Customer Reviews

Raising Cats Naturally - How to Care for Your Cat the Way Nature Intended

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For those who have seen through the highly effective brainwashing that pet food companies have subjected us to, this book is a must-have. Cats, as obligate carnivores (meaning they MUST eat a raw meat based diet to be healthy), do very poorly on cooked grain-based foods. This book shows how to give them a proper diet based on raw meat and bone, which will result in lean, muscular, extremely healthy and beautiful animals who shed less, and leave a LOT less odor in the litter box. Cats fed this way are also more resistant to disease, and require fewer vet visits.

There are lots of other excellent books on how to feed a raw, species-appropriate diet to dogs and cats, but none of them are nearly as good on the CAT side. Michelle Bernard's book is best by far. She understands better than other authors how the dietary needs of cats and dogs differ. She also dispels the two most common fears people have about raw-feeding such as "Won't they get sick from the bacteria in raw meat?" and "Aren't bones dangerous?". I ask: What do you think they eat in the wild??? The truth is, the strong stomach acid of a cat will kill most excess bacteria, and what it misses passes through their short digestive tract so quickly that nothing has a chance to proliferate. As for bone, only COOKED bone splinters - raw bone does not. (And bone can be ground, for those who can't get over that worry.) In short, this is what they're MADE TO EAT! (Or at least as close as we can get, short of providing live prey.) Does it really make sense to feed COOKED GRAINS AND VEGETABLES to an animal that's designed to digest RAW MEAT AND BONE? Conventional pet foods couldn't BE more OPPOSITE to what cats need!

I could write a tome about how important this information is for cat owners, but I'll only say further that my own two kitties, who came to me as sickly 12-week old kittens, have been fed this way from the day I got them. They just had their 4th birthday, and aside from other raw-fed cats I have met, they are by far the most beautifully healthy cats I've ever seen!

If you're more than just a "casual" cat owner, please get this book! Feeding this diet does entail a bit more work than pouring a cup of kibble into a bowl, but the benefits make it worthwhile. Your kitties will LOVE you for it, and you'll feel very good about giving them REAL food!

My husband and I have been feeding our cats the raw meat cat food recipe in Raising Cats Naturally for the past 7 years and our cats are VERY HEALTHY! Before this diet, one of my cats had chronic urinary tract infections and I was told he would need surgery to ever fully recover. He's been fine ever since we switched him to this food. (He also had a few sessions of acupuncture and 3 months of Chinese medicine...Passwan - great stuff.)

That being said, this recipe is not for the faint of heart. We invested in a heavy duty meat grinder (from Korea) to grind the chicken bones and fortunately we live across the street from a great Mexican butcher that is happy to sell us a pound of fresh chicken hearts every 10 days or so. It also takes us about 2 hours to make a double portion of food and clean the kitchen afterward. Honestly, I've been doing it so long I don't even think about it anymore.

This book is helpful regardless of whether or not you take all of Michelle's advice. She truly understands cat nutrition and if nothing else, you'll get some great ideas about how to enhance your current routine. Michelle, I cannot thank you enough!