what would make my 7 cats choose to starve instead of eating fresh meat

My 14 year old siamese eats both dry and wet. Probably more wet food. She also eats steak, loves mayonnaise, (does a little dance around my legs when she sees the jar out), any bird she can catch, and mice. When she eats a mouse, alot of times she eats the whole thing, except for a little organ of some kind, she leaves that. She likes doughnuts. Cats crave fat. Their diet should be half fat and half protein. My cat has been lean all her life. I give her all the wet food she wants, whenever she wants it, and keep her dry food dish full all the time. Me, I'm addicted to milk and cheese, it's not a problem, I've been lean all my life.

Originally posted by megabyte
reply to post by Kailassa

 

that is the point I am trying to make - that through watching my cats behaviour I have googled and found that companies in fact tinker with the ratios of certain substances in the foods they manufacture in order to target the same receptors in our brains as heroin targets so that we will keep buying their product even if the product is devoid of nutrients

This is a great conspiracy - we thought we should beware Genetically modified food but here it looks like companies have been modifying food for their profits for a long time
I hope this helps those who are allergic and also those who find it hard to lose weight etc

Yes, this is why I won't let my cat have bought food too often.

However it's not just pet food, as you've already realised.
If babies and children are fed healthy, home-made food they will develop a taste for healthy stuff, which will come back again after their teenage efforts to become sugar-junkies. And they will be able to sense what their bodies need.

Sugars, refined starches, rancid oils and corn syrup seem to affect the stomach/brain so one no longer copes well with healthy food and craves more rubbish.
Most bought oils are rancid, they are just treated to remove the evidence.


By the way, we're near enough to neighbours, considering this is a world/wide forum.

My (neutered) cat is allowed out because he stays on the property, and brings all his kills to the front door for me.
So far they have all been mice, sparrows and an occasional rat.
Killing those is good for the native wildlife.

Originally posted by Becker44
reply to post by megabyte

 

I should wait a while for the rest of these cat owners to show up.

I too am a cat owner (3) and over the past 18 - 24 months I have noticed an almost dramatic change in their eating habits. Wet foods of meats, fish, vegetables and sauces were being passed over and ignored, only to be replaced with an obvious desire for "crunchies".

The neutered male cat I have nearly died about 6 months ago after suffering an acute case of cystysis caused by consumption of too much dry food (vet's diagnosis). My diagnosis however is that it wasn't just quantity that caused the problem but quality also and even a link between the two. I now have a stricter feeding routine for them and "crunchies" are more of a treat and reward for eating the real meat food that comes first. Something else I noticed was that the same dried food that I had purchased for years was starting to be turned down, three cats all turning the same thing down just didn't seem right. And I know my cats and how they all have different habits but it just wasn't right.

My conclusion:

I think some pet foods, mainly dried foods, have unnecessary added ingredients to promote things like appetite, satisfaction and preference to overcome the fact that the main ingredients are below standard and would not alone be very pallatable.

With falling standards in the quality of dried foods there would be a need to increase the quantity of the "appetising" ingredients.

Basically, it's crap, and the worse it gets the more additives they include to keep it a profitable product.

I love my cats and always try to keep them happy. Fortunately, feeding them at some times of the year is merely a supplement because there's so much food for them to hunt, I feel secure knowing they are eating as nature intended and not how one of those greedy profiteers would prefer.

The sleepless night I had with my hand against "Duke's" belly to make sure he kept breathing was something I wouldn't wish on anyone and will never forget, I nearly lost a dear friend. Thankfully he made a full recovery and is asleep on my lap as I write this (I need a p but hate to disturb him).

So... why don't they make mouse flavoured cat food, when are foods for animals going to be scrutinised more along with the companies producing them and when are people going to wise up to the fact that our pets could be slowly and knowingly poisoned even when there are a dozen healthy claims on the packet.

prrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!

reply to post by megabyte


Just curious:

When did this happen?

reply to post by nerbot


well said

me too - when I was feeding commercially produced food I had a lot of cats with feline urinary syndrome and whatever else the vets have re named the problem.

I know the commercially bought food is crap and that is why I try so hard to immitate the food the cat would get for itself in the wild

I also try to immitate for myself the food that a hunter gatherer might get if commercially produced food was not available and am following the paleolithic diet for myself

the point is that it seems even small amount of commercially produced food could keep you craving more commercially produced food because it is manipulated to have more addicitve ingredients

I read somewhere that to give up sugar you have to fight the cravign for 3 weeks so that would be the same for giving up craving for the addictive substances the companies put into food too

good luck to anyone trying to give up an addiction to commercially produced food

reply to post by xiphias


4 days ago

my cats are back to eating the fresh food i give them but for 3 days they were whinging they wanted the dry food and refused to eat their usual fresh food

as I said - I had to do somethign about the nineteen year old cat as she had loose stools and was getting it all over her back legs and then all over the bed when she sat on the bed and she was refusing to lick herself clean

she now has no problems at the back end and I feed her in a seperate room - she seems to prefer being in that room now - maybe the hustle and bustle of the household is getting too much for her

When evaluating cat food at your local store, there is a sure way to tell which is healthy food, and which is the same sort of crapfood corps design for humans:

It's all crap. Sorry to be crude but that's just the way it is.

