Cats, and raw food

[azurelunatic]

Interesting article.

votania mentioned that feeding cooked food to cats was toxic to them. She'd found some resources suggesting this. I got curious, because I know that the canned cat food that we give them has been cooked, and decided to look it up at some point.

I was spurred to actually do this today because I commented in nalidoll's journal that I was teasing her, because I thought that any diet that was strictly exclusive of something was a bit silly; I hold that it should be possible to have a good balance of different types of food, cooked, raw, and so forth. (I think that insisting that all your food be cooked is equally silly, if not sillier. Who wants to cook apples? Or bananas? Or oranges? Or peas?)

The article seems to maintain that there are benefits and disadvantages to both raw and cooked foods, and moderation is the key. That's my position as well.

Furthermore, the cats in the Pottenger study look to have been suffering from a taurine deficiency, which produces all of the effects of the ills that the cats fed with cooked food were suffering. This was before people knew how crucial taurine was to cats. shammash and eris_raven are doing well with their cooked canned cat food... I don't see the problem with giving my Eris, at least, cooked scraps of meat (and rice, if she really wants it).

Comments

[cissa.livejournal.com]

I agree that moderation is the thing. I do make cat food for our beasts, and a lot of it is raw ground beef and organ meats. But we supplement with a bit of canned in each bowl for flavor and cat-appeal, and weekend evenings they get dry food so they don't wake us up at 6 am the next day!

I've offered them raw chicken necks to gnaw-- the bones aren't splintery so they're safe, and some cats adore them and get all feral-- but ours are Far Too Civilized for such and turn up their refined little noses. *g*

[azurelunatic]

When we adopted Little Miss Raven, she wanted to share my sushi.

[sithjawa.livejournal.com]

Taurine? As in, the stuff in Red bull?

Dude.

[azurelunatic]

Heh. You know, I utterly missed that bit... I suppose it would be.

[sionainn.livejournal.com]

Zoe is on all raw diet.... Biologically Appropriate Raw Foods (BARF). She is radiantly healthy and will not eat processed kibble-crap ever again (her choice too!)

Zeus is slowly being migrated over. He gets very worried when there isn't any cat food in his dish... even though he adores the raw chicken gizzards and mackerel I've been giving him. He does well chewing up whole chicken wings (raw) also. Raw bones do not splinter like cooked ones do and are soft and malleable and safe for animals to eat.


Zoe and Zeus are fed in the same room, and they each go to their separate bowls and never try and bug each other. Zeus tried to do it only ONCE but Zoe was very firm in her refusal to share. :-)

[sionainn.livejournal.com]

And tons more resources on Google:

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=BARF+diet

[azurelunatic]

Oh, excellent for them.

shammash usually gets scraps when someone's preparing meat. eris_raven hasn't learned about begging yet.