Ashanti Bengals

• Why doesn’t Ashanti offer premium-quality commercial dry or canned catfood to their animals?

Because after researching the contents of even premium-quality pet foods — we felt that in good conscience we could no longer feed the to our animals.

• Where could I find reliable information about the ingredients in commercial pet foods?

It is very quick in easy (in English) to find such information on the interent. However, here are two pdf lins to reliable sources that you may find eye-opening:

• So what exactly DO you feed your animals?

Grocery store broiler chickens. Occasionally, grocery store rabbit, frog legs, salmon, game hens, etc. These meats are provided with bones and skin — all cut into small pieces, or ground (with bones and skin) through an electric grinder. When possible, we also purchase organ meats, which are very rich in nutrients.

• Why must the meat be raw, rather than cooked? Can’t raw meat harbor bacteria and parasites?

Meat must be given raw, because research clearly proves that cooking destroys essential trace nutrients, such as taurine which is indispensible for felines (and Bengals are theorized to have a greater than typical need for Taurine). Also, consider from a logical standpoint. Do wild cats cook their prey? Futhermore, regarding parasites, we freeze all our meat before we offer it to kill most potential parasites (as well as to make more room in the refrigerator for HUMAN food). Bacteria is present on the surface and within prey which a cat would kill in the wild. Cats with normal immune systems should have no problems with the bacteria prsent on human-quality raw meat.

• Don’t you add supplements?

Although many nutritionists suggest that supplementing well-balanced raw feeding is definitely overkill, we prefer to error on the side of conservatism. So, we do add a product specifically designed for felines, and with an emphasis on the needs of wild felines.

• What about vegetables and starches?

No, we do not offer either vegetables or grains — cats are CARNIVORES and considerable scientific research supports the fact that they cannot correctly digest or extract nutritional content from grains. Cats do sometimes “graze” medicinally on certain herbs — they are free to do that here in their home environment at Ashanti. However, we do not add addtional greens to the food we prepare for them.

• Couldn’t your cat’s be injured by feeding them raw bones?

It is a myth that raw prey-sized bones are dangerous (however COOKING changes the molecular structure of bones and renders them much more brittle, therefore breaking into jagged pieces — which can definitely be dangerous for your cat!) Raw bones of small animals such as poultry (not including turkey), rabbit, frogs, salmon, mice, etc. are easily crunched up and eaten by cats, even in their whole state. Our cats enjoy whole bones. But, for the sake of convenience, we often grind them up with the meat — and then they are nothing more than tiny coarse-sand sized morsels.

• Isn’t providing raw food expensive and time-consuming?

While it’s true that preparing raw food is more time-consuming than pouring kibble in a dish, or opening a can of cat food — we find that we spend less than an hour of preparation time per week (and most of this time is cleaning up the grinder and putting things away). For us, this is a manageable and reasonable amount of well-spent time.

As to expense, we have been thrilled to discover that feeding raw is considerably LESS expensive than feeding premium-quality cat food. Of course, we choose to buy our meat at stores which carry the best prices, and we are always on the look-out for sales. In general, we expect to may no more than 2.5 euros per kg. of meat (less than $1.50US per pound). One kilogram of meat will last one of our adult female cats about 5 days, unless she is pregnant or nursing. Therefore, we expect to pay about $3.00US (2.50€) per week, per cat, on food.

• How do you know you are providing the right quantity of meat?

A good estimate is 1 to 2% of the animal’s weight in food, per day. A female cat weighing 5 kg, would get 100 to 200 g. of food per day. Lactating or pregnant females and kittens need somewhat more. In any event, we place the food before the cat, and then what isn’t eaten within 30 minutes, we remove and put back in the refrigerator.

• How do you store and serve the cats’ meals?

After grinding or chopping the meat, skin and bones which we will be offereing to the cats for the week, we portion the mixture into plastic freezer bags. Enough by weight in each freezer bag to feed all of our cats for one day. All raw food is then frozen. Each morning, we remove one bag of food from the freezer, and immerse it into a large basin of hot tap water, to thaw the meat and bring it up to room temperature. Once the meat has been warmed, we sprinkle on the optional supplement powder, and place each cats portion on a small plate. Easy, simple and delicious (at least according to the cats!)

• Did you notice any changes in your cats when switching your animals from commercial pet food to raw feeding?

Yes! Amazing changes! Within 2 weeks we could notice a remarkable difference in coat quality — brighter, sleeker, softer. Our heavy cats slimmed down, and our thinner cats gained muscle mass. Now all our cats easily maintain their correct weight. Also, after kittening, our queens no longer seem guant, they are still heavily muscled and firm. Kittens are particularly roly-poly, and transition extremely easily from nursing to eatin raw food.

Secondly, the quantity and frequency of stools in the litter box was immediately drastically reduced. It no longer smelled nearly so horrid and was much firmer. One of our cats had chronic diarrhea. That problem stopped, she now has stools like all the other cats.

• What if I would like to adopt one of your cats? Does this mean that I HAVE to feed them raw food too?

No. If you come to pick up your cat/kitten at our cattery, we would be glad to provide you with enough frozen raw food, that you can incorporate it into a kibble diet to transition. This way, you can guide your animal back to commerical pet food. We can even suggest a particular brand of premium quality pet food which we were comparatively satisfied with, before we switched to raw food.

However, if you would like to learn more about feeding raw, we would be happy to show you how we prepare our own raw food — and answer your questions to the best of our ability on an ongoing basis.