Once you’ve made the decision to transition your cat to a raw food diet, you’ll need to consider which type of raw food will best suit you and your cat.
There are essentially two options: you can purchase a pre-packaged commercial raw food or prepare your cat’s meals from scratch yourself in your home kitchen.
Commercial Raw Food Diet for Cats
Pre-packaged commercial raw food is usually frozen in portion sizes, which you can defrost as and when you need it. Whilst commercial raw food can be an expensive way to feed your cat a raw diet, for the busy working pet parent it’s a quick and easy option. It really is as simple as just opening a packet of food and transferring the appropriate portion amount into your cat’s bowl.
Advantages
- If you’re a little squeamish or ‘put off’ by the thought of handling meat, offal and bones – you don’t have to.
- Commercial raw food generally contains all of the nutrients and other essentials that your cat needs for a healthy, balanced diet – so you don’t need to add additional supplements.
Disadvantages
- You often have to buy commercial raw pet food in large quantities, so if you’re only just starting the transition to raw feeding and your cat won’t eat this particular brand or product, you’re stuck with it.
- A commercial raw food diet is often very soft (we’ve seen products that resemble baby food), so it doesn’t work your cat’s jaw or teeth unlike chewing on raw meaty bones or meat chunks.
Charlie has IBD, so when I starting feeding a commercial raw food diet it was important to me to pay close attention to the list of ingredients. Surprisingly, I discovered a few raw food products claiming to be suitable for ‘dogs and cats’, but which included onion and garlic (known to be toxic to cats) or yoghurt (which can cause issues for cats that are lactose intolerant). My advice is to read the labels and ensure you know exactly what you’re feeding your cat, especially if they have gastrointestinal problems or other health issues. It’s better to be safe than sorry!
Homemade Raw Food Diets for Cats
A homemade raw food diet is made up of raw meat – in chunks or ground, offal and raw bones (chicken necks, for example). Preparing your cat’s food from scratch is likely to be less expensive in the long run, but it can be time consuming in the beginning.
Image: toholio via Flickr
The two factors that generally dissuade people from preparing raw food from scratch are:
- Being ‘squeamish’ about preparing raw meat or handling offal.
- The process seems complicated and expensive – you need to work out the right balance of raw food and nutrients, and include supplements.
For the first six months after transitioning the cats to a raw food diet, I fed them commercial raw food – it was easier and the idea of preparing raw food from scratch seemed overwhelming. As someone who eats mostly chicken or vegetarian meals myself, I’ll also freely admit that I wasn’t keen on handling raw meat or organs. I’ve since learnt to appreciate that the only way to really know what is in the food the Pawesome Cats family are eating, is to make it myself from scratch.
Ground Raw Food Diet
This is probably the most popular method of feeding raw and works well for cats that transition from a commercial wet food (canned) diet. It involves putting the meat (including offal, bones and fat) into a meat grinder with supplements and egg yolk to make a ground food for your cat. Overall, this is a cost effective option but you’ll need a powerful meat grinder to grind the bones, so there may be some initial expense.
Image: Anfuehrer via Flickr
Raw feeders who follow a ground raw food diet for cats usually make large batches of food and freeze it in meal-sized portions. The main downside of a completely ground raw diet is that it won’t have enough texture to keep your cat’s teeth and jaw strong and healthy, but you can add chunks of raw meat to address this.
Prey Model or ‘Frankenprey’ Raw Food Diet
The prey model diet is designed to closely resemble your cat’s diet in the wild, with the correct percentage of animal parts – meat, organs, edible bones and muscle meat fed in controlled quantities over a week. The basic guide is 80% muscle meat, 10% bone, 5% liver, and 5% other secreting organ. Each meal or day may include different species of animal, hence the alternative term ‘frankenprey’.
Meals are usually chunks, which your cat will need to gnaw on until they are bite-sized. One of the benefits of the prey model diet is improved dental health – the process of having to tear and gnaw at meat and bones will keep your cat’s mouth healthy and teeth tartar free.
