Getting your cat to eat raw food

Getting your cat to eat raw food

Many people like the idea of giving their cats a raw food diet but what do you do for the picky eater? How do you transition a cat that has turned their nose up at anything raw before? Here’s what you do…We can’t blame cats that have been on kibble most or all of their lives and suddenly get the taste for raw. We have cat food companies that go to GREAT lengths to make sure their food is palatable and addictive even just so they  make sure you keep buying THEIR brand. This is one of the many reasons we don’t want to feed kibble to our cats if we can help it so here’s what we do to transition a cat.

  1. If you already aren’t feeding wet food – transition the cat to 1/2 wet food 1/2 kibble.
  2. Add 1/4 teaspoon of raw into the wet food daily. Keep it there for a week and slowly raise the amount. Make sure to mix well.
  3. Now slowly decrease the amount of dry food and offer more wet food with the 1/4 tsp of raw in it till your cat is on wet/raw food few times daily ONLY.
  4. Keep increasing the raw in the wet food by 1/4 teaspoon or a bit more each week. If the cat turns its nose up go back to the amount they like. Remember this may take 6 months or longer to get the cat fully transitioned. Better it taking time than never so be patient.
  5. If your cat isn’t crazy about this idea no matter how hard you try – use freeze dried raw food and add water to make a wet food. You can mix this half and half with the canned food and slowly transition to the 100% freeze dried raw. Then from here you can add the raw meat again into the freeze dried…if it is still a no go…then keep using the freeze dried with ADDED water – do not feed dry…cats already don’t get enough water as it is…so the more they get in their food the better.
  6. Sometimes adding probiotics by sprinkling on top of raw food helps…as does small amount of melted butter or juice from organic canned fish (I do not recommend this long term as fish are heavily contaminated).

The idea is to find a raw food flavor that your cat likes…maybe cooking the meat as well for a while, then only lightly cooking/searing and finally raw is fine too. Every cat is different some take to raw very fast others need a bit of transition time. In the end if it takes a full year or more..it is still worth it! Raw fed cats have far fewer health problems than their kibble fed counterparts!

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