Be aware that grinding bones can score or wear away soft metals such as tin or cast aluminum from your grinder. The metal then enters the cat's body through the food, causing a potentially poisonous or harmful build-up of aluminum or tin.
If you're planning to grind bones, we recommend using grinders without cast aluminum or tin-coated parts.
The following herbs should never be given to cats internally:
Essential oils from any plant should never be used on or near cats. Refer to the article on Aromatherapy by certified aromatherapist Kristen Leigh Bell
in 1932, Francis Pottenger, MD, began a ten-year experiment that compared the effects of cooked and raw meats on cats. One group of cats was fed a diet that consisted of 2/3 raw meat scraps (including bone, muscle and viscera) and 1/3 market-grade raw milk and cod liver oil. The other group was fed an identical diet, except their meat scraps were cooked.
The group fed raw meat remained consistent in size and form over the generations, with males remaining visibly different from females in size and facial structure. They had excellent tissue tone, good fur quality with little shedding. The calcium and phosphorous levels in their bones were optimal, and organs were well-developed well and fully functional. This group was also resistant to infection, fleas and other parasites. They were friendly, outgoing and even tempered, producing litters of even size with few complications.
The group fed cooked meat was not so lucky. The cats were all of different size and all looked different. Their long bones got longer and thinner, resulting in hind legs longer than front legs. Their bones also showed evidence of calcium loss. By the third generation of kittens, these cats' bones were soft and bone infections were commonplace. Heart and vision problems abounded, along with marked increases in irritability and hostility. The cats were plagued by skin and organ problems. This third generation was so nutritionally deficient that none survived beyond six months, effectively terminating their line.
Females being fed cooked meat became more aggressive, while males became less so. In fact, it seemed that the coked diet reversed the sex roles. Males' sex drives declined. There was also an increase in abnormal sexual activity between the cats. The kittens born to cooked diet cats weighed less than their raw-fed counterparts. Their infant mortality rates were higher and they developed many allergies.
Pottenger summarized his finding by saying that something about raw food helps to activate and support growth and development. Whatever this may be, it seems easily destroyed by the cooking process. Cats who spent one year on a diet considered fine for human consumption so damaged the vitality of cats that it took 3-4 generations of raw feeding to resolve these problems genetically. Some cats were so damaged that no amount of raw feeding resolved their genetic problems.
More info on the experiment can be found at http://www.price-pottenger.org/Articles/PottsCats.html
Taurine is an essential amino acid for cats - meaning, they must obtain pre-formed taurine from their food. Some years ago, pet food manufacturers discovered the importance of taurine after cats the country over began dying of dilated cardiomyopathy and loosing their vision to central retinal degeneration. The cooking and processing of these commercial foods robbed them of taurine. Once pet food manufacturers began replacing the taurine, these problems were dramatically reduced.
In Natural Health for Dogs and Cats, Dr. Richard Pitcairn says that today's nutritional standards call for between 60 - 80 mgs of taurine a day for a 10 pound cat. In doing the math for my cats, I found that they ate around 1/6 of a pound of meat a day. Since I feed chicken only, that means my cats are only getting about 26 mgs of taurine daily from their food. I compensate for this by adding 50 mgs of taurine a day to each of my cats' food.
Dr. Pitcairn later contends that the daily taurine content of a wild cat's diet (he doesn't specify if this is a feral cat or some other breed altogether) is only 25 - 50 mgs a day, so raw meat alone should cover a cat's taurine requirements. In the book The Encyclopedia of Natural Pet Care however, C.J. Poutinen says that mice have 2.4 mgs of taurine per gram of mouse. That would put even a 50 gram mouse in at over 100 mgs of taurine..... My personal take is that it's better to be safe than sorry, and most of us who feed raw are still supplementing taurine for this reason. Since taurine is not stored by the cat's body, a little extra each day (if Pitcairn is right) is not likely to harm the cat anyway.
To illustrate taurine content in cooked and raw meats, I included the
following chart from Celeste Yarnall's book Natural Cat Care
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As you can see, cooking dramatically reduces taurine levels. It should be noted that when boiling meat, a large proportion of the taurine lost may be recovered in the cooking water.
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