The Mad Menagerie - and the Herd goes RAW

I was recently asked to write an account for a RAW feeding blog/website/FB page covering our RAW feeding journey. I thought it could be an interesting contribution to my blog as well, so here it is! 

Our journey to RAW began in early 2013. At that stage we had 4 cats – Effie and Coco who were 3 years old, and two rescue, bottle baby foster fails - Lisbeth and Tyrion who were 1 year old. .

Effie

Effie and Coco were adopted as kittens from a rescue group – both came to me very sick with cat ‘flu (especially Effie) and Coco had Ringworm, which we weren’t told about. Within a month both kittens had developed intractable diarrhea which didn't respond to any treatment. Fiinally; after spending 1000s of dollars, ‘visiting’ the vet twice a week for 2 months and running every test under the sun with no resolution, the vet and I both hoped onto the internet and came to the same conclusion – Tritrichomonas foetus. He had never herd of it before, as it is very rare here so I took the kittens to a feline specialist who very quickly confirmed an extreme case of TF and prescribed medication, which sorted the issue out effectively.

Effie in the meantime, was also treated by the specialist for a chronic sinus infection caused by her cat ‘flu and had also developed eosinophilic infiltration in her lips which resolved once her other issues were identified and successfully treated.  Over the years however, Effie continued to have bouts of diarrhea, especially if she was stressed. She’s a highly sensitive cat and being very closely bonded to me is my emotional sponge, which doesn’t help her stress levels. As time went on she also became itchy and started to have inflammation in her mouth. Coco was mostly healthy as far as we knew at that time, but she was prone to being overweight, even on restricted portions. At this time both cats were fed ‘quality’ food - Iams dry and canned.

Lisbeth

Lisbeth came to me as a teeny abused, abandoned foster baby, hours away from death. The rescue had thought she was about 2 weeks due to her size old but it transpired she was 6-8 weeks old and was severely emaciated. She has ongoing behavioural (epic scardey cat) issues due to her start in life but with every year that passes she continues to blossom and gain confidence. From the beginning she had serious GI issues with weekly bouts of appetite loss, vomiting and diarrhea and at 3 years old she developed Stomatitis and had a FME which successfully ended the problem.

Tyrion

Tyrion – once he had been rescued with his mother and siblings from a terrible situation, went on to lead a charmed start to life in my foster room. He was the class clown and as healthy as an Ox.

And so, we arrive at 2013. Effie and Lisbeth’s GI issues were causing me more and more concern and Coco was increasingly obese despite being on ‘diet’ food for two years. She was relentless in her search for food and was never satisfied. Tyrion was still the class clown.

Coco

I started to research and the first thing I did was transition all of the cats to grain free dry and stopped free feeding. This helped up to a point but didn’t completely resolve things. So I kept searching and discovered the ‘novel’ concept of RAW feeding! I researched solidly for another 4 months before feeling confident to act and then I went for it, making homemade RAW using Dr Pierson’s recipe with chunks added. Tyrion and Coco transitioned immediately with quite startling results. Coco immediately started losing weight and stopped begging for food and Tyrion? …. 

Yep, he was still the clown and loved to assist me making their food, which involved stuffing his face as the meat came out of the grinder. Their coats became softer, really shiny and their dandruff disappeared.

The transition for Effie and Lisbeth was more challenging because Lisbeth’s appetite had always been very poor and Effie doesn’t have a good sense of smell due to damage from her previous sinus infection as well as often feeling ‘off’ and not wanting to eat. I had to use every trick in the book to get them going and it took about 6 months, but we got there in the end and once they got going, the change was quite incredible to witness.

Lisbeth went from 1-2 really nasty GI episodes a week during which she wouldn’t eat for days at a time, to eagerly asking for food. Her GI episodes fell away until she was having roughly one every 6 months. Their severity was a mere shadow of what they had been and they resolved within a day. Before RAW I had struggled to keep weight on her but within a few months she become a chunky wee monkey and her coat was also glossy and soft.

