Since Meira did so well with the drumstick, I decided to get her a Cornish Game hen. The nice gentleman at the butchers was so kind to cut it in half for me. I'm a total contradiction in that I can feed my cats other animals, but I just don't want to deal with the carcass myself. Last time I tried to quarter one up myself I ended up apologizing to the bird the whole time.. Better to let them deal with that part of it, and they were more then happy to do so.
I decided she could probably deal with half a bird at a time, so I put the first half on the plate
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| This doesn't look so bad.. |
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| it is only going to get worse.. |
and I took it down to her... had an entire army of cats following me down begging for a chance to chew the bird. Since I've given them hens before and they were ignored, I wasn't falling for it.
Meira was happy to see me since I bring food when I show up..
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| You can see just how bad she looks here |
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| She got to work on it while the kittens cried at being left out |
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| nom nom nom |
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| She took a break to quiet the masses |
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| Then gave it another go |
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| Crunch Crunch Crunch |
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| mmmm tastes better on the floor |
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| Taking another break |
It was quite interesting watching her work on it. She would lick it and lick it then gnaw on the bones. If you have never heard a cat chew on the spine of a large bird, I have to tell you it is quite a unique almost spine chilling sound.. I was a little sad I didn't have a camera with me that could take video with sound, but then I thought you all might not be interested in that. :)
After about 20 minutes, I had a few other things to do, and left her to work on it, and when I got back later in the day the entire thing was gone. Yes, I searched the room for any sign of left over bones, hey my husband asked too.. So for dinner I weighed out the amount of food I was giving her, and yes I'm feeding her about as much as I am feeding all seven of the resident cats.. I'm hoping that soon that "empty leg" will fill up and she'll stop eating as much. Sunday morning she got the other half of the bird and the organs that came with it and made quick work of them too. Oddly enough her litter box deposits are mostly urine at this point with one nice solid dried out tootsie per day so she is utilizing all of that food.
Now that she is on a raw diet her colon is much more happy. I fed her some canned food last week and I could hear how angry it was. The kittens nursing on it made all kinds of squishy colon moving gaseous noises..I'm guessing she's not going to be able to eat anything but raw. I so hope her kittens have a stronger constitution.. Because "raw fed" is just not popular around here... although considering how adorable they are, maybe there will be a few converts :)
If you feel like reading more about feeding raw, here are a few links. There are many more out there, but I trust these two because I have spent a great deal of time reading them. The first is run by Lisa A. Pierson, DVM Her information on the feline diabetes message boards is what got me into raw to begin with years ago to try to help Em with her diabetes, and help Jack and Eli with their urinary crystals. Since switching the crew over, I've seen some wonderful first hand results, and seeing how quickly it cleared up Meira's diarrhea it is just one more gold star on the board of goodness for raw feeding.
http://www.catinfo.org
http://feline-nutrition.org/
