It’s heartening to see that feeding raw meat to cats is gaining popularity. It’s biologically appropriate and it supports a healthy immune system, making dis-ease a thing of the past. So your reliance on vets drops dramatically. This means that some of them will be against this healthy diet.

However, without support from those who understand what a healthy diet for cats is, mistakes can be made, which can mean your cat doesn’t get the full advantage of raw feeding. 

This may be the biggest hurdle for people to overcome. Many people find it hard to believe that all the commercial cat food available is unhealthy. Why would their vet lie to them?

Sadly, this is a reflection of our current, very corrupt world. While many vets may be well intentioned, they’ve been trained by industry – big pet food and big p-harma. Veterinary schools are always short of money, so welcome financial support. Which industry willingly gives, as long as they can influence the students. Influence here may not be the right word. Dominate seems more appropriate.

Yet zoo vets well understand the need for raw food for their feline charges. Zoos cannot finance the high cost of constantly ailing animals as does the domestic market. They know that raw meat means healthy cats. Just as it does in the wild.

Not all brands of anything are equal. Some brands are better than others. Some simply just don’t understand cats needs. So this can be a sideways move.

First, you need to check the ingredients. There should be no other ingredients other than raw muscle meat, raw organ meat and raw bones. Synthetic supplements are harmful to cats. Most fruit and vegetables are hazardous to cats. It’s not limited to grains.

Antioxidants are another name for preservatives, which need to be avoided at all costs.

Supplements are unnecessary when the quality of the food is good.

Some raw brands of cat food aren’t raw as they’ve been pasteurised. You’ll not know that unless you ask. Even then the answer may be a vague one, to cover themselves.

Dehydrated raw cat food can be a problem, not just because it’s dry, a real hazard in itself. Whenever you process food, you destroy something. It could be the enzymes or altering the protein to make it less digestible, and so forth.

Food needs to be real food. Real food tends to go bad easily. Not sit on the shelf for years.

Learning how to make your cats food yourself gives you much more control. You can also more easily cater to their preferences.

Many people give up at the first hurdle with a shrug ‘my cat won’t eat raw food’.

While some cats take to a raw diet really easily and quickly, with an air of ‘what took you so long’, others may be junkies. If you’d brought up your kids on junk food, you wouldn’t expect them to adapt to your new healthy food overnight.

Often a process is needed to take your cat, step by step, to not only eat the food, but to eat it with great enthusiasm and gusto. They need to be reminded that they really are cats, that they really are carnivores.

You can’t just exchange a bowl of kibble for a bowl of raw food one day and expect every cat to take to it.

Feeding raw meat to cats does involve a de-tox period. When a cat starts to eat real food, their body seems to relax and they go through a period of de-toxing. This worries many people and they often stop at this point. Or visit their vet, who normally has no idea what’s going on. Working with someone in the know helps both you and your cat through this process.

De-toxing is necessary and healthy and shows how toxic they were. Toxins come from the majority of commercial cat food as well as vet meds.

De-toxing takes the form of a discharge. It can be from any orifice. Or it can be a skin eruption. It may make them feel lethargic for a while. It can make them refuse food for a meal or two.

In younger cats, this is short lived. In older cats, it can take longer. But inevitably, they emerge from this process, happier, more playful and healthier.

Wild cats only eat what they have just killed. They’re not carrion feeders as dogs are. They must have very fresh meat. This is why cats have a reputation of being fussy eaters. They know commercial cat food is stale, but the chemical engineers do a good job in masking that. For a while.

Feeding raw meat to cats is one of the best things you can do for your cat’s health. And only you can do it. But you need to get it right and you may need to overcome some hurdles first. Be persistent and dedicated (and seek out help if necessary) to see it through. It is worth it. And it’s amazing how may ailments improve or disappear altogether.