To be fair, 90% of the food in your grocery store that isn't found around the edges is just as much crap as your catfood is -- if not worse. If the idea of designing food to be hyperpalatable, addictive, and essentially a nutrientless, toxic drug people will want to buy more of, is news to you, you haven't been studying nutrition from any of the 'real' science (modern nutrition is 'corporate marketing' presented as-science, but mostly bad science funded by corps. There is other stuff out there).

Some catfood in the store is more expensive and designed to look healthy. It's still crapfood. It's just marketed at the high end. Because you'll think it's better if you're paying more for it. Kinda like a lot of shampoos.

An acquaintance who is obsessed with this topic once told me if you had to buy store-crunchy for your cat, that kitten chow had the highest protein ratio. Still crapfood. However, I had gone through half the store of brands trying to find one that did not make my cats vomit constantly, lose their hair, get neurotic, etc. That is the only one they seem to be able to eat without those effects. (They like others, it's just the side effects suck.) It never comes in the giant bags so tends to be in middle-zone of price.

If you want healthy catfood you're going to pay a hefty chunk of money for it. When I switched to Felidae wet food, although they were slightly less thrilled than they are with junkfood wetfood, their health clearly improved over time, and the one that was always too skinny fleshed out. I think Felidae has changed its formula a little but they still like it. My friend switched to Felidae dry. His cat seemed healthy, but got more playful, eyes more clear, skin and fur clearly healthier, etc. My cats hated the dry.

Cats like raw food if you kill it and share it. Otherwise they might not. I have one cat who will eat raw meat cut small, but in fairness, this big-butt manxish fighter tomboy will eat damn near anything. My other cats will not touch raw meat, but they all adore tuna, and canned chicken, which I've fed them when we were poor and desperate (although it's possible hunger helped!).

Currently I have 6. None will drink cream. Half will drink half&half. All will drink milk. They prefer it cold. This kinda goes against intuition, but that's the way it is.

Cats like any animal are susceptible to parasites and other problems of raw foods. They also are vastly more able to smell things that we are oblivious to in meats. (50 times better smell or something like that.) I have friends who do have cats that like raw meats. When their cats won't eat a little bit of something, they won't eat it either, convinced the cats know it's fouled even though it may seem ok on the surface, to them.

Is it possible you changed your source of meat?
Or your grocer if a tiny one has changed their expiration date policies?
Or their supplier?
Any 'change' in the food from what they're used to, even far more subtle than you could perceive, could make them universally react to it as potentially dangerous.

Despite that my crunchy food is crappy and my soft food for them is decent, they still love crunchy. They would prefer to have a mix of food, and sometimes something different. Most cats like variety in their diet just like we do. (Some other cats are so finicky if you change their food even slightly they won't eat for days.) And some cats really like crunchy, they want some of that texture.

Concerning your cats, honestly, I doubt that this particular observation -- and I believe you -- is solely based on the insidious drug-design of food -- there are a variety of legitimate things about cats and their food that could contribute to the result you saw.

If they were ALREADY eating raw meat and liked it, and suddenly all of them didn't, then I am WAY more inclined to think the meat you were offering them 'had issues' than I am to think that a few days of crunchy so drug-addled them they weren't able to eat meat again.

Concerning the design of catfood, this is no different than people food, so "of course." However, liking one food, and even preferring it (most would rather have a Big Mac than a baked chicken breast any day, obviously), does not put one entirely off eating another food which is healthy and which is a staple in their life, especially when they're clearly hungry.

But cats will not eat what they consider poison. They are not so picky about taste unless they are prima donnas and if you've got 7, they're not -- too much pride competition for that, they might complain for a few minutes but then they'd eat because they were hungry. If they refused raw food entirely, for days, then your raw food was not good IMO.

Best,
RC

reply to post by RedCairo




well said and I particularly liked this paragraph you wrote

To be fair, 90% of the food in your grocery store that isn't found around the edges is just as much crap as your catfood is -- if not worse. If the idea of designing food to be hyperpalatable, addictive, and essentially a nutrientless, toxic drug people will want to buy more of, is news to you, you haven't been studying nutrition from any of the 'real' science (modern nutrition is 'corporate marketing' presented as-science, but mostly bad science funded by corps


no I have not changed the raw meat I buy - I have always bought it in bulk direct from the pet meat abbatoir and it is freshly butchered on the day that I buy it and the meat I served up was part of a bulk purchase that our cats had no issues with

honestly - the point I am making is that the multinational companies are farming us for whatever profits they can get out of us and they dont care what effect it has on our health or our pockets so long as they make maximum profit

My cats may be put off their food when I make a change but I would swear they are pure addicts when it comes to those treats.