Effie …. Ahhhhh Effie, my problem child! Once she was fully transitioned things did improve for her but her itching slowly worsened and she still had periodic GI attacks, which also involved her mouth flaring up. As the years went by Effie’s stress levels remained high as both Coco and I were unwell. Coco was suffering from a progressive Neuro/Muscular condition – for which she was medicated, but she was becoming increasingly aggressive and depressed due to pain. And so, our former happy clowder became unstable with ensuing behavioural issues. I worked with the cats intensively for a year but eventually Tyrion decided he couldn’t cope with living with other cats and began hosing the whole house down every night and started attacking Lisbeth, his special buddy. I consulted with the rescue and made the impossible decision to rehome Tyrion because I could not give him what he needed, which was to be the king of his very own castle. He spent all of 10 days in the shelter before being rehomed with a lovely couple (with full disclosure) that absolutely adore him. He is blissfully happy and I still miss him EVERY day.

My beautiful wee man, Tyrion.

All of this plus some frustrating medical problems for me has had a big impact on Effie, and her health issues have worsened. She had also started peeing outside the litter box again – a BIG red flag as we all know. At the same time, her itching escalated and she was scratching her face until it bled (she is on medication for the itching) and her GI attacks were becoming more frequent and severe which confused me because she is fully RAW fed. On reflection, I thought that there might just be more to this than stress so I did some detective work ... I began following Effie when she was outside (real secret squirrel stuff!) and discovered that she was visiting one particular neighbour’s garage, where she was stealing biscuits!

What an EPIC lightbulb moment. It explained so much, but is was also extremely frustrating to realise that she was eating all of that CRAP which was  upsetting her system and undoing all of my hard work!

Butter wouldn't melt .... 

And so it has been and continues to be.

I am slowly restricting Effie’s outside time more and more (all of my cats are locked in after dusk & overnight) especially at dusk which is when she saunters off for her 'fix', but in order to keep her stress levels down I have to be careful not to make too many changes too fast. 

Coco in happier times

Also, the dynamic between the cats is still tricky – we had to have Coco put to sleep just before Christmas and Effie literally went off the deep end and started spraying, which she has NEVER done before. 

She and Lisbeth (who is an indoors only cat due to her anxiety issues) are only just tolerating each other at present and we are working towards harmonious full time integration. Hopefully we will reach that goal in the near future. I will also be cat netting some of the garden soon so that Effie can go outside but not off the property which means she will no longer have access to the kittie crack. 

When Effie has had little to no access to ‘crack’ her gut is settled, as is her mouth for the most part. But recently she had a bikkies binging episode which caused more serious dental problems to develop so she has had FME to stop her suffering and to furhter reduce her stress levels through pain reduction. The vet and I both feel that neither Effie nor Lisbeth’s dental issues are related to feeding RAW. They’ve always had chunks, necks and wings etc to clean their teeth and I brush their teeth – or I used to when they had them! The brushing was another source of stress for Effie as she hated it. Unfortunately their dental issues have been intractable and stubborn and we feel that genetics and immunological causes are the culprit, not diet.   

An uneasy truce ...

Recently when my own health problems made making their RAW at home difficult I made the

decision to start using commercial RAW. This was not an easy choice for me, as I like to know EXACTLY what is in the food my cats are eating. Another factor in making this decision was the chance that eating only one source of protein (chicken) may have been exacerbating Effie’s allergy problems. Back to the researching drawing board I went and found a RAW feeding company that is owned and run by vets and was available in my town! YIPPEEE! The product is fantastic and Lisbeth adored it from the get go. Effie, well you know the drill! As I have introduced each new protein source I’ve had to convince her that it is indeed food and that she will actually like it! We are most of the way there now and she is happily eating around 8 different proteins. I have also introduced them to bone broth. Lisbeth literally inhaled it the first time I offered it. Effie treated it with deeeeep suspicion and distain, so we’ve been working on that. I started adding 1/8th of a tsp to her dinner every night and only JUST got away with that! We are now up to 2Tbsp and we’ll just keep it there for now as she is happy and is enjoying her RAW immensely.

Since introducing the novel and varied proteins I have seen a small improvement in Effie – but of course it is hard to truly quantify because she is still stealing biscuits on occasion. Lisbeth on the other hand has shown a total remission in her remaining GI attacks. Zero. Nada. Nothing! Completely gone. Her episodes of being a bit ‘off’ and not wanting to eat are also a thing of the past. She simply wolfs her food down at every single mealtime. Their coats, which I didn’t think could look any better than they were have however, reached a new level of glory. They are finer, uber shiny, soft, totally dandruff free and the colour is deeper. The other bonus of course is one that must still be mentioned …. Ye Olde litter box. Zero smell and small compact poo. Bliss!