1 Year - June 17, 2009

I am just totally thrilled to be able to say that we've now been a raw fed home for one year, so........................

HAPPY 1st RAW FED CAT BIRTHDAY TO US :)

What a year it's been and as I reflect on the last 12 months, the learning curve we have been through with regards to a natural diet, and I think about our own cat (and dog) family and the changes I have seen, I do wonder why we fed commercial foods for as long as we did. I look around at our cats who are so content, happy, healthy, with coats that feel like silk, energy levels that exhaust even me and I'm constantly on the go so that's saying something. When you consider we have a very large cat family, we go to and from cat shows, we have kitten families and other breeders who visit us on a regular basis and as I think back, I can not remember the last time one of our cats had to visit the vet with the exception of our darling Nocino who has been having a very difficult time of it. In fact, we have only been to our vets for boosters or kitten vaccinations.

Since raw feeding, we have had 5 litters in the home and they have been wonderful and 2 of those litters were not small as one was a litter of 7, yet not one single kitten loss. It really was trial and error where the litters were concerned and I have now come to the decision that future babies will have to be given some wet commercial foods prior to leaving home because not all of our kitten families will want to continue with a natural diet, and it is important that the babies' digestive systems become used to very good quality commercial wet foods. We still will not feed any kitten biscuits, not now, not ever. We have had no biscuits in the home since the beginning of August last year. You all know that we lost our darling Amaretto in March this year to CRF, a kidney disease and losing Retto to this horrendous illness made me even more determined that we would never feed biscuits to any of the cats or kittens.

We also now have our very first generation of raw fed kittens in the home who will be contributing to the Schimmel line. These young people are: Mokatika, Xanath, and Xaica and the fact that they are our first raw fed babies from raw fed mothers makes me so incredibly hopeful for the future generations that will grace our home.

I have had some "weak" moments with the raw feeding when I have given some wet commercial foods mixed in with Prize Choice mince, solely for convenience rather than anything else, but moments like this are few and far between and there was also a time when I found myself feeding far more mince meals than I should have been, again, for convenience. Once I realised this I made a determined effort to get back on track and whilst I am not saying there is anything wrong with feeding raw mince, it is much better for the cats to be eating fresh chunks of meat and bones.

It is wonderful to see that, one year down the line, our oldest cat family members, Cacao, now aged 6 years and 7 months, and Ice, now aged 6 years, are totally thriving on their raw diet and they look better now than they did a couple of years ago. These 2 people were the hardest ones to convince when we initially began raw feeding, particularly Cacao but perseverance and time won out in the end and I only have to look at her and know that we are doing the right thing.

Even now I still marvel at how easy it was changing from being a commercially fed home to a home with raw fed cats and kittens and whilst it is not that easy at the start, I can assure you that raw feeding soon becomes second nature and I find it no harder to prepare raw meals than it was filling up biscuit bowls, opening pouches/tins of commercial food. I have absolutely no regrets at all, and looking back, there is not a single thing I would have done differently.

I'm looking forward to seeing what happens during the next 12 months of our raw feeding and although I am not expecting to see any more changes really, what will be interesting is to see how our up and coming raw fed kittens cope throughout their first pregnancies and litters with regards to health of the kittens, and then......................how their progeny are doing in 10 years' time (yes, I truly do think that far ahead when it comes to the Schimmel line). One thing that will hopefully change within the next few months is that I will find the time to actually visit the reptile supplier to get some day old chicks, something I've been longing to try but never seem to find the time to actually leave the home long enough to go to the shop. I also need to try and source fresh rabbits and one would think in a farming area such as where we live, it would be easy but trust me, it isn't. So those are definitely 2 different food sources that I will be including within the next year.

I'll be monitoring Cacao and Ice closely because at this age, with the problems that do tend to surround Siamese and Orientals, to say nothing of the fact that many pedigree cats need dental work due to not ever having to use their teeth and jaws properly, I'm quite curious to see whether or not the raw diet will have prevented issues that I would expect to crop up in a Siamese or Oriental cat of their age. It is entirely possible that we started our raw feeding program way to late in order to prevent future problems with our older cats but time will tell....................................