I love that Luscious & I are diet buddies...

Today was Day 1 of my shake/juice feast. Today I supplemented my 1L of orange juice and my 1L blueberry/mango/banana smoothie with a couple of pieces of fruit due to scheduling...I forgot we had a staff meeting and I didn't want to get really hungry, since I finished my OJ relatively early in the day.

Things are going well so far with the cats. They ate all of the food I put down for them this morning and only left a bit of their dinner from this evening. I'm pretty pleased with how quickly and easily they're adapting to their new diets.

Unfortunately, the Panasonic Grinder I purchased is really not working out at all. Its continuing to jam up and simply can't handle the bones or skin that are going in with the chicken (both really REALLY necessary for the cats' overall health!) I even switched from drumsticks to chicken wings today, hoping the smaller bones would be ground more easily, but I had even more trouble today than I did yesterday. I wound up giving up after I'd produced just under what they'd need for the whole day tomorrow -- I'm just going make a huge batch of the raw food using boneless chicken tomorrow afternoon to tide them over until the new machine arrives.

Luckily I found a reasonably priced grinder on amazon thats received really good reviews from people who grind up whole chickens/etc for their cats & dogs. I'm hopeful that this works, because I'm not exactly planning on purchasing a $2000 industrial grinder anytime soon.

http://www.amazon.com/Electric-Meat-Grinder-Ends-Cranking/dp/B0000AXDVK

Preparing their food is really something that I can't continue to do on a regular basis because its just too fucking disgusting. My hands still smell like meat and its really grossing me out. If i can get the prep down to once every 2-4 weeks, I'll be thrilled.

I moved!

Hop on over to http://kalequeen.wordpress.com for continued blog updates!

Raw Cat Food Meat Grinding Extravaganza!

I found a meat grinder on Craigslist last night for $65 last night and bought it this afternoon. I spent TWO HOURS in the kitchen, figuring things out, jamming pieces of meat far too big for the grinder into the grinder, getting frustrated with meat grinder, struggling to dissassemble/remove bone/reassemble the grinder....overall a ridiculous ordeal. After two hours, I managed to produce 1 day's worth of food:

Each ground chicken patty is 2.5 ounces, which is 2-3% of my cats weights (between 10 and 12 lbs...and in Luscious' case, her healthy/intended weight). While today was relatively frustrating, I've learned some things and should be able to crank out more final product, more quickly, each time I have to break out the grinder.

I'll go into more detail on the process in later posts, including strategies for faster/more streamlined grinding of the cat's food, as well as added supplementation. Many owners switch their cats to raw food due to weight issues their cats have (like LUSCIOUS!) so I'll address what I'm doing differently for her as well.Even though the actual making of the food really grossed me out, I'm excited to be doing such a great thing for my cats! Raw is really really the best.

Here are some pictures of the cats:

One of all four (you can sort of see how big Luscious is here in comparison to the other cats)

Here's one of Luscious Fantasia Brusciouses all by herself, this is a classic Luscious pose and probably my favorite picture we've taken of her to date! Too bad that big beautiful luscious stomach will be shrinking soon. She hardly ever leaves this ottoman!

Dante Cheyenne Champagne is in pretty decent health. He has a really healthy and shiny coat. He does suffer from the most horrid, rancid cat breath I've ever encountered in my life, and occasionally experiences room-clearing gas.

Luscious' brother, the Reverend Frederick Aluiscious Brusciouses III is the healthiest of our cats. His coat is the shiniest and softest, and he has a significant amount of muscle mass. He is the Alpha Male (a phenomenon I wasn't sure existed among domesticated cats until I met this guy). You can really see the family resemblance between them in their faces...and nowhere else, really. :)

Jack Knickabuckna Powell is my favorite! He is fairly healthy with the occasional gas & gross poops. A few months ago we were drying out some umbrellas which really intrigued the cats, subsequently leading to this and other glamour shots.

So those are all the cats! I can't wait to post their vibrant, healthy faces after a few weeks on raw food!