Cat Choices in Food.....Raw/Cooked vs Dry/Canned

Member Content
2.April 2008 20:28

Just was in another forum when something someone said made me curious.......Do you find the same for your cats?.............

My cats won´t eat raw anything that I might offer them as a treat, such as hamburger. Equally, my cats seem so conditioned to dried or canned cat food that they will ignore cooked meat from our dinner even if it has no sauce on it. The most I have ever seen, is one of them, lick a few juices off the plate.......I thought all animals love raw meat or for that matter, MEAT........cooked or otherwise.........they have the same reaction to raw or cooked fish, I might add.......

Does anyone find they have observed the same behavior in cats they have observed????

19.April 2008 23:53



This maybe tells what my cats want to eat? The kitten in the pictures is only 6 weeks old but she already knows what a Real Cat eats.

19.April 2008 23:57

my cats both love their tin food and also any meat that i am eatin. katie who is the oldest even eats raw food, once it has been offer to her...

20.April 2008 01:21

My cats eat dry food and raw meat - they will not touch cooked meat, unless it is canned cat food called Feline Porta 21.

20.April 2008 01:57

Mercedes will eat raw meat, dry food, canned food, or cooked meat, she will eat virtually anything.. however Tiffany and Sophie who have been eating dry food since the age of kittens will only eat that.

20.April 2008 02:10

I have never even thought about giving Beau raw meat before. I don´t know if he would eat it or not. He does especially liked cooked chicken and turkey though, and will also sometimes, when in the mood, eat beef, ham and bacon. He is mostly given dry kibble (Science Diet).

20.April 2008 02:11

The only cat that wants to eat human food is Angelica. She is always begging. Tuffy or Cinder don´t seem interested at all & I havne´t attempted to feed them anything other than cat food.

3.July 2008 08:13

i started my cats on canned food and raw food to supplement from day one so they´re used to it and gobble it down with relish. I´ve heard that once they´re on a dry diet it´s often hard to get them to make the switch. Just like when you´ve spent your whole life eating junk food it´s hard to just go healthy, even though that´s what´s best for your body. Luckily I did my research early on and I found out about the dangers of dry food.

3.July 2008 11:18

My experience is that cats can get used to certain type of food and are reluctant to eat anything else. However if they get really hungry, they will eat anything.

3.July 2008 11:34

[Removed]

3.July 2008 11:38

My cats are all different - Pebbles would only ever eat dry food, no matter what I offered her
The others tend to lick the gravy off the meat and leave the meat!! They will eat raw or cooked fish. I agree with Oldwoman, when they are hungry anything will do

3.July 2008 12:05

My cat prefers raw meat better than anything. When we cook some meat at home he inevitably gets as much as he can before we cook it and then, after the meat is cooked, he would put up eating the cooked meat. However, fish somehow differs from lamb or chicken for example. I mean that he would eat raw fish, however, if it is boiled or roasted he would like it better. Nonetheless, even the raw fish would do better than canned food, for example. He is not that big fan of canned food or dry food. His motto might be: "back to the basics: long live the raw meat, down with the canned food "Should I think my cat is strange?

3.July 2008 12:52

Mini Me was almost starving when we got him at six months. We then fed him on dry food and tried to tempt him with meat. He does not like meat at all - in any form. He´ll eat fish and vegetables and has a sweet tooth, but he has never taken to meat. I suppose it´s because he´s never seen it as a young kitten. He loves his dry food though.

3.July 2008 15:16

Should I think my cat is strange?
Not at all. All cats have their own preferences given a chioce. One of my cats will eat raw chicken and almost nothing esle. I do make an affort to broaden my cats´ pallets and feed them a varied diet, but I would not try and starve a cat into eating something it does not like. The exception being Sidney, who is now at almost 7 kg a bit too fat, and his poor old legs are giving up on him. I am keeping him strictly on low calorie diet food in a vain hope, that he will shed some weight. A bit like myself really.

8.July 2008 21:59

My posting vanished. I will start again. My cat is on dried diet food that the vet prescribed. The Science Diet, M/D and R/D ... I read that dried food wasn´t good. But surely if served with lots of water it is OK? It is supposed to be good for their teeth. I have also heard that commercial wet cat food is very fattening and that is why so many cats are now overweight. Kimmy likes sliced chicken so maybe I should just feed her that but it is hard to work out portion size. She has put on weight since being on her diet so clearly something hasn´t worked. It is a very lite diet - the Atkins diet my vet said (or Catkins as I call it). What does everyone else think. How can I best feed her and make her slim but also happy.

8.July 2008 22:08

my cats eat dried food only with some wet food. Booboo can´t have raw since he´s FIV+ so it´s dry for em all.... They get a can of canned food about twice a week and Booboo usually gets more because of his FIV and UTI....

15.July 2008 23:38

I started feeding the kittens homemade raw cat food (whole ground chicken, egg yolks, fish oil, chicken hearts and liver and vitamin & mineral supplements) almost exclusively a little over a week ago. I got the recipe from a website (www.catnutrition.org) and so far the kitties love it. I know people choose different kinds of diets for their cats but I feel like I´m doign the best thing by feeding them what´s closest to what they eat naturally.

15.July 2008 23:43

Another thing about the raw diet is that it´s helping me with my own eating habits. I realise that I put far more effort into making sure Inca and Atticus eat healthy than I do for myself. I´m starting to pay more attention to all the junk I put into my body just because it´s convenient. I wouldn´t do that to the cats and I shouldn´t do it to myself.

15.July 2008 23:45

Raanii eats anything!!!!, pickles is a bit fussy, he likes supercoat dry food and some kinda of wet food, never raw meat.

19.July 2008 14:59 | changed 19.July 2008 14:59

I live in Turkey...giving my rexes raw meat from this region of the world would absolutely kill them! I feed them cooked meat/fish/poultry daily, eagle pack holistic cat food and Nature´s Best dry food. Raw diets are a good idea-but not always appropriate.

11.August 2008 16:13

I am not sure what to think about feeding my cats raw meat. I know many people here do it, and their cats are fine.

I tried doing an Internet search, but I found equal sources for both pro and con raw diets. So I then gave my cats a small portion of raw chicken to see if they would eat it. They loved it! They ate it all.

Well, I then called the vet to make sure it was safe to continue giving them raw meat. The woman who answered the phone (not a vet, but an assistant no doubt) said that raw food is not good for them to eat. It carries the same risks for humans eating raw meat. She said the idea that cats need raw food comes from old wives´ tales.

But I really don´t know what to think. Does anyone have a good Internet source for this issue of raw diets?

-->