The boys are doing beautifully

Just when I thought there was no hope of getting them on commercial foods, a ray of light appeared in the form of a nice looking tootsie in the box.  Then another and another..

Yup, we are awesome and we know it!

I am going to introduce them to shredded food next, then dry food.. and if all goes well I'll be returning them to the shelter for adoption since no one has stepped up saying they want these two boys.  I very much hope they will adopt them out together.  I can not bear the thought of them being separated.

Former Foster Friday - Miss Odilia and her paper..

and the highlight of my time with her..


I adore how she perks up and comes RUNNING (trotting really) toward the sound of ripping paper..

Amy, thank you again for adopting her and taking such good care of her.. (and feel free to send more pictures and write more blog posts about her for me)

More Yummies from Chewy.com

It is November, and once again Chewy has offered us something yummy for The Crew..

A box.. for us?? 

What's in it, what's in it, what's in it.???

Liv-a-Littles 100% Chicken Breast

With a powdery bottom.. 

This is all you guys get..
(I split the larger pieces up into smaller chunks, they break pretty easily)

ME FIRST!

Oddly enough there are only six tails in that last photo, but all seven cats are accounted for :) Skippy's tail is just out of shot, but Eli's tail made it in..

Liv-a-littles is one of the few treats I feel somewhat comfortable feeding The Crew, although if you look at the ingredient list of these 100% chicken treats you'll see that there isn't just one ingredient.

Ingredients: Freeze-dried chicken breast, Marinade (sodium phosphate, salt, carrageenan)

I'm not happy about that. (although blame the government for allowing anything under a certain percentage to not be listed on the label hence they can get away with 100% - same as no calorie spray butter can get away with saying it has no calories when in fact it does)  I can understand the salt.. I do not get the carrageenan in the least as it is generally used as a thickening agent.  I wrote to Halo when I first realized it was used, but they have not gotten back to me on why they use it.  *shrug*  I totally wish they would reconsider using it..

But you can't blame Chewy for this one.  Their shipping is so fast, and it is really nice that they offer a wide variety of types of treats so those kitties on a restricted diet can find options.

So thanks again to Andrew for including us in this blogger outreach program.  Hopefully next month there will be another offering we can try.

Chewy is doing another giveaway.. I've included their rafflecopter for your ease of entry..

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Girls and Boys and looking for homes

So, we have come to the point in this set of fosters that I was not looking forward to. The girls were doing so well and hit size a while back so it really was time to get them to the shelter to find their forever homes. I brought them in yesterday. The staff ooohed and aaahed over them, how good they looked, how pretty they were.. and there was a bit of discussion about just how BIG they were. Both were around three and a half pounds (they should be brought back at two pounds). Oddly enough Mishka who I have always considered the smallest of the bunched weighed more than Verona who I always considered larger. Ah well.. I guess her bones were heavier. So now they are now at the shelter waiting for their forever home/s.

I bought some cat toys from Frieda at the cat show this past weekend.  The cat show was a bit of a disappointment in that there were only a few retailers of merchandise. One being outdoor cat enclosures, another being hand made cat trees and the third being Frieda.  I got a few photos, I might turn it into a blog post if anyone is interested.

As you can see, the toys were a huge hit!!

So now we are on a quest to get the boys on conventional food.  I have a few things to try.  They had one meal of canned food last night and this morning their stool was large and soft, so it is not looking good.  I fear very much these two will have to be raw fed.  I know I should not fear this, as I believe anyone who is willing to take on kitty with a special needs diet to be a class of super adopters that I hope every kitten gets adopted into, but it is about me.. I do not want to be the "crazy raw feeding" foster home that seemingly has a never ending supply of kittens that can't eat anything but raw food..

But in the end, I will do what is right for these two (and no, it is NOT adopting them myself even though I REALLY REALLY want to in a 'lets not take reality into play here' sort of way.  Smed is needy.. he demands a lot of attention and that would not go over very well with my own needy kitties.  They already think I don't give them nearly enough time.

So if you are willing to feed raw food, and you might like a kitty that will buff your face with his cheek and ask that you kiss him until your lips fall off, I so have the kitten for you.. If you want one stocky boy with a round ping pong ball shaped head who likes attention and loves licking toes, I so have the kitten for you.. and if you want them both I will love you forever..

