
So that’s the deal with the label. It says “For Supplemental and Intermittent Feeding Only” because it has to. Unless I want to shell out four figures. Which I don’t.
Look past the label. According to Feline Nutrition Foundation, thousands of cats have been fed this formulated recipe with varying protein sources with long-term positive results. Sustained results, too. That’s why it is all my cats eat, though, technically, I cannot advise you to do the same. Unless I want to shell out four figures. Which I can’t.
Enough grumbling. I’m happy I can share with others how I learned to make raw cat food. Give it a try yourself if you have a chance! Make sure to your research. There’s some light math involved, too. (Don’t get me started on phosphorous-calcium ratios.) But if you’re interested and don’t mind getting your hands dirty, it’s worth trying.
Our food contains small bits of bone. Don’t worry, they’re not dangerous. Cats evolved to eat small bones, and it has always been a very important part of their diet for the calcium. Our bone bits are smoothed down; the biggest ones are about the size of a lentil. If your cat is transitioning to our food, they may leave some of these small bits in the bowl, but eventually they will learn to like eating them. Raw bone is softer than cooked bone and not nearly as brittle. The pieces are small enough that they are easy to swallow. And once they go down, they stay down, since cats’ stomach acid is ten times more acidic than our own.
Tips for Transitioning
If you’re trying our food on your cats for the first time, especially if your cats are new to raw food, there will be a transition. Start with the smell. Large pet food companies coat their food in fragrant substances and add ingredients to give their food an appetizing aroma (to cats, at least). Also, cooked meat is more pungent than fresh raw meat, which should barely have a smell. Your cat will notice. They may be oblivious at first to the fact that it is food and it is yummy. If your cat gets off to a slow start, you can put a little bit of the food the outside of their mouth or on their snout. Licking will ensue. They will realize fairly quickly it is food and that they like it.
Other cats can take longer to transition. To speed things along, some raw food companies advise mixing a little of the raw food in with the food your cat currently eats, until you can slowly change them over, which may not be the most effective method. I don’t advise feeding raw food in the same meal with kibble. A food high in carbohydrates will cause your cat’s stomach acid to be less acidic, which can compromise their ability to digest the raw food.
You should check with your vet, but my vet told me the best way to transition a cat to a raw food is to have them go “cold turkey,” if you’ll pardon the pun. A healthy adult cat can go hungry for 2-3 days without adverse effects. (Don’t push it further than that.) But if they’re not eating raw food by the second or third day, I’d be very surprised. The good news is that cats love raw food once they try it. It’s the most easily digestible, most natural thing for them.
Take my friend’s cat, Lily. Lily was a lifelong kibble eater, but she was also going outside, gorging on mice. Despite her age (13!) and ingrained eating habits, she started eating our raw food right away without her owners having to do anything, probably because it’s similar to the raw mice she was used to.
Not every cat is Lily, though. Sometimes it’s hard to get cats to try new things (they’re like people and old dogs that way). For instance, I recently switched the fish oil I add to the food. My female cat ate the new batch with nary a mew, while her more temperamental brother fussed about it for a day and a half. Boys, amirite?
I know it’s hard to see your beloved kitties (of either gender) walk away hungry after turning up their noses a couple times, but they do adjust, I promise. Once transitioned, one of the first things you might notice is that your cat is more energetic. Shinier coats and clearer eyes will be soon to follow. You’ll be happy you made the switch. And so will they.
Every cat is different. Consult with your veterinarian if you have any concerns.