[Sca-cooks] OT - cat antics

[Laura L]

> Irmgart commented:
> > I feed him a diet of
> > raw chicken (with bones and some of the innards--contact me if
> you'd like
> > more info...I'm a great proponent of feeding bones and
> raw--BARF--to cats).
>
> Do you just put chicken parts in the blender and grind them up? I
> thought you
> had to be careful of chicken bones with cats? Or is that just
> with the neck?

Actually,  most of what I feed is chicken thighs (sometimes the whole bird,
but you get a better bone/meat ratio with thighs). I do about half and half
with the bones... sometimes I grind the bones in a meat grinder (one of the
old cast iron ones) sometimes I give them to him whole. You only have to be
careful with *cooked* bones. Raw bones will break, but not splinter, cooked
bones splinter something horrible.

>
> > He would like to be a kibble junkie, but he is allergy to the
> corn that is
> > in almost all kibble.
>
> So, how did you determine the cat was allergic to corn?

When we got George he had what we thought was a upper respiratory infection,
but it lasted for a couple of months without getting any better. On the
advisement of the vet, we switched him to canned food, and it cleared up in
about a week. Then I found out what they actually *put* in pet food (not
just mechanically separated chicken, but diseased animals as well). I tried
him on an organic canned food, but it had corn in it as well, and we went
right back to the runny nose and eyes and sneezing, and when he gets the
milk out of my husband's corn flakes in the morning, he gets runny eyes.  I
did some research on cats and food and found out that 1) cats don't get much
nutritional value from plant matter, which makes sense and 2) cats are often
allergic or have sensitivity to grains since they aren't part of their
natural diets.

> > OFC: Also, for Yule on Sunday, I was cooking a duck for Yule
> and the d*mned
> > cat stole the liver that I had set aside to make pate out of.
> grrrr... I'd
> > already given him the heart, part of the neck and the gizzard... was he
> > happy with that??? NO... <sigh>
>
> How much pate can you make out of 1 duck liver? It doesn't seem it would
> be very much. Is it really worth the labor?

I honestly don't know, but it was a honking big liver...about 4 times the
size of a good sized chicken liver.

> > Well, the duck was pretty good for a first attempt... I think next time,
> > I'll prick the skin of the duck more so that more of the fat
> will run out.
> You might find some of the comments in this file of interest:
> duck-goose-msg    (28K) 10/ 8/01    Cooking duck and goose. Recipes.
>
> http://www.florilegium.org/files/FOOD-MEATS/eels-msg.html
> --
> THLord Stefan li Rous    Barony of Bryn Gwlad    Kingdom of Ansteorra
>     Mark S. Harris            Austin, Texas
> StefanliRous at austin.rr.com
> **** See Stefan's Florilegium files at:  http://www.florilegium.org ****
>


Thanks for the tip!

Irmgart