Tuesday, February 19, 2013

Cat Food Epiphany


Last night I prepared a lovely dinner made from fresh, local, free range chicken.  It is the first time I have ever tried my hand at butterflying a whole chicken.  I didn't do a half bad job considering I didn't have any kitchen shears and my knives are not as sharp as they should be when attempting to cut through bone.

I almost threw away the backbone, but my Poopsie cat can smell raw chicken like I can smell home made Scrabble (Texas Trash) in the oven - from a mile away!  My normally reserved and shy boy cat turned into a playful, flirty, adorable kitten right there at the smell and sight of that raw chicken.  So I gave him the back bone.  He went Crazy over it!  Of course, once that back bone hit the floor Nabisco and Roz came over to investigate.  I ended up stealing the carcass back and cutting it in half so Nabisco wouldn't incite a riot.  And initially I kept Roz away since she's got these unidentified allergies and I've been told to keep her away from chicken.  But eventually she stole Nabisco's carcass right out from under her and once she had it, I couldn't really take it away.  She was Growling at me!

After their decadent snack, those silly cats were so cute all night last night!  It was as if I was covered in catnip.  They were all over me purring and rubbing their faces and stepping all over one another to cuddle with me.  I expect that with Roz and Nabisco from time to time, but this is very out of the ordinary for the Poopsie cat.

Luckily Roz's face didn't blow up last night or this morning.  She was quite bright eyed and still full of silly energy, in fact.  So in light of Roz not having a reaction to the chicken I turned to my Google Fu to see if there was something to this difference in free range chicken rather than regular chicken.  What I found was something that should have been rather OBVIOUS to me considering how much exp[erimenting I have done with diet adjustments for health issues both in cats and dogs:


Well, DUH!  I don't know why I didn't think of that before!  So now I have another rabbit hole to find my way through.  The Stella and Chewy's dehydrated lamb I use may be grass fed, but I need to double check that.  If their chicken is free range, my solution is clear.  Dehydrated and even raw chicken is cheaper than the lamb.   I just have to decide whether I want to feed raw as a supplement or as a complete meal.  And that means I'll need to go back and refresh my memory on the latest raw diet data.  I don't mind feeding raw, I just have to have something they'll eat that I can free feed on the weekends when I start working faires and cons again this Spring.  That is the tough part!

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