Foodie Friday

Happy Friday, guys!

What? Wasn’t this the food you were expecting? BOL! Mom was at a friends house yesterday to do some gingerbread decorating and just talk and laugh and be silly. She also used the opportunity to make some silly, nerdy “amino acid” cakes

Hee hee hee…

Mom had her Biochemistry exam today. (She thinks she did okay.) Her study buddies got the two cakes pictured above.
We got something very yummy for lunch! Nice big chunks of pig heart. We didn’t get any breakfast, but lunch instead, so Virus also chewed a little on her phone’s computer cable. She was most pleased. But hey – SHE’s the one who say it’s so nice to feed raw so we get our chewing needs covered. When we don’t get anything proper to chew what does she expect? Really!?!

Here are some furry nice sunset pix taken from Mom’s school, through a window, with her phone. All in all not bad.

Happy kisses,
Hyssy, Virus and Bajas

Foodie Friday [Water]

NB! Our favorite M&Ms just informed me that they don’t see our pictures. Our photo host was “all new and better” today so we wonder if it’s got something to do with it. PLS let me know if any more of you can’t see them. We know M&M have had issues with our pix before when they worked for others, so there’s also a chance that their computer sometimes sensor my handsomeness?
B

Hello Foodie Friends!

Today we’ll talk a little about a part of food that we don’t really think of as food at all – WATER. If we generalize a little most animals have a water content of about 75%. That means both you and your hooman(s) are more water than anything else!

I like water quite a lot, actually, as long as they don’t make me swim in it. I don’t swim very well.

Hyssy was quite skeptical when approaching the water, as was Virus. This is actually a quite common behavior for cats. Cats originated from small felines living in a desert climate. Since there’s hardly any thing there to drink, cats evolved to get virtually all their water from their food. Dogs are a little more prone to drinking if you look at our history. We’re also designed to get most of our water from the prey animals we eat, though.

Hee hee.. Here’s more pee! This is a color sample of Virus or Hyssy’s pee when they were eating the kibbles. They got some canned foods and tastes of raw foods, too, but their base food was kibble. You can see it’s quite dark yellow/orange in color.

Mom did a test month last spring where we all got no kibbles and only canned or raw to see if the kitties were getting enough water when they had to do most of their drinking on their own. She had read several studies that suggested the majority of cats are constantly dehydrated and wanted to make sure that was not the case with her boys. They did eat almost 50/50 canned and kibble most days. Still… it turned out at that they were not drinking sufficiently. We cannot seem to find the photo of their all raw/canned food pee, but when it was wet it had about the color of the yellowish dry crystals in the photo above, only less orange/brown and more like a very pale, pure yellow. There really was no doubt that they had been dehydrated by the amounts of pee they now left in the litter box.

So now they more or less stopped drinking altogether, but peed about twice the amount compared to before. The most surprising change, though, was the change in attitude. Virus used to be a rather aloof cat. He’d like to sit in a lap now and then, and ride on on of the hoomans’ shoulders. But he wasn’t exactly what you’d call a purring machine. He became a different cat. Cuddly.. social.. and I think he purrs at least 10 times as much as before. There was just no doubt he was feeling much better without being constantly dehydrated. (Bajas also keeps a much better water balance when he’s fed foods with a nice high water content. No over drinking episodes and vomiting – which is nice for both of us. )

We think efurrybody should eat the foodables that work for them, but it’s important to think about water content. If your kibble fed dog is a bad drinker you might put some water on the kibble when it’s served. You shouldn’t leave moist kibble out for long because of all the bacterial growth you’ll end up with, but as long as the dog eats it right away it’s no problem. The same goes for cats, but most kibble fed cats tend to be “grazers” who eat a little now and then from their 24/7 buffet.

Now who would have thought we could write so much about water? BOL! I hope you all have a great weekend! Mom fell on her face and busted her ankle, so I hope I’ll be getting some quality company.

Bajas

Happy Foodie Friday

We interrupt our planned Foodie Friday post with a progress report!

We are most thrilled to tell you that last night Virus and Hyssing – for the very first time – agreed to chewing pieces of chicken neck. They have eaten the occasional small bone. But finding small and easily edible bones (for kitties) are hard to find, at least for us, and what we find is generally pricey. It was pure luck Mom found a new Asian store downtown on Wednesday and they stocked chicken necks. We have found some earlier, attached to whole chickens bought in Sweden, but the kitties didn’t seem to want them back then.

