[Rubellite]

You just might find interesting.............or then again you might not 

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1244595/Is-food-youre-feeding-pet-killing--making-vet-rich.html

(told you so) 

[Caralou]

Mmmm, I do disagree with some of the article...

The main problem with kidneys in male neutered cats and is to do with low water intake.
If feeding a dry diet you need to make sure they are drinking often and plenty and if not you need to add a wet food - whether raw food or home made or good quality premade.

I think that swapping to raw foods without more information for people (not all pet owners have internet access!) would deprive animals of essential nutrients and although the article argues that 30 years ago animals were fed on scraps etc 30 years ago the average lifespan of a cat was 5 years less and a dog 3 years less so advances in vet care and manufactured food nutrients has had a beneficial effect. I do think the raw food diet can be beneficial, but only if you monitor the nutrient levels and give supplements - and it also depends if your pet will eat it in the first place (so start as young as possible to give them a taste for it)!

It mentions the negatives of a dry food but doesnt give the positives such as improved dental health and this can prevent major treatments (dental has to be done under an anaesthetic) as well as it being beneficial for cats with poor digestive tracts - it was the only way I could feed Thorsy as he got so ill with other foods including raw (although I did make homemade wet food for him alongside to keep his water content up).

Really, like all things it involves thinking before acting. Make sure your pet eats a varied diet, drinks plenty of water and exercises. If feeding a commercial diet look at the content and with cats for example look for high protein contents and avoid wheat additions as a bulking agent. Mine get a mix of a very good dry food, some commercial wet, homemade wet and tonight they are having raw liver - all in moderation and variation  

[chickenlady]

My Tiggs had kidney desease at the age of 7, but was fed wet food all her life, what she had was polycystic kidney desease and it is genetic (most common in persians) the vet did prescribe a special dry diet for kidney problems as well as tablets which gave us an extra year with her! she would of died within months of being diagnosed otherwise.

[Rubellite]

Can't say I know much about raw feeding in cats as I haven't been able to convert mine - but regards the dental issues that you mention, Cara, with dogs they have improved dental health through eating a raw food diet as the very action of tearing the meat from the bones acts like floss and the bones themselves clean the teeth. I can vouch for this as one of my JRTs had terrible teeth, since switching to raw her daughters who were going the same way, had extremely clean teeth and fresh breath. Bonnie, the last of the line, is now 121/2 and the only tartar she has on her teeth are on her canines. The rest of her teeth are sparkling clean.
Have you ever tried to clean your teeth with a biscuit? 

[sunshineband]

All I can say is that one of our cats live to be 20 and spent the first ten or more years eating only dry food, with the occasional tiny piece of chicken or tuna. Her teeth were fine too.. no caries at all.

Another lived to fourteen, and one our current ones is nearly seventeen -- have a mixture of dry food, etc

Amazing how much water they drink actually, as since they have been indoors so much when it snowed they couldn;t drink from the pond   so it is obvious what has gone from the bowl

[Caralou]

It does help to break off the plaque, and is more beneficial than wet cat food for doing that as it obviously has a more abrasive action which is how it benefits the dental health. One of my friends cats eats a primarily raw diet as she is a prolific hunter who eats her kills and adores raw meats and yet has awful teeth and had to have 2 extractions last year (only 6 years old) whereas one of mine has great teeth at a year older so some of it can also be down to genetics and predisposition (as with CL's kitty who had ut problems).

Have you ever tried to clean your teeth with raw meat?     

[mumofstig]

My Siamese doesn't drink any water at all I change it every morning but she never touches a drop, and I've never seen her with her head down the loo either

For this reason I now feed her a couple of wet pouches a day as well as dried food in her other bowl. Is this enough moisture or should I be worried?

[Caralou]

Does she go outside? If so she probably drinks from puddles etc (I know mine do!). If not try adding a little water to the wet food you feed her and a little bit of liver or red meat (raw) if she will eat it. 85% of ut problems in cats are in neutered males, but I dont know if that is because they are daft and usually drink less or the op effects the pipes more or a combination of the two!

[mumofstig]

No she doesn't go out so will try the other suggestions so I don't worry

[Caralou]

Have you also tried a cat water fountain? Mine love running water so I have two. A catit dome which little Niblet will sit and watch for hours   and a drinkwell fountain that runs like a tap and my Shia puss adores this. You can get them from about £20 now and both the ones I have are quiet provided you keep them full with water. It really does encourage them when in the house to drink and also stops me turning the taps on for Shia all the time!

[arugula]

You just might find interesting.............or then again you might not 

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1244595/Is-food-youre-feeding-pet-killing--making-vet-rich.html

(told you so) 

Hmm... interesting, as you say.....

