Tuesday, January 08, 2008

Vegetarians and feeding a raw diet

I got an e-mail this morning from a woman who has been a vegetarian for 30 years. She went from feeding commercial crap food (Science Diet, etc.) to her cat to Wellness canned. She see a difference in the cat's energy and appearance, but she noticed that his stool smelled very strong.

While I usually recommend Wellness canned food to people who cannot or will not for whatever reason feed a raw diet. It doesn't surprise me, however, that the stool of a cat consuming this food has a strong odor. There's a lot of ingredients in Wellness canned which are unnecessary for an obligate carnivore. Unfortunate, but true.

Wysong makes an all-meat canned food which may be a better option, but it needs to be supplemented. Wysong recommends their Call of the Wild powdered supplement, but with that, you add back in a lot of extra crap.

There are not a lot of options. I won't recommend a commercially prepared raw meat product. I feel that feeding a raw meat diet that was prepared by a company has the potential to cause illness. You just don't know what's in it. Cooking destroys most of the potential contaminants in meat.

I can understand, however, if a vegetarian cannot bring herself to prepare a raw meat diet. There was a time I could not, but I've become much more relaxed in my views and opinions. At least I think I have.