What I know - Why feeding raw isn't that expensive

So, in the past I've extolled the virtues of feeding a raw diet to your kitty. Often I hear, but it is expensive, I can not afford to feed my cat raw..

I totally understand that, I do. I've been homeless so I have run almost all of the gambit of the financial situations people can be in (I'm still waiting for the wealthy part..  if anyone has a couple of million to spare to help me achieve that, I'm game! )

I also understand change in and of itself can be expensive.  A lot of cats will not transition off their food due to the simple fact that they are cats and it is in their nature.  If they have been eating just one food or one type of food their whole life, getting them to try something else can be very very difficult.  But I implore you to all try it for the simple fact that one day you might NEED to change your cat's diet (be it on to raw, or something else for some reason we can't even think of yet) and if you are left with a stubborn cat who refuses to eat anything but what they have been eating you might be in a life or death situation.

So anyway.. price..

I ran out of raw food the other day and ran down to my local pet store and purchased not only a 5lb container of raw food, but four packages of dehydrated food so The Crew would have something for dinner. I picked up four packages of Stella & Chewy individual servings.  I knew this was not going to be a full dinner for seven cats but I had something else at home to complete the meal.  Each package was $1.89 and was designed to be equivalent to one 3 oz can of food.

Now I highly highly doubt that you feed $2.00 cans of food to your kitty.  A prescription can of cat food can run you almost $2.00 but those generally are 5-6 oz cans so it is per day.. a good quality canned food can run $1.50 a can, Fancy Feast is $0.58 per can so $1.16 per day and your generic Walmart brand of cat food works out to $0.44 a 5.5 oz can..  Non generic store brand cat food works out to about $0.50 a 5.5 oz can.. The general consensus is that canned food fed cats eat between 5-6 oz of food per day

Dry food?  The general consensus on feeding a dry food is 1/2 to 1 cup per day.  I would imagine the higher quality 'grain free' dry foods would be fed at the lower amounts while your general store brand cat foods would be at the higher amount.. but for the sake of this post not being a mile long lets just go with a cup. A three pound bag of food holds 12 cups.  Now we all know you can buy a bag 3lb of food for under $5 which works out to $0.42 a day a 3lb bag of grain free food can be $12 which is a dollar a day (and it goes up from there)

Raw?  I bought one five pound container of raw food at my local store. They come in 2, 5 and 10lb containers. The larger the container the smaller the per serving price and if I buy a case at a time I get a further discount. I thaw it out, and I feed my cats. I store the remainder in the fridge and it keeps for just shy of a week (I can make it last a whole week but it starts to smell a little stronger than I would like.  My cats still eat it just fine and have never had an issue when the food sits around)  If we thaw out more than we will feed in a week we will often refreeze it in smaller containers.   My big strong strapping kitties eat 2-3 ounces of raw per meal and we feed twice a day.  That five pound chub of food cost me $12 which works out to $0.15 per ounce or $0.60 to .90 per day.

(btw, all prices are based on buying in bulk.. 24 cans at a time, 3lbs of dry food, etc)

I can bring that price down even further if I make my own food.  Granted to do so you need a grinder (actually you don't need a grinder as a lot of people feed their cats what is called 'frankenprey' but often getting an adult cat on to non ground raw food is a bit more complicated so that would be information for another post) Buying chicken thighs, livers, eggs and a few supplements often means you can feed for .09 or .10 an ounce, bringing the cost to $0.36 - 0.60 per day..

Now, admittedly feeding generic food is cheaper, but in our own diet eating a continual diet of McDonald's food is cheaper than what we generally eat, but we generally do not do that because it is not healthy.  We eat not only to feed ourselves for the day, but to sustain our body over our lifetime. Eating species appropriate foods and avoiding overly refined and over processed foods keeps us healthy and helps us avoid heath issues such as diabetes, kidney disease, and to some extent cancer. This is no less true for our own cats. Removing the grains, and the fruits and vegetables from our cat's diet improves their health dramatically and often helps the cat lose weight while actually eating better more nutritious food. (and then there is the reduced litter box odor, reduced litter use, reduced waste of cans etc)

and I am not the only one to think so.. Check out this page..

How much does it cost to feed my cat? or “I *can* afford to feed commercial raw!”

And according to the kittens.. raw is much more fun!
The first video is 6 minutes of four kittens eating 25 chicken hearts..
The second video is Smedley trying to eat his..