Before I start this entry, I must advise you that the photos below are quite graphic so if you are squeamish, it is best that you don't look at them.

We are almost 15 months into our raw feeding now and have made 2 breakthroughs within the last 3-4 weeks. The first of which is the fact that I've finally sorted out this "offal" situation. As I have previously mentioned, I have really struggled when it comes to both feeding offal, and also getting the cats to eat it. Previously they have turned away from kidney, liver, and heart and no matter what I did, or how I tried to disguise it, we were getting nowhere. I did just give up with the offal, quite a long time ago and have been feeding plenty of tinned clams with the raw meals as clams are high in taurine. One day, I just made the decision that it's not good enough and while clams are fine and the cats love them, they really should be eating offal. It was beef steak on the menu that evening for dinner so I also bought 2 packs of lamb hearts as well. I have to admit that I found it sickening cutting up the hearts and I did have to actually stop but realised that is just ridiculous and the whole point of this is for the benefit of our cat family so I carried away chopping them up, I put them on the huge tray mixed in with the beef hearts and was absolutely stunned when, an hour later, there was not a single heart left, it had all been eaten. I don't know why the kids suddenly decided that heart tastes okay but I was just over the moon. We do have quite a few beef steak meals during the week and for the past 3 weeks I have been including the heart in with the beef and they have eaten it every single time. The reason this is great news is because heart has a high taurine content so I'm delighted.

Our 2nd major breakthrough was that we have now fed our first meals of raw, day old chicks, courtesy of Gwen. For months now I have been meaning to try these but just never seem to find the time to drive to the reptile supplier that we have in our area and Gwen was visiting us on September 5th and offered to bring some with her. Our dear friend Gwen of Chrestomanci Siamese & Orientals is also a totally raw fed home and I jumped at the chance as you can imagine. Well she kindly bought a bag of about 45 chicks with her (approximately 2 meals for our lot!) and dinner that night was raw chicks. I actually thought I would struggle to handle them and had my doubts that I'd have the stomach for it, however, surprisingly I found it much easier than I thought. I wasn't sure that any of the kids would take to the day old chicks if they were offered whole, so I did cut them in half prior to feeding in the hopes that the smell of all the "gooey" bits on the inside would entice them but I don't think I needed to have done that because our Deserts litter, and our adult cat family went totally nutty for the chicks, they were tearing into them, doing their whole possessive growly voices. It was really so funny to watch and afterwards, when I went to clean up any remains, I was surprised to see that feet had been eaten, as had beaks, feathers, even eyeballs. Yes it's gross I know, however to a cat, this is a perfectly natural thing to eat and why shouldn't it be? We humans have been brainwashed for years by vets and pet food manufacturers but quite frankly, you only have to watch a cat eat raw, natural prey to know that it really is the best way to go.

As you can imagine, Ashanti totally loves the day old chicks and he gets 2 at meal times because he is a big lad bless him. I was not surprised at all that he left nothing behind, he ate the entire chick, feet and all.

We will be adding day old chicks on a regular weekly basis now into our cat menu although I will have to sit down and work out which menu items I will remove in order to fit the chicks in. With raw feeding, the diet must be totally balanced and our set weekly menu took a lot of thought, time, and research however I am certain it will be easy enough to replace some items with the chicks.