[Rubellite]

Have you ever tried to clean your teeth with raw meat?     

Raw meat alone is not a good provider of calcium. The bones element of a raw diet provides this and other minerals and of course the action of gnawing a bone is where the teeth are cleaned. 
BARF stands for Biologically Appropriate Raw Food or some people just say Bones And Raw Food.
RMBs are Raw Meaty Bones. Both methods of feeding are gaining hold as people realise the health benefits for their pets. I've beeen feeding this way for over 6 years and now can't even stand the smell of commercial pet food. Our cat food makes me want to throw up - it smells the same as it goes in as to when it comes out, and that'll be those additives to make it smell good to the cat 

[Caralou]

I dont think commercial wet does smell good to all cats, my Shia wont touch it (in fact she will only eat cooked fresh meats, my homemade food and certain biscuits as she is such a fussy little thing) and usually my cats will wolf down homemade food in preference to shop bought food. I agree on the smell except with the premium chicken and tuna ranges which smell and look like chicken and tuna but cost a fortune so cheaper to cook them the real thing! Apparantly one of the best commercial foods for lack of additives and that is good for sensitive tums is Classic cat food - it is also one of the cheapest on the market and in tests has trumped the vet created sensitive stomach brands.

I dont think the raw foods diet is a bad one, I just think it needs more information and testing and that it isnt suited to all animals plus balancing the nutrition isnt as easy as alot of people make out with it. As mentioned before I have tried my cats with it and it didn't work - a couple of them will happily devour raw meats (although with cats you must be very careful with bones both cooked and uncooked) but 3 wont touch it and when I tried Thorsy on it for his stomach it made him terribly ill so it doesnt always help with gastric problems and can worsen them. I try giving them bits of raw meats weekly with liver and kidneys being their choice to eat (when I culled my two cock birds I took the meat off the bones while still warm and two of them thought it was the best meal they had ever had - the rest walked off in disgust!) but I keep it balanced with other feeds.

The same arguments I hold against raw food can be applied to my home made cat food - getting the nutritional balance is hard and I wouldnt recommend it to anyone who hasn't looked into it fully and who hasnt got the necessary vitamins in other sources for their cats. I dont think any diet is bad as long as balanced and suited to your pet. You may advocate a raw food diet, me a homemade diet and others will believe that commercial food is best as it has all the nutrients already in - it is a matter of personal choice and all have health benefits and elements that can cause health problems and more studies need to be done into the comparative benefits before any one side can claim their diet is best for pets (and these should be carried out independently and not in the pocket of pet food manufacturers so the results are not biased)

[Rubellite]

I absolutely agree with what you say Cara, and that is why my cats still eat commercial food. I don't dispute that the PFMs supply all the required nutrients, it is the chemical additives and preservatives that are the real baddies. Cats are far more difficult to deal with, than dogs, as they are more fussy, having said that I would not feed my cats exclusively on dried food as no matter what the pet food manufacturers/vets say, dried biscuits only, can not do any animal any good over the long term. Mine have some biscuits, mainly wet food and some tinned fish or cooked chicken, also mice and birds 
Dogs, on the other hand, and I have done extensive reading on the subject, are not difficult to feed. What you have to keep in mind is what they would eat if they were non-domesticated. Dogs are scavengers and so their digestive system is designed to cope with a variety of foods, although they are predominantly meat eaters and thus should be treated so. Their stomach acid is capable of digesting bone and so it follows that many of the bugs that would lay us low, such as salmonella, do not have such an effect on dogs. One of the ways of feeding is "whole prey". For instance if a dog caught a rabbit, it would eat the lot - usually stomach contents first - which is where vegetable matter comes in to the equation; followed by meat, bones and fur. Thus, when raw feeding, one would try to achieve a balance of meat, bone and offal, with a little vegetable matter thrown in. Interestingly enough, raw fed dogs do not suffer as much with anal gland trouble, for when they poo, they give the anal glands a workout, for passing digested bone is harder than pooping out the waste from dried food. Nice subject  On the bright side, raw fed poop smells less and there is not as much of it 
You could argue that chicken wings from the supermarket have little calcium content as opposed to free range chicken which we know have denser bones; anti-biotics and growth hormones, play a part. It is a complex and controversial subject....

[mumofstig]

The difference is..dogs are omnivores.....eat everything, think bears and humans 
cat's are carnivores and naturally would only eat raw flesh 
So it's fairly easy to feed dogs, but quite difficult to feed cats. I suppose if we were not soo kind (?) to them they would feed themselves their correct diet