I can assure you Mom acted most silly yesterday jumping for joy as she watched Virus eat the stuff. It should be said it was cut down into small pieces, but as you can see on the video he had to actually CHEW which is the important thing.

We don’t think it’ll be all easy sailing from here on, but it’s still a great breakthrough!

I’m sorta proud of the little ones – they have such tiny mouths after all.

Bajas

Foodie Friday

Happy Friday, friends!
We have decided to make Fridays Foodie Friday, at least some of the time. As most of you know we eat raw meatables here at the WriggleButtCamp and we’ll talk a bit about why and how and use Fridays to tell about anything exciting going on food wise. (Food is always exciting, so we’ll try to limit it to EXTRA exciting stuff.) Since the kitties still are fairly new to the whole thing there is still ups and downs and we haven’t succeeded in making them eat bones yet.. So still lots of work to do.

Oh – and I have something FUN to show you at the end of this post!

Today we’ll cover the beginning of our raw adventures. From back when I was just a pup.

Before Mom picked me up she did a lot of reading and believed she was pretty smart and clever and stuff. Tara, the Airedale, had quite a lot of food issues when she was young and it took a lot of time with special foods to make her stop itching. So Mom thought veterinarian diets were the only real way to go. She hung out at a lot of doggie forums, though, after I arrived. And although she used to be one of those who said “high quality kibble is the only way” she started to read more about canine nutrition.. And being interested in nature/biology/science some of what she read stood out as more “logical” than the rest.. Quite a few experienced, knowledgeable dog people were feeding raw and happy with it – and also some famous “experts” recommended it.. So she decided to give it a try. Not 100%, but after some consultations with Turid Rugaas she was convinced we could try part raw part kibble.

I’m ashamed to say I thought she was crazy! The first time I was presented with a raw chicken wing I had no idea what to do with it and we had quite a few troubles and somewhat gave up the whole thing.. Then one day a while later Mom was shocked to find my back covered in blood. She thought my somewhat boisterous MinPin friend, Fenris, had bitten me too hard. But after shaving me down it turned out to be all over my back.

After trips to the Vet it turned out to be food allergies – I was reacting to the meatables in my foods. I was left with the choices of feeding kibble with a high grain content or prescription foods with hydrolyzed proteins. Either way I produced masses of poop and farted and shed a lot. Mom was rather unhappy. She only bought black clothes to match my furs, since they got everywhere.

Then she started hearing good things about a pre made raw food made here in Norway. It was mainly used by sledding dogs at the time, since they have such high requirements. They need high energy foods that digest very well.. So she decided to give it a go. She got a few small packages and I LOVED it. It was so furry, furry yummy! Now we had to wait and see if it would make me itchy and bloody and horrible. But HOOORAY! My food allergies were only to COOKED proteins. Turns out that as long as they are raw I can eat meatables from any protein source. This was a 100% meat based product, no grains or veggies or fruits or anything – just meats and organs and ground bone.

Mom started driving out to the guy that produces it to buy it fresh – at this point Coco and Nimbus had joined our crew, too. And this raw food was the only thing that managed to keep some weight on Nimbus’ skinny frame. From time to time, if she didn’t have the time to drive out to buy a large amount of the raw yummyness she’d try some kibble, but it was always a disaster. When you’re used to tiny, odorless poops – big stinky poops (and the gas produced all day and spread in the living room) just isn’t fun.. And if fed kibble for too long, the shedding began again too..

So – that is the very beginning of our adventure with the raw foods. Now to the fun stuff I promised to show you:

A while back a fellow WhippetWorlder wanted some pictures to use on her new website. She put in a lot of hard work to create a raw food CoOp in Indianapolis, to make it affordable for herself and others in the area to get raw foods for their pets. Mom thought it was an honorable cause and allowed her to use pix of Virus and myself (this was back before Hyssy arrived). And now the website is finally ready:
http://www.rawpaws.org/AboutUs.aspx

Just pop over there and scroll down to see your celebrity friends! Hee hee… We encourage all our friends in the area, who might be (interested in) raw feeding to give it a try. We looked at the order form and the contents and prices made us VERY envious.

Kisses,
Bajas