Rachel, some of my cats jumped on in to the raw diet with all four paws. I had some hold outs, though. One, I have to grind the food or make it really small because of the way she eats. We are working on building her jaw muscles...it's going to be awhile. Sometimes I have to hold the chunks of raw and make her bite them out of my hand. That's SO MUCH FUN with organs!
For bones, some of the cats were like, "Heck yah!" when I gave them chicken wings and drumsticks and some of them were like, "Uh....what?"
So I tried cornish game hens. Now they all go for that, (exception the one I have to grind things for), because it's smaller, so much easier for them to eat. When you get to that point, try a cornish game hen dismembered.
They won't eat it every day but every two or three days, they'll take to it.
Even the most stubborn cat is eating the cornish game hen which surprised me.
The only one I'm having a problem with is the older cat. She likes raw, she just doesn't know how to pick up a bite. I did notice that she is missing two teeth in her bottom row...poor baby....so this is part of the problem. I may have to forever grind her food, I don't know.
When I first started this, I checked her teeth, I thought they were all there, her gums were and are pink. All her teeth are white and look healthy but I pretty much held her mouth open the other day with a vice grip, (not really!!), and did some thorough investigating. Dang it all, she's missing two on the bottom row which is easy to miss because have you seen those cute little teeth they have? Those are tiny!
Sigh. I don't have a grinder yet so right now I'm putting everything in a blender and shredding it. She lapped it up yesterday in the afternoon but not so much at night.
I'll try again and see how that works. Also, I guess I'm going to just buy ground beef, ground turkey and such. It's got to be better than kibble and she'll eat the amount she should. I don't think she's eating enough right now. She's lost weight and I read not to let them lose too much too fast so I always give her extra meal times. Just takes her so long to eat those chunks with her scooping with her tongue.
I'm hoping with blending them, (there's still a chunk or two in there), she'll get the hang of it. At least get her to eat enough.
I've seen what it does to a cat that doesn't eat for too long. A roommate had a cat go missing for a few days. I happened to work at a vet at the time so we brought him in and got him some care.
It's a long, drawn out story that I don't want to get in to here but I will say, he was starting to do better. There was some mishandling over a weekend at the vets, (shouldn't have let a newbie handle this), and he didn't get enough---his health declined rapidly, it was horrible to watch and he did eventually die.
Make sure they are getting enough to eat, do not let them go without food for a day. I know you know this but I know that switching to raw, sometimes these picky little snots won't get enough and I can't stress enough that with the felines, we have to give in. Can't hold out like we do dogs.
Anyway, good luck.