[Remy2012]

I would love to get people's views and ideas on a canned/raw diet.
If you do feed both... what does your menu look like?

What do you do if you go on vacation? I would love a flexible plan that could feed up to 3x a day... but if need be cut back to one. If I do go away... I will only ask someone to come once a day.

Thanks!

 

[Ritzpg]

I actually have the same question. I've been feeding Ritz (female, 2.5 years old) raw for 10 months. I am going to be fostering Ace, an eight month old female cat/kitten beginning late next week. She is currently staying with a friend of mine until both Ritz, me and Ace move to a new house next week.
The way I'm figuring is: if I feed Ace half canned food, then make sure the raw portion has the correct amount of protein/liver/kidney/bone. For example, if Ace needs roughly eight ounces of food a day, four from canned, four from raw, then do the calculations based on four ounces, keeping in mind Ace is still growing (although I think she is going to be on the small size). Ace is currently eating Fancy Feast classic and a high quality dry food. I will switch her over to probably Evo (rotate proteins) and either eliminate or start reducing the dry food. When I visited Ace earlier this week, I gave her some raw quail to see if she would, in fact, recognize it as food. And she ate most of it! (left some of the bone). And in so far as vacation: I am going on vacation for ten days at the end of September. My niece is going to come to my house and feed Ritz (she has three cats and knows I feed raw). I may not transition Ace to raw until I get back from vacation. For various reasons, I will probably ask my friend to take care of Ace when I'm away. For various reasons, I'd rather not have Ace and Ritz in the same (NEW) house together when I am gone for ten days. Ritz is going to be stressed enough as it is.

 

[hoofmaiden]

I won't address the canned combined w/ raw thing, but it really is important for cats to eat twice a day. They are not set up to gorge and fast like dogs, and asking them to do that can result in health problems.

So it's pretty important to either get someone to come in once a day or use an auto-feeder with ice packs, which will allow the pet sitter to load the PM meal in the AM. It will open at the programmed time to feed the kitty the second meal.

This will not work w/ more than one cat, of course.

 

[Ritzpg]

Yes, my niece will come in twice a day.

 

[Ritzpg]

Thanks; how old is your kitty?

 

[Ritzpg]

Thanks. Ace is around seven months old (rescued from the streets cause she was running on three legs; obviously formerly owned, abandoned). Fully vetted, spayed, etc. I need to get a weight on her to calculate how much raw/canned she should be eating. And figure out whether I should go with the 2%, 3% or 4% [the latter for growing kitten]. Her weight is fine.

 

[dweamgoil]

I fed half raw, half canned for over a year and half before switching to full raw. I used to feed all kinds of varied proteins like chicken and pig hearts, liver, quail, chicken wings, pork kidneys, natural frozen sardines once a week, beef tongue, chicken meaty bones, rabbit, duck, etc. basically whatever I could get my hands on. I would feed bone about 3-4 times a week, but obviously some days it was way less than others. I started feeding Weruva chicken varieties exclusively since it was a low calorie food and 2 of my cats tend to get chunky. Regarding proportions, I would feed between 2-3 oz of raw and half a 5 oz can of wet for a full grown cat. For Sasha, since he was a growing kitten, I would feed between 8-10 oz of food a day, and for him, I would feed EVO 95% canned food (everything except the beef since it gave some of my cats the runs) since not only he was growing, but he was really skinny when I first got him anyways.

Hope this helps!

 

[Ritzpg]

Thanks; this helps a lot.

 

[Remy2012]

thanks Dweamgoil this gives me some guidelines.

 

[dweamgoil]

You're very welcome