There is generally less preparation and fewer supplements involved than the grinding method of feeding raw but it can be time consuming to calculate the correct proportions and determine the supplements required to ensure this diet is nutritionally balanced. Raw feeders who follow the prey model raw food diet usually stick to strict feeding programs.
Whole Prey Raw Food Diet
Whole prey is exactly what it says – feeding your cat whole prey animals rather than butchered meat. People who feed their cat this type of diet cite that it’s easy to feed, although for some people, it can be an emotionally difficult decision to feed whole animals.
Image: mararie via Flickr
Outdoor cats who are familiar with hunting prey are more likely to take to this type of diet, whereas indoor cats that have been fed canned food most of their lives and never caught prey before won’t recognise what you’re giving them as a source of food or know what to do with it.
Do you feed your cat a raw food diet? What’s your preferred method of feeding raw?
Top image: Boaz Arad via Flickr
This is an excellent post. I can’t believe how horrible the ingredients are in commercial cat foods. It makes sense if we clean up our own diets, to clean up our pets, they deserve the best nutrition also x
We just transitioned our dog to a raw diet and are now preparing to do the same thing with the cats. I think we probably will go with a commercial raw since there are so many good ones on the market and time (or lack of time) is an issue for us.
I fed Eamon, my cat, a raw diet for many years. But he was the only one of my crew that would even touch the stuff. The girls tried to bury it, run from it or kill it. That made the house quite a mess, I gotta say. And, then Eamon decided he wouldn't eat it anymore, either.
Many raw diets just don't smell like anything, and I wonder if that lack of scent put Eamon off his meals. Now that he's a senior, he seems to like foods that are higher on the stink level. That's just a guess, of course.
It is really interesting to see all of these aspects of raw cat food! I think that if I started feeding raw I would start out with a commercial diet with the end goal of doing a grinding diet. If I could afford to buy anything in bulk, feeding raw would be a much more realistic idea for me. I'm sure my kitties would like it once they got used to it.
I've never fed raw. Never even heard about it until I started blogging. With eight cats and limited freezer space, I would be making food constantly. Have any studies been conducted to determine cats are healthier and live longer on a raw diet?
The head peep was researching what it would take to make raw for us, but we have very little freezer space, so that's not practical right now. It seems like some people would feed commercial raw not only because they are squeamish about grinding but because storage space for a big enough batch to make the effort worthwhile might not be available.
True, that. And the time. Mom's time is soooo constrained right now. She was thinking about ground bu you're right about the teeth issue. It would be AWESOME if some company would come up with a supplement you could add to ground raw and – presto – balanced diet!
Yeah, she's looking for an easy way out MOL!
We have never tried raw food. Mommy things she may be a little squeamish and probably couldn't do it. I have to say, it would probably fun to catch a real mousie some day!
Maybe one day when the mom has more time, she'll start making raw food for us.
I must confess I never considered feeding my cat raw food. Canned food is very convenient and my cats loves it. In Portugal I never saw pre-packaged commercial raw food. I don't think we have it here.
the down side to frakenprey is that if you have multiple cats you might end up with cats who don't eat appropriately.
I have one of my cats who won't chew meat. period. she certainly will not chew bone. She's amazing because her teeth are pretty clean so it is working for her, but I have to grind to ensure even distribution of nutrients to the whole crew.
I would love to feed raw, but I am squeamish and I was worried about the cost of feeding 15 cats. I also worry I would mess up the supplement part and they would lack taurine. etc.
Lots to think about. I'm curious if you have access to more or better quality meat in AU.? In the U.S. buying organic is expensive and we are a culture of convenience. I admire your dedication to feed and prep your own raw which is a cat's ancestral diet. We feed a combo of raw, grain-free wet and dry only as treats (when I don't have time to make my own).
We aren't currently eating any raw, but I think it would be cool to have some raw meat and bones to chew on! I chew on the paper plates my canned meals are served in, so my human thinks I do have a need to gnaw on something.