Meet our newest Little Carnivores....

Mouse aka Mou Mou is our newest cat, she is a 'foster failure' she is about 12 weeks old now and I have had her since she was about 4 weeks old.  She is a spunky little kitten and took to raw like a duck to water.  She loves her raw meals. 

Then this is Ruby, she is a Yorkie/Shih Tzu mix.  She was up for adoption through the vet I work for because her owners couldn't afford/didn't want to pay for her systemic yeast infection (all over skin as well as in ears and on her ear flaps) it was/is a chronic issue probably due to poor quality food.  That's okay I am working at switching her to raw.

Beginners Guide to Feeding Raw

This is a very valuable tool if you are looking into feeding Raw.  I can't tell you how many times I am so grateful that I bit the bullet and decided to switch my dogs to raw.  It literally saved Zoey's life. 

Here's an awesome PDF on feeding raw:
http://www.chanceslittlewebsite.com/prey-model-raw.html

My Cat Recipe

 3 pounds of poultry thigh meat/bones/skin
     1 cup water (or, preferably, more if your cat will eat it with more water)
    2 eggs - use the yolk raw but lightly cook the white
    5000 mg fish oil  Do NOT use cod liver oil!
    400 IU (268 mg) Vitamin E (powdered E in capsules is the easiest to use)
    50 mg Vitamin B-complex (capsules or tablets)
    2,000 mg taurine (use powdered - either in capsules or loose)
    3/4 tsp Morton Lite salt with iodine when using chicken
    Liver - add 4 ounces of chicken livers per 3 lb of meat/bones/skin.
    If using boneless meats add: (½) teaspoon of eggshell powder is needed per pound of meat and organ
    1/2 capsule 10mg Manganese per 3#

My Additional Supplements:  (Right now the 2 kitties I have both have severe arthritis and joint issues, one has heart problems and the other one has early kidney disease)
5  Glucosamine MSM Tablets 1500mg per 2 tablets = 125mg per meal.
3 & 1/2 teaspoons Lysine 500mg per day so 7000mg is what is needed  the stuff I have is 522mg per 1/4 teaspoon
800 IU Vitamin E Additional  (have read cats need 100IU per day.
9000 additional fish oil (to get about 1000mg per day)
2,000mg more taurine

Daily added to food with each meal for Munchie (Cardiomyopathy and Arthritis)
1 tablet Zeel (homeopathic for arthritis) twice daily
7mg Hyaluronic Acid once daily  (for joints)
250mg L-Carnitine once daily (for heart health)
30mg CoQ10 once daily (for heart health)
250mg Microlactin twice daily (for joints)

Daily added to food with each meal for DeeJay (arthritis, megacolon and early kidney disease)
1 tablet Zeel (homeopathic for arthritis) twice daily
7mg Hyaluronic Acid once daily  (for joints)
250mg Microlactin twice daily (for joints)
1/4 teaspoon Miralax for megacolon twice daily

Teaching an old cat new tricks....

DeeJay is my 14 & 1/2 year old kitty.  She has a lot of health issues and we are slowly getting them under control.  She has pretty severe arthritis in most of her joints.  We have been feeding her canned, but we learned that it is a lot cheaper to feed her raw so we are transitioning her over to raw too.  To feed both of my cats raw just for the chicken we buy it's $5.22 per week.  Now we add supplements and liver but the costs are minimal compared to each daily meal.  I love how inexpensive it is and am glad that I figured out it's only gonna cost us $20 per month instead of $40.  We *may* be able to afford to switch the rest of the kitties to raw too.  We shall see.

Here is DeeJays 1st raw meal

 

Almost all gone, mind you she had only been eating about 1/4-1/2 of her normal meals this week

 When she was finished with her meal she ate 1/2 of my chihuahua's then got mad at her when Zoey decided she better eat her own food LOL

Zoey Bone In Meal

 Tonight was bone in meal for Zoey.  It is a cornish hen spine.  She loves to chomp on bones and it's healthy for her teeth.  She gets a boney meal twice a week. 

