| Paw Colors | Points |
|---|---|
| Grey | 0-49 |
| Red | 50-149 |
| Orange | 150-299 |
| Green | 300-599 |
| Magenta | 600-1499 |
| Purple | 1500-4999 |
| Blue | 5000-9999 |
| Brown | 10000-24999 |
| Black | 25000+ |
If I were to switch my cat to a raw diet, how old should she be when I start it?
Keywords: age, diet, food, raw meat
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The best time to start is as soon as a kitten is ready for it’s first taste of “real” food, just like when it’s mother would bring it it’s first mouse in the wild. Between 4 to 6 weeks. Never feed a cat anything other than what nature intended if you are lucky enough to be given that opportunity.
Kittens get their teeth in very early and are ready to start chewing meat as soon as those first teeth come in. If you have even had your finger bit playfully by a kitten you know that they have super sharp teeth and it is very painful for them to gnaw on you. That’s because those teeth were engineered by nature to shred that finger of yours if they wanted to. So as soon as they get those teeth… it’s time to start feeding them raw meat. Don’t wait… you will be wasting valuable impressionable time that you can never get back.
Kittens often learn what is and is not safe from their mothers. However, when we take them away from their mothers it becomes our job to teach them what they should be eating. You don’t want to steer your cat wrong here. If you offer them only watered down kitten kibble, they will think that is the only safe thing. If you offer them only canned food, they will think that is the only safe food. So use this early time wisely. Offer a variety of meats and small crushed bones to your kitten.
Another important aspect that I have learned myself is that if you don’t have kittenhood to help your cat build up their jaw muscles you will run into issues trying later to get them to eat whole pieces of meat. It is such a priceless period of time during which a kitten learns to rip, shred and crunch up whole animal parts when they are growing and learning how to do these things also helps them have healthy teeth and gums throughout their lives. If a kitten is denied this precious window of learning, YOU are going to have to work 10 times as harder to teach your cat about what foods are safe and how to eat them as an adult. And we all know how hard it is to break adult habits, don’t we?
A great website with pictures from a breeder about raw feeding from birth is http://goldcoastragdolls.com/MyOwnCatFood.htm .
By feeding raw from birth you are building a priceless foundation of health for your cat. If you use kittenhood wisely, you are offering your kitty the best possible foundation for wellness there is. You wouldn’t feed a human child chips and hotdogs for the first 4 years of their life and then expect them to grow into healthy adults would you? Of course not. And you can make the same choice not to do that to your cat.
Any age cat can be transitioned onto raw, I have worked with 5 month old kittens all the way up to a 15 year old cat, but the earlier in life you start them the better and the sooner you start them the easier it is on both you and your cat.
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