Well, Asia my newest addition is now officially 100% raw. I have had her for 4 weeks today. The first week she was a bit under the weather, so I did not push the raw until she was fully recovered. The breeder fed a bit of raw, some cooked chicken, some canned, and some kibble. So I kept this up with the addition of some probiotics for the first two weeks until she was settled.
I currently have three adult cats that have been 100% raw for 7 yrs. I started off with mostly ground products and supplements the first few years, but now I feed more whole pieces and chunks, whole organs, and very little supplementation. I have never actually converted a kitten though, so this was going to be a new experience, plus it has been 5 years since my last 'conversion'.
Asia, at first, was wanting more cooked chicken then raw, so I started partially cooking the chicken. It took about a week to go from feeding only cooked chicken to 100% raw chicken bits. She seemed to have the typical 'ah ha' moment I have seen so often, where suddenly raw chicken was the greatest thing on the planet, and cooked was terrible. Once that happened, I started introducing other meats (rabbit, turkey, quail), bits of organ meats, and so on.
Last week, the best I could do was get her to eat small bits of chicken and rabbit, no bone, no organs, no ground. I kept her on a bit of dry and canned, but at this point she was 80-90% raw. This week, she has tried a bit of liver, heart, and she started eating some soft bone (breast bones cut up from cornish hens, and some small ribs in teeny pieces). At first she would get intimidated by anything that stuck to her teeth.
The last two days, she has started raiding my adult bengals food plate, which has more chunks and bone, and working over pieces on her own. I watch her carefully, don't want any choking, but she is doing great, crunching away like an adult already!
I gave her a day old baby quail last week, which was more amusement then anything else. She tossed it around the kitchen for 30 minutes!! Sort of morbid, amusing, odd at the same time. This morning I tried the quail again, she tossed it around for a few minutes, then I caught her chewing for a bit, but then she walked away. I cut it up in smaller bits, and she ate a couple of them, and I was beaming with excitement. I have not been able to get my crew to go whole small prey like that yet, was hoping to introduce the kitten early and have at least one small whole prey eater in the house.
I never thought I would feel so proud about watching a 4 month old kitten chew up a piece of cornish hen neck bone...lol.
These pics are from last week, she got excited about a piece of rabbit. She did not do much damage to it, but she tried for a long time. She looks very ALC in the second photo
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