Retraining the Blondies (a food story)

I have a near-impossible mission. I want to retrain the Blondies to eat wet raw food as their staple diet.

In view of Juno whom I’m already starting on Cubgrub and hopefully, will grow up eating raw food, eventually, Juno will stay in Bunny’s Place. At least that’s what I think.

We only have two catios in the house plus Safehouse for Tabs and Riley. Ginger’s Catio is for the Monsters and nobody else even dares to even step into it. The Monsters are intimidating by their sheer size and presence. But comparatively, they aren’t even half the warriors as Cow Mau, Bunny and Indy were (which is good – a fact that I’m not at all complaining about!). The days of rushing our own cats to the vet’s for fight injuries are over for me, I hope.

So, that leaves only Bunny’s Place (the Blondies’ safe haven) for Juno. Even now, Riley and Tabs would also go into Bunny’s Place when they need to escape from the Safehouse especially when there are too many people in the house! So, even if Juno lives in the Safehouse, she would occasionally need to go to Bunny’s Place too.

The problem with the Blondies is that they are all junkies.

It’s a long story, but the Blondies joined Bunny’s Place where our super seniors (Cleo, Cow Mau and Indy) were in their autumn years. That’s when they qualified for the “as long as they eat” diet. Cleo and Indy had CKD while Cow Mau had mouth pain and congestive heart failure. Their appetites weren’t good so I had to give them a variety of food, which included kibble to whet their appetite. That’s how the Blondies discovered this palatable food called kibble. And demanded for it.

Otherwise, they were raised on raw food too.

So, that’s how the Blondies became junkies.

Yesterday, I already started my project of slowly converting them to 100% raw food again. I didn’t give them any kibble at all, and all of them chose to starve and sat out dinner.

Persistent, right?

“We demand for kibble. Otherwise, we go on a hunger strike!!”, they demanded.

This morning, only two of them ate raw food. They were still hoping to get their demands met. I did not relent.

It’s going to be a long haul.

I did, however, add a few pellets of kibble into the raw food. That worked to at least entice them to come to the bowl. Most of the raw food was eaten.

They all used to love cut-up raw chicken but now, they don’t want it anymore.

Samantha and Indra used to be on Coco&Joe’s while Akira insists on Cubgrub and Kai is on both, but now, they aren’t keen anymore.

When they were on raw food, they know they would get kibble snacks in between and they looked forward to this. But I’m planning to cut the kibble snacks gradually until a bare minimum.

It’s a bad habit, anyway. When the Monsters hear the sound of kibble, they will also crowd at the door, hoping to get some, when in fact, they don’t need it all.

“Go low on kibble” – is our new motto now.

This also means that Riley would have to be included in the project too. She’s also a kibble junkie. But Riley is easier because I can force feed her raw food very easily.


Posted

in

,

by

Tags:

Discover more from AnimalCare

Subscribe now to keep reading and get access to the full archive.

Continue reading