The antics and the noise they make are too far over the top not to be the result of determination to get me to give them a treat.

I have really had to put my foot down and they are only allowed 5 one time a day.

They aren't happy about it and beg often but they don't get any more than that unless grandma slips them a couple.

My cats only like Whiskas... they will starve before they switch too.

What are the cats addicted to?
Maybe feeling more healthy because they have had a chance to get a sensible level of vitamin E, Calcium, and zinc / copper etc that is contained in processed cat food that they aren't getting from being fed unprocessed meat.

Their livers are also probably getting a chance to recover from the excess of protein that they have been fed.

reply to post by davespanners


not precisely correct because I do add nutrients to raw meat because they could never be healthy without extra nutrients [after all, in the wikld they would eat a whole mouse and not just muscle meats]

but the fresh food I give my cats has not changed and none of my cats have FUS or UTI or whatever else the vets are calling kidney and liver problems that cats get when they are fed on dry commercially prepared cat food

here is the food I feed my cats

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yes the additives I put in are commercially produced BUT they are human grade and not pet grade so that makes it a bit better

my cats have eaten this mixture along with raw chicken necks for more than a decade and they are not ill

this thread is about the fact that human grade food is being tinkered with for maximum profit and it is detrimental to all of us

Sounds like you may have gotten bad batch of cat food and they knew it. A dog will eat anything and every thing but a cat will not. The food may have smelled odd or tasted odd to bad to them. I have owned cats and dogs all my life. In that 43 years I have seen and learned a lot about cats and dogs. A dog will eat until it dies. Seen that happen once. A dog knocked over and eat a 50 pound bag of dog food. It died half way though the bag. A cat will eat until it is full and then leave the rest for latter. I feed my cats wet and dry both. They will eat until the are full and then leave. They will come back every few hours to eat a bit more then leave again.

reply to post by fixer1967


negative because I buy it in bulk bags of 7 kilo lots and pack them in the freezer in serve sizes

the cats ate the same bag of meat before and after the dry food addiction of 3 days

but as it has been 3 days I did throw that food out and made them a new batch

I KNOW there are addictive substances put into pet food to keep your pets brand name loyal

I started this thread because I did not know the big companies are doign the same with food destined for humans

I have to imagine that having 7 cats all locked up in a house would break their spirits but good. Think it could be attempts at suicide by starvation?

reply to post by jeantherapy


they are NOT locked up in the house but they are confined to the backyard and the house and I have a lot of things for them to do and places for them to play in etc

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they have their own IMAX theatre lol - a cage under some trees so the cats are in the cage on hammocks and the birds are outside the cage

they have surround sound and vision and the show changes by seasons and they have gallery seats and stalls

they are very fascinated by bird watching

reply to post by megabyte


Sorry to hear about your sick little buddies. I was disgusted hear a local story about old people around here who don't like cats in their garden, so they put out antifreeze for the cats to drink. As you may know, for some reason cats love to drink the stuff and it also kills them. Anyways I hope you can figure it out without ridiculous vet bills.

reply to post by Mumbotron


yes I heard some cat haters do things like that so that is why it is practical for me to have my cats confined to my back yard

cats are fine - they were on a hunger strike for 3 days but also the dry food was chucked up by 2 cats

they are back on the real meat again and all is well

Holy moley you've had cats 19 years and have not worked out that they are the fussiest little buggers on the face of the planet!!

My old little guy would love the chicken flavoured dry food that was for kittens. So I'd go and buy a load of it to save money, then he decides he only likes canned tuna. It's as if he constantly read my mind and just wanted to screw with me, the little sod..

Damn feline leuk...

this is not a food conspiracy.
This is an alien intervention conspiracy.
Think about it. Persians. Persieds. Think that's just a coincidence?
Fireballs in the sky as of late. meteors. Make the connection.
It's as plain to see as the whiskers on their faces.
The world was supposed to end on Saturday.
Thankfully, your cats must have caught the matt groening prophecy and known of the impending doom.
The whole need to switch the queen's diet was a farce. Your "cats" had the foresight to know that the only way to save the planet was to abstain from meat for 3 days. And signal the mother ships.
Did you happen to notice the fervor with which they carried this out gobbling up the dried food and then promptly communicating to the mother ship by what you mistook as purring afterward?
Those cats saved the planet for all mankind.

Either that or cats are just jealous by nature and want what the other one is having.

No food is natural. Cows aren't natural. The pigs we eat, the chickens, the turkeys. tomatoes, corn.
All of our food sources have been genetically modified for .. well.. forever.
We've constructed them all through scientific experimentation since the time we switched from hunter-gatherers to agriculture.
Give them aliens some catnip. They deserve it.