Cats and dry food

I need to preface this with a statement.  I'm not a vet, I don't pretend to be a vet and certainly don't play one to tv!
I had a conversation with my brother recently about his dog.  Well, his wife's dog.  She's been itching a lot lately, chewing, scratching and overall just being miserable.  He wanted to know if it could be because of her getting into the cat's food.  After a series of questions; from what they are feeding the cats, what they are feeding her to how old she is, I came to two conclusions.
1. They need to quit feeding the cats garbage food
2. The dog has reached the age where allergies seem to crop up, if they are going to, out of the blue.  Unless they have incredibly severe allergies, like my Pug, it can take 4 years for their system to finally revolt and go crazy.

Cats should NOT be fed a food with grain or "vegetables" in it.  Would you offer a horse a steak, or the trimmings from other meats that you don't really like?  Of COURSE not.  Why?  Because they are herbivores and can't even begin to digest meat.  So my question is, why would you feed an obligate carnivore grains or vegetables?
ob·li·gate (bl-gt, -gt)

adj.

Able to exist or survive only in a particular environment or by assuming a particular role.

Dry pet food is the direct side affect of the mass produced tv dinner industry.  They didn't exist prior to 1950, there had to be a place to use all the by products of the production of these foods so the pet food industry was born.  It all started with dog food, when it turned out to be a smashing success they figured they increase their profits by making cat food too!  By now we are in the late 60's, dry cat food was super convenient, cats seemed to like it ok, but a problem cropped up.  Thousands of cats died before they figured out the "problem" was the lack of Taurine.  Taurine is found in meat, not all meats have the same amounts, mice are loaded, chicken not as much.  Before the introduction of dry cat food, crystals weren't really an issue and kidney failure wasn't all that common unless the cat was very old.  Now it's pretty much expected along with diabetes.  It drives me crazy how people will walk down the isle in a grocery store and grab a bag of Friskies or Alley Cat or some other dirt cheap bag of cat food.  Corn, wheat, soy, more corn and more wheat, unidentified fat source, tallow, and crap fractionated vitamins and minerals.  Not a shred of meat.

Now, if you have a dog with allergies they rarely have just food allergies or just environmental allergies.  Most dogs are sensitive to grain, they shouldn't eat it any more than a cat should, if you have a dog that has allergies, grains will usually send them into hyper drive.  Dogs always want cat food because it smells better, it has a much stronger smell so they are drawn to it.  They've been feeding her better food but crap food has to have tons of flavor enhancers so cats will EAT it.  Of course she's going to want that, it's like offering a kid broccoli or a Twinkie, no contest.  With her system all inflamed and whacked out it will take up to 3 weeks for it to calm down.  They were suppose to go buy grain free foods today so IF she gets in to the cats food it won't send her into a tail spin.  I didn't even go into the subject of raw, they won't feed it, been there, won't go there again... unless THEY ask.

Differences in personality

I thawed what was left of the deer carcasses I was given this past season.  I decided to toss them into the back yard and let the dogs have some chew time.  I found it very interesting to watch them choose a section and go about eating it.  Garion and Lena are very utilitarian, they dragged their sections of ribs away from the pile and proceeded to demolish them.  Lena ate her section in a very organized manner, completely.  Garion ate about 3/4 of two sections, I think they picked up to much grass and debris so he lost interest.  Bentley, I don't what to think of him.  He might be a bit slow, he couldn't figure out what to do with the remaining ribs, the spine was too much for him and the pelvis he didn't even look at.  He picked here, sniffed there and then tried to negotiate a scapula.  It seemed to be too much for him, he ended up eating most of one that Lena took a chunk out of.  Goliath, my mostly toothless old man was let out last, I did NOT want him going after what Lena had.  He went straight to a huge section of ribs, stood in the center and started tearing at it.  He is relentless, and completely unintimidated by something that is bigger than him.  He will be left alone out there for quite a while, it's hard work for him to get anything off the bone since he has no front teeth and only has maybe 4 molars left.  I doesn't stop him!!  I have no doubt that Lena would survive just fine if she went out hunting, she has proven that when I left a whole frozen rabbit out in the yard.  It took her 3 days to figure out exactly what to do but when she did she ate the entire thing, all she left behind was the stomach and entrails.  If Garion ate rabbit I'm certain the same would hold true for him.  Bentley would have no idea what to do, he had a chance at it, even after I cut it open he couldn't figure out how to get past the fur.

Cats and raw

Cats are notoriously difficult to transition to raw.  Some never get to the point of eating it 100%, it's not ideal but what in this life ever is?  Persistence with really finicky cats is the only thing that will win the battle.  I have 3 cats that will eat raw and one that wants to but can't.  She will still try it on occasion but projectile vomits without fail no matter the meat she tries.

All of my cats go insane for venison, it's the only red meat they will eat.  They get it only in the fall/winter since that's when my sources hunt.  The rest of the year they get rabbit, chicken, turkey mostly.  I have found a supplier that offers whole chicks, mice and baby quail that I'm going to get some stuff from.  One of my cats used to be outdoor, when she had her kittens I brought her inside to raise the kittens and I never put her back out.  I hope she will be happy with the mice/chicks/quail, I'm also going to get what are called popsicle bunnies, babies that are still born and frozen, when I get my next order of rabbit.  My most out going cat tries to steal rabbit off the cutting board as I'm cutting it up for the dogs.  I get the feeling he will go bonkers for those.

My best advice for those wanting to feed their cat raw is, don't give up.  If you get them to 50% and they won't go any further, it's far better than not eating any at all.  If you can get them on a grain free food as well as the raw, it's a benefit to the cat.  Keep offering it, if you have to mix it with canned that's fine too.  The best ground pre-made raw for cats can be found here, their product is superb.  Good luck and happy Raw Feeding.

What I'm about

My name is Pat, I've been into pet nutrition for a very long time.  I started feeding raw to my dogs almost 17 years ago.  I had a Boxer that was allergic to just about every grain out there and at the time there weren't any grain free foods on the market.  It was a steep learning curve because there wasn't any information available regarding feeding your pets anything but processed food.  My vet is the one that urged me to make her food but he said he couldn't help me since he knew nothing about nutrition.  I started with beef, cutting it up and mixing millet with pureed veggies.  My "aha!" moment came when I was watching a show on wolves, they didn't eat carbohydrates, they didn't eat veggies, they ate bone in meats i.e. rabbit, foul, rodents.  I totally changed how I approached my dogs diet.  I didn't know it at the time but the feeding philosophy would come to be known as "the whole prey model".  Since I started down this road we have had 10 personal dogs, many fosters and our cats eating this way.  I've had foster pups as young as 4 weeks and dogs fed the lowest grade dry food imaginable go straight on to raw.  It's my passion and I want to spread the word even further than it has already spread.  Raw isn't as unusual as it used to be but there is still a lot of scare tactic information out there regarding it.

I have a website that has a lot of information on it.  If you have any interest in feeding raw or have questions about where to begin, you will find all of it there.