Holly Ollivander - The Raw Meat Cat Food Cookbook: What Your Cat Wants to Eat Whether They Know It or Not

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This book is dedicated to the beloved memory of

Spike Oreo Thomas.

Spikey, we wish wed known then what we know now.

Chances are, you have picked up this book because you share your life with one or more of the marvelous, complex and emotionally rewarding entities that are cats. You wish them to experience a long and happy life with you, and you are willing to go to some effort to give them that.

If thats the case, welcome to the Raw Meat Cat Food Cookbook !

In 2004, our beloved 18-month-old cat Mehetabel lost control of her bladder on our white duvet cover. It was only a small amount of urine but what we found alarming was that it was tinged pink. Over the next few years we would learn more about feline urinary-tract health but at the time the following terrifying equation was what came to mind:

urine + blood = imminent kidney failure + death of our cat

We rushed Mehetabel to the vet, who prescribed antibiotics and a urine test and who to our relief seemed fairly unconcerned. The antibiotics appeared to clear up the problem in short order. However, when the urine test results came back, it turned out Mehetabel was suffering from struvite crystals which form when a cats urine is not acid enough.

Left untreated, these crystals can cut, scar, cause swelling, and eventually block the cats urethra permanently. The vet recommended switching Mehetabel away from her then-current food (a premium brand of dry kibble) to a medicated brand formulated to acidify urine. We went away with the new food, hoping that all would now be well.

And so it was, kind of

Mehetabel still suffered a relapse every few months, but by keeping her on the medicated food, plus administering water from a silicone bulb, plus getting antibiotics whenever a blockage/infection flared up it wasnt ideal but it seemed to be the best we could hope for. We soldiered on with Mehetabels health issues, using the official ways of dealing with them, for the next six years or so.

However, in 2010, another of our cats began to display similar symptoms. Jet was about 11 years old at the time (she came to us as a young adult stray), and had been losing weight and condition despite adoring her commercial, individual (wet) packet food. She was passing what we could only assume were crystals; her bright red urine contained small, glistening, mucus-balls that could easily have been mistaken for parts of her insides. We got the test results we expected and put her on the recommended acidifying diet, but she kept going downhill and continued to pass blood and mucus.

It was time to acknowledge that the vet, armed mainly with a selection of drugs and commercial diets, could not provide a long-term remedy. Thats not to belittle the veterinarian profession in any way; its just that if a problem requires a re-think by an animals owner, then the animals vet is clearly not the person who needs to provide a solution.

After extensive research into commercial cat food it became clear that the diet we had chosen (with the best intentions) to feed our cats, was the root of the problem. At best, the medicated cat food contained additives that attempted to compensate for some of the harm that the other ingredients were causing. The solution was obvious and we took it: we switched to the raw food diet we describe in this book.

Jet in particular has always been a fussy eater and took a little persuading, but we persisted and succeeded in getting both cats to accept the new diet. Two years later, all our cats are using their litter trays and passing normal urine, free of blood or stones. None are dependent upon medication or antibiotics.

Our most recent arrival, Penny, came to us as a five week-old kitten having been rejected by her mother and subsequently hand-reared by one of our local vets, then briefly weaned onto commercial food. We immediately offered her raw meat food and she fell on it as if it was something shed been missing as much as she surely missed her mothers milk. Penny has been exclusively fed (apart from the very occasional human-mealtime indulgence) on raw meat food for the entire time shes been with us now, and is a thriving and growing six-month-old.

Whats more, having discovered raw food she turned up her nose at the commercial food wed been given by the vet just in case. She wanted the real thing.

Can we guarantee that this raw meat diet will have the same miraculous effects on your cat, as it did on ours? Of course we cant. All we can do is share the techniques and recipes that have worked for us in the sincere hope that they will work for you as well.

The tagline to this book says, What your cat wants to eat, whether they know it or not, because most modern cats simply do not know what they have been missing. Since the moment they were weaned, they have become addicted to a corporate-formulated substance that can eventually destroy every major organ of the feline body: grain-dominant cat food. This addiction can adversely affect blood sugar, urine pH, adrenal stability, digestive function, and tooth, gum and joint health, and our experience is that it can be a major contributor to spiraling vet bills after the age of four or five years old.

For six-plus decades, commercial grain-based cat food has been pushed upon the public for one main reason: corporate profit. Regrettably, it isnt just cats who are addicted; advertising has brainwashed humans into believing that feeding our obligate carnivore companions a meat-flavored, grain-based diet is the best way to show how much we care.

Another potential source of pressure is the funding of certain veterinary colleges by major pet food manufacturers. They assure any doubters that such funding is ethical and even-handed which would mean that the corporations are acting in the best interests of their consumers (who are of course our pets!) rather than seeking to create recommendations and outlets for the corporations products without ever addressing the issue of whether any brand can be good within a whole class of products that are harmful.

This concern can only be heightened when you consider how many manufacturers offer specially-tailored supplemental cat foods to deal with the health problems their products originally exacerbated.

Cats are obligate carnivores; they require muscle meat, bones and organs, rather than grain, in order to operate at peak health. If pet food companies offered for sale what a cat really needs, once the more complicated production costs were met and then a percentage of profit added on top to keep the shareholders happy, the cat-owning public would simply balk at paying that much. Grain is a cheap filler, meat is not, and thats the bottom line.