This weekend, I've notice that our male kitty Chester Pete has not only gained a fair bit of weight, but he has also started limping again (he has thickening from osteoarthritis in one knee). He's already on a glucosamine supplement, but the years of crappy kibble and his voracious appetite have left him yet again overweight, in pain, and with a fairly poor coat quality.
So we have now, several years after beginning the journey, moved on to step 3 of the cats' transition to raw-- step 4 maybe? I don't know. First we got them on decent kibble, but that didn't last all that long. Then we got them on scheduled feedings, and my god that took some time. Five cats can be tough to feed all at once and individually when you have a couple who are picky pants and couple who will eat everybody's food all at once. Then we got them eating a mix of kibble and wet food.
Now we are moving to all wet food. Chester has made this transition pretty much immediately. However, because he's had a history of urinary crystals and a blockage, we will continue using the Health Meter litter in the litter box that he uses most often. Fingers crossed that we can someday make the switch totally to raw.
For the dogs, it is finally crunch time in a much more literal way. I bought a case of turkey necks and good god they're huge (and kind of obscene!). I ground about 1/4-1/3 of the case-- the grinder had a bit of a hard time. I had to frequently reverse it. But it did ok.
Then I took one giganto neck and took each dog outside individually and held it while they had a chance to gnaw on the thing. Everyone was thrilled. It took Andre a little while to figure out that he could chew it and not just lick it. And Luna was an absolute bitch when she came back inside, her resource guarding shit-headness coming out in full force-- a reminder of why they have to be fed separately and these chew times minded with caution. Then everyone had a boneless meal.
At any rate, I will be making a point of doing this once or twice a week for the teeth benefits and to give everyone some one-on-one time away from the others.
I've taken a round of "before" pics of everyone's teeth. None of them are horrible, but they all have some plaque and some redness at the gum line. And some have smellier breath than others. Here goes nothing.
Luna
River
Andre
Robin
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