Munchie Bone In

 So tonight was bone in night.  Munchie still isn't too enthused about eating boney pieces which really shocks me as he digs chicken bones out of the garbage can and eats the nobbys off the end of the bones.  He would take a bite into the chicken, feel the bone in his mouth and quit.  So I had to resort rto smashing the bones up in my Ninja.  He still wouldn't eat it so I had to mix maybe a teaspooon of canned food in with it to get him to eat it all..  Here are some pictures of him biting into the piece. 

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Cat Raw Recipe

My recipe is modified from this site for Munchie who has heart disease:
http://catinfo.org/?link=makingcatfood

 3 pounds of poultry thigh meat/bones/skin (If using Boneless add the eggshell or bonemeal powder)
 Liver - add 4 ounces of chicken livers per 3 lb of meat/bones/skin.  * For future recipes I am probably going to give 2oz of Liver and 2oz of Kidney as I feel they need the variety of the organs)
    1/2 cup water (or, preferably, more if your cat will eat it with more water)
    2 eggs - use the yolk raw but lightly cook the white
    5000 mg fish oil  Do NOT use cod liver oil!
    400 IU (268 mg) Vitamin E (powdered E in capsules is the easiest to use)
    50 mg Vitamin B-complex (capsules or tablets)
    2,000 mg taurine (use powdered - either in capsules or loose)
    3/4 tsp Morton Lite salt with iodine (contains potassium and sodium - make sure that it contains iodine)         (½) teaspoon of eggshell or bone meal powder is needed per pound of meat and organ ONLY if using Boneless meat
   
My Additional Supplements for Munchie's specific needs for arthrits, bladder and heart health.
2 Glucosamine MSM Tablets 1500mg (so he gets 250mg per day)
Lysine 12 scoops (needs 1 scoop twice a day) 500mg per day so 6000mg is what is needed
2,000mg additional Taurine
400 I.U. addition Vit E

It calls for 1 cup of water but that made it really liquidy so next batch am just going to do 1/2 cup of water.  I put the water in a bowl, then added the eggs and all the supplements and stirred until they dissolved, then added that to the meat mixture and liver, and then blended it up using my Ninja processor.

Munchie my 15# cat needs 2oz per meal twice a day.

Munchies Transition

Munchie is transitioning over to raw. Munchie has severe arthritis and was recently diagnosed with heart disease.  We are having an ultrasound done tomorrow to determine exactly what is wrong with his heart.  He is on a bunch of medications, but has decided he no longer needs to eat cat food, so we are making the transition to raw.

 

Munchie is a proud member of the clean bowl club

 

Pork grind

Here is my little 4# chihuahua eating some yummy pork grind.

Zoey's Mix

So little Miss Zoey (4# chihuahua) is extremely picky when it comes to organs.  So I make her up a mixture of everything she needs for a balanced diet.  I still give her boney meals a couple times a week alternating between rabbit, cornish hens and whole prey mice.  The she gets either chicken, pork, beef, turkey, fish, duck for her other meals that are made into little ice cube shaped cubes.   Zoey loves these little cubes and what she doesn't know is that she eats the organs without problems......won't hurt her :-)  Here is my 'recipe' that I use for her:
14oz meat (beef, chicken, pork, turkey, duck, fish)
4oz beef heart or chicken or rabbit hearts whatever I can find
or 1# Meat
1 oz Liver I use beef or chicken liver.
1 oz Other Secreting Organ kidney, spleen, thymus, pancreas, lung, testicles, or brains.  I mostly used Beef Kidneys as that is what was readily availabe.  I am running low on it so I am going to have to go hunt down some other organs.
1 sardine
1/2 teaspoon ground egg shell
1 raw egg
1 fish oil capsule (1000mg)
2 & 1/2 Vit E (400IU) Capsules
2 oz Vegetables/Blue Berries (I use these as antioxidants for Zoey since she has so many health issues).  I mainly use pumpkin, spinach, broccoli.  Notice if you feed Prey Model Raw, the veggies are usually omitted.  But after research I decided to include this small amount as she needs the antioxidant properties of them. 

Here is her meat thawing

 I put everything into the Ninja and chop/mix it up.

Here it is portioned out in the cubes.  After they are flash frozen, I put them into snack bags and then into a gallon sized ziplocked labeled with what meat it is. 

They are a little more than 1oz per cube, Zoey gets 1 cube twice a day.