Congratulations on taking the step of transitioning your cat to a healthy diet.
Please consult with a vet that is up to date on this subject, if you are hesitant to whether your cat´s health is enough to transition to raw food.
A healthy cat or kitten will thrive on this diet and these are the benefits that you will begin to see very fast:

 

  • Shiny and dandruff free coat
  • Healthy teeth
  • A balanced weight
  • Less poop in the litter box and it will not smell
  • A more active cat
  • Not begging for food like it´s always hungry
  • Less urinary tract problems because the water intake will increase

An adult need to eat 3%-5% of its body weight, and kittens need up to 10% of its body weight as they grow.
The best thing about giving raw food is that their body can use all of it which means that they need less of it to be full.
Commercial food have lots of ingredients that the cat´s body cannot use and it will make the feel full for a while but all of a sudden they are hungry again.
The extra ingredients in commercial foods will just pass through the body without transforming into energy for the cat.

If you have a kitten that you want to transition into raw diet, you are in luck because they will probably like it at once. But for their bellies sake, make the transition over 1-2 weeks by mixing 1/4 raw food into 3/4 of the food they eat now.

 Adult cats

 Your adult cat is already used to eating wet or dry foods (or both), and they need some more time to ease into this new type of food.
Even if you try it out and your cat immediately likes it, do this over a period of 1-2 weeks to reduce the risk of oopsie bellies.
Giving your cat a new type of food is not only about the taste of it, it´s also how the cat´s body react to it when it´s not used to it.
I know I stress this a lot in my guides but PATIENCE is so important when it comes to changing a cat´s routines, because some cats are sensitive to routine changes and also because some cats are MASTER MANIPULATORS 🙂
If your cat is healthy, you could be much more persistent on NOT letting him or her beg until you take out the dry kibbles. Your cat need food and water every day, so don´t starve it but it is okay (as long as it is an healthy cat) to refuse to give in on the puppy eyes.

Before we start, let me tell you a short story that happened to me when I was cat sitting for a friend. This is a typical way of how cats work and how good they are at manipulating us.

My friend told me that her cat Indigo only wanted to eat dry food, but she always give him the possibility to have some wet food so everyday she gave him dry food with a side of wet food. And everyday he ate his dry food and squinted at the wet food.
I asked her 2 days before to just give him the wet food for a day, and at night sprinkle some dry food on it. She did that but he almost didn´t eat all day, he pawed out the dry kibbles and ate those.
Same thing the next day, he hadn´t touched the wet food over night at all.

So now it was time for my friend to go away and that night I decided to make an experiment so I came over there and just played with him, trying to let him know that his mommy is away. And then I went home. Later that night I came back and again showed him, that I´m the only one he has now and when it was time to give food, I only gave him wet food.
The next morning I went over there to find what I was hoping and had thought that I would see – he´d ate all the wet food! 😀
This is what happened: He realized that he had absolutely no idea of how to manipulate me yet, he had no idea if I would give him dry food if he would´nt eat the wet food. So he did what a cat would do in nature, he ate what he had access to and that is pure survival instinct.

From dry food to wet food

Have you heard of the term ”dry food junkie”?
Well, if your cat eats dry food and refuse to eat anything else when you try several different kinds? Then you have a dry food junkie on your hands 🙂
There are so much additives for strong flavour in dry food, and also lots of sugar and salts – all of these makes your cat addictive to this food. Wet food has it too, but dry food tops the list of that.

 

So if you have tried to give some raw meat from when you are cooking for yourself and your cat has squinted at it – this is because your cat has no idea that it is food! It doesn´t smell like food and it doesn´t look like food, so it can´t be food. Right? WRONG! But only you know that.
If you have tried it 10 times and your cat still doesn´t have a go at it, you probably say ”my cat just doesn´t like it” but that too is wrong. You have just not transitioned or presented it correctly.
But don´t worry, I´m here to help you 🙂

 

First of all you need to stop having dry food out all day long.
”But I work all day and theres….” NO, that is irrelevant here. Your cat does NOT need food all minutes of the day.
So if you are free feeding dry food, start by giving it in meals of 2 or 3 each day. One portion (not full bowl) when you go to work in the morning, and one portion when you come home. At weekends you can try to give a portion of dry food and when your cat has eaten and left the bowl, take it away and put it down a few hours later.
Now you will start to make your cat understand that YOU are the source of food, not by just excisting in this home.

