Ah, carnivores! My lovely little carnivores, snarfing down pork heart and pork liver. I never would have imagined such a thing in my household.
I knew the dogs would be an easy switch. Dogs, after all, will eat anything. They LOVE anything boney or meaty that I toss their way. Since I still have kibble that I'm using up, I'm feeding them raw one day and kibble the next. You should see how they follow me around, begging for MEAT on the kibble days!. They're shameless!
The cats, OTOH, are somewhat less convinced that meat is all they want. In fact, I haven't yet been able to convince Pretty or Annabelle to do more than smell it and indignantly turn away, waiting impatiently for their canned food. All of the others are at least willing to try it - some of them voraciously so. They prefer bite-sized pieces, though I have started making the chunks a bit bigger to challenge them to chew and shred. I even gave them a few pieces with some chicken bone attached last night, but only Weasel would crunch bones. All of the other cats rejected the pieces with bone. Bone is obviously going to be a tough sell around here.
So far I've offered them chicken leg, chicken liver, pork heart, and pork liver. All seem acceptable to the cats as long as they don't contain bone. I've ordered chicken backs and necks that should be here on Monday, so I'll keep trying to tempt them to crunch bones with the necks. A local butcher is saving otherwise discarded animal parts for me. Today I'm expecting beef lungs and hopefully some other parts. Hunting season will start in a few weeks, so I'll hopefully get some nice meaty venison bones. With any luck, I'll also be able to convince some hunters to save their gut piles for me. Oh joy.
I'm surprisingly ungrossed out by cutting up animal flesh - something i haven't done in decades. And to my even greater surprise, I do actually feel extremely satisfied and content listening to the dogs crunch bones when they eat. It's such an incredibly natural and "right" sound - every bit as pleasurable as standing in the barn listening to the horses munch hay.
I've ordered my postal scale and am eager for it to arrive so that I can see whether I'm even remotely close eyeballing portions for the cats. I've worked waaaaay too hard over the last 15 mos taking weight off of these beasts to screw it up now by overfeeding raw. I let the cats eat the first few raw meals communally because I figured the competition would be a good impetus for getting the reluctant ones to try it. Unfortunately, a couple of the piggies overate. Lamie was feeling pretty sickly yesterday, so I withheld raw from her last night and started portioning amounts for the other cats. Today Lamie is back to normal, so I'll give her raw again tonight and see how it goes.
Noddy threw up one of his raw meals within 10 mins of eating it, but that's the only upchucking I've witnessed so far. Otherwise, everyone seems to be handling the new diet quite well.
Now I just have to figure out how to seduce princesses Annabelle and Pretty over to the meat side.
BTW, the Gangsta LOVES RAW MEAT!!
Laurie
