I started the transition yesterday afternoon.
I started by offering a bit of Coco&Joe’s while Riley was downstairs and looking at the Monsters eat their food. But as expected, she didn’t want any of it (more out of fear, I think). Since Riley can be force-fed very easily, I force-fed her a a bit of the food and she ate it all up. This is just to let her have a taste of it, to know that it’s edible. It was good enough that she did not reject it at all.
I’m told that canned food is definitely more palatable and aromatic than raw food, so transitioning from canned food to raw would be quite the challenge.
When I first started feeding Riley on the street, she didn’t even know how to eat canned food (totally rejected it, both she and Samantha). They only knew how to eat kibble. Perhaps some neighbours have been feeding them kibble when they passed by. It was only later that I managed to feed Riley some canned food and after that, she preferred canned food to kibble.
Last night, I left a tiny bit of raw food mixed with Riley’s canned food in the room. This morning, it was all finished!
Riley tends to eat at night when she is alone. My raw-feeding friend taught me that by nature, cats hunt at night so they would tend to be more hungry at night. You cannot change biology. He suggests leaving food before midnight to let them eat. But there won’t be anyone monitoring the food and if any are left over, it would be spoilt by morning (that’s wastage). For his cats, it’s a case of “sapu habis”. They all eat late at night. And in the day time, they actually do not eat much.
As much as I agree that we cannot change biology, our Super Seniors all sleep at night!! That’s a result of years and years of conditioning. Tabs also sleeps at night. Very soundly too.
Hunt? Who needs to hunt? Our food is served.
This morning, I added a bit more raw food (Coco&Joe’s) into Riley’s breakfast. This time, I used their Chicken&Fish recipe (that’s raw chicken with cooked sardines). I figured since Riley loves canned fish, I should add this flavour for a gradual transition. I also added some raw chicken breast meat (just to try).
Our Monsters walloped all the flavours. Well, boys will be boys, right? They came back from their old home (where they were only fed mostly kibble with only a little bit of canned food), and they straight away went back to a raw diet without any problem at all. No transition was even needed. I had brought them up on a 100% raw diet for the first 6 months of their lives.
Riley also urinated and defecated into the litter box (I’ve already removed the basin of soil now). Her faeces were very well formed.
This is Coco&Joe’s raw Chicken&Fish flavour in Back2Nature’s Tuna with Mackerel with small pieces of raw chicken breast meat.
Riley is turning out to be an affectionate (manja) cat. There just isn’t an English word to accurately describe “manja”, is there?
She prefers to eat if I place the bowl of food between my legs. I think it makes her feel safe, to have some sort of “protection” (from my legs?). So whenever I offer food, she will not eat it until I place the bowl between my legs.
She first goes for the canned fish (of course!), I think she ate up some pieces of the raw chicken too! That’s good progress.
I opened the room door for her to come out on her own, but she was hesitant.
She only got as far as the top of the staircase, then she scuttled back to her room and hid in the crevice!
This morning, when I was feeding the Super Seniors, I heard Riley mewing from the room above. Maybe she still wants to go back outdoors or maybe she was just calling me as she used to every morning in the porch.
It’s already Day 5!