 

If you have more than one cat you might have to separate them in different rooms during this short transition just to make them less stressed over the changes.
Your cats will get hungry, but that’s good. Nothing enhances a meal more than having an appetite. Just make sure each cat does eat, every day.

 

When they are used to the meal time routine and start to show you that they are hungry and know to ask you for their food, you can start to mix in a little wet food.
The meal-time change could make your cat want to eat wet food as it is, so try offering 1 teaspoon before each meal and if that works without more convincing, then just keep that going for a week and on the second week you can give a table spoon of wet food and a bit less dry food after.
If the above way does´nt work on your cats, you can try to mix the wet food into the portion of dry food, that should work.
Even the worst quality wet food is a hella lot better than any type of dry food, but if possible choose a grainfree wet food. Try to avoid wet food with fish, your cat could get a bit addicted to that too and it could be hard to go from there to raw food as you should not give raw fish.

BTW, congratulations on getting this far! 😀 That is so awesome, and you are doing a very good job!

If you want to you could take a break here and just keep this routine for a few weeks or months. This might be especially handy for you if you have a longer vacation coming up which includes a cat sitter or that your cats will be traveling with you.
Some of you might want to just soak the dry food in water to make your cat drink more fluids, but Dr. Lisa Pierson, DVM, at CatInfo.org explains why you should´nt:
”Dry food has a high bacterial content. Mold is also often found in dry food. There have been many deaths of dogs and cats secondary to eating mold mycotoxins, vomitoxins and aflatoxins which often contaminate the grains found in dry food. If you want to try the trick of wetting down the dry food to alter the texture, please leave it out for only 20-30 minutes then discard it. Bacteria and mold thrive in moisture.”

If your cat already were eating both wet and dry

Then you can just skip the steps above and slowly give more of the wet food and less of the dry, do it weekly by adding and removing 1 tablespoon of each, and second week 2 tablespoons etc.

From wet food to raw

Now you can actually do exactly like above, but instead of wet food you will now ease into raw food. Cut up small pieces of chicken or buy minced chicken and add 1 teaspoon in the wet food for a week. If you don´t want to go that slow you could add 1/4 of the meal as meat, and 3/4 as wet food, this is not too strong for the cat´s belly if he or she is already used to wet food.

If your cat seem to refuse the food when you have added raw meat to it, then you can try giving the meat half frozen. A few of mine actually prefers it half frozen before thawed. Freeze the meat halfway or thaw it half way and then add it to the food.
It might be some time of experimenting, all cats are different so just find a way that works for you.

You could also try to put the raw meat on a separate plate next to the wet food, this is purely to get your cat to associate raw meat with food. Do this until you see that your cat wants to try it, or just gives it a lick because that is SUCCESS!! 😀 Weeeeeee!!
Now you could start to mix it with the wet food as explained above.
It might not be necessary but if needed you could ”spice” the food with something yummy like crushed dry food or water from tuna. Just add a little to get your cat to give it a taste.

Add chunky pieces

Now that your cat is well on it´s way to eating raw meat, you can try to add some larger chunks of meat into the mix. This is the absolute best way to brush your cat´s teeth! No more bite marks on your fingers from trying ”cloth brushes” on your finger or scratch marks all over your body because your cat refuse to allow a strange object in it´s mouth.

Take it slow by adding smaller chunks and just a few of them, and gradually add more and bigger. No need to add it everyday but every now and then.

Try giving meat on bones

When your cat has eaten raw food for a while, you can try to introduce bones with meat on them. This is good for teeth cleaning but it can be useful for overly active cats as they will gnaw on the bones for a long time and also to stop your cat from always begging for more food (restless behaviour)
It is perfectly fine if your cat eats the bone, just make sure it is raw and use smaller bones like chicken wings.
NEVER EVER GIVE YOUR CAT COOKED BONES!! Raw bones are totally fine and tender, but cooked bones are very dangerous.
I hope that you will have great use of this guide, and thank you so much for being a good cat guardian that wants to give your cats the absolute best <3
januari 13, 2018
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