My name is Beth, I am a Feline Behaviour Advisor with years of veterinary assistant experience, qualified also in Animal Care and Feline First Aid. I own one moggie and he is my rescue named Chairman. When I rescued Chairman, his vet quickly discovered he had very severe gingivitis and he lost almost all of his teeth due to the condition. In more recent times, I have also discovered that nearly all commercial diets have upset his stomach to the point where I had to do more research to see if there was something I could change in his diet to help him.
Coming from a veterinary industry background, I am aware of prescription diets and more expensive commercial diets that are designed for specific health needs. I took some time into researching what I wanted to try first and this is where I came across the raw diet (I have also had ferrets in the past too which helped me to decide). I started with an 80/10/10 diet to see if it would help and kept my
fingers crossed for him.
I was a little apprehensive at first, given that raw does need to be handled more carefully than say a commercial pouch of wet food. However, since we have done the swap, the cleaning regime is no different as his bowls are cleaned after each meal regardless. Using an 80/10/10 diet such as Hear Me Raw Food, is definitely one of the easiest ways to feed raw – all the work has been done for you, so you don’t need to worry about anything; just defrost and serve!
I have noticed a huge improvement with Chairman since changing him to raw. His breath (which on a commercial diet combined with gingivitis was enough to make your eyes water!) smells much better, his stools are back to normal (colour and consistency) and he generally appears much brighter in himself. I believe that there are multiple cat owners using raw for conditions such as irritable bowel disease, all have positive results that I have spoken to. From a behavioural aspect, cats that have less toileting issues are less likely to eliminate inappropriately within their environment.
I won’t be looking back on Chairman’s diet and would be reluctant to try commercial food again. I would highly recommend that if you are considering a raw diet, try it and see for yourself – always remembering to introduce any new diet slowly of course. As long as you are willing to clean up after each meal (which should be a given) then feeding raw really isn’t any different to feeding a
commercial diet in terms of difficulty and I know for a fact that my cat loves it!
…Let’s face it, if your cat were choosing their own food, they probably wouldn’t go to the supermarket to pick it out of a pouch. They would be pouncing around, hunting all of the live prey they can find – a raw diet is probably the closest to the cats natural diet than anything else you can buy!