Cats and puppies: A listing of friend or foe
Cats – 6
Samantha — 11 year old petite black cat. Not interested in the puppies at the least.
Princess — 11 year old big fat tuxedo [black and white] cat. Will watch the puppies from a distance, as long as the pups are in their kitchen pen, or crate.
Strider — 2 1/2 year old gray/silver subtle striped cat. Will walk around the pen when the puppies are in it, rubbing the sides, walk around the top of the pen, get inside the pen and look at the pups. The pups and he smell each other and tolerate each other in there. Victoria sometimes likes to get in there and hold Strider and he stays and purrs up a storm, and Gretchen mostly will interact with Strider. They had a near startup play session today, but I nixed it, so that no one would get hurt.
Dixie — 2 1/2 year old darkgray/gray subtle striped cat (Strider’s litter-mate). She wants nothing to do with the puppies.
Scarlet — 1 year old tortiseshell/calico mix cat. She rubs seductively all around the pen when the puppies are in it, sniffs them through the holes in the pen, sometimes she jumps in and drinks from their water bowl, or just sits there washing herself, and looking at the pups. The pups just look at her.
Foster — under 1 year old brown black tabby cat. He’s petrified of the pups. Want to see a cat tail bloom? Just drop Foster into the pen with pups. Voila! Out Foster will fly out of the pen with tail fully extending in wild bloom.
Pups – 2
The Pups — Gretchen and Lothar, love to watch the cats as they eat. They all eat the same raw food. The pups eat at mach speed. So they get done and watch the cats, who eat at turtle-moving speed. Sometimes they get so excited that they bark at the cats in this situation. It’s something the cats just ignore. They are separated by several feet for eating. The pups in their pen, and the cats by the fridge on the floor. The pups just want the cat’s food. They’ll eat anything at anytime, no matter what. Little piggies. They are controlled from doing so, of course. 🙂
So, there is one total foe, Foster. One disinterested, Samantha. One from a distance watcher, Princess. One I’d rather not be around them, Dixie. Two “we are friends”, Strider and Scarlet.
From what I recall, Strider and Dixie were in a dog/cat multiple foster home before we adopted them. They were rescued at 6 weeks of age from the wild, so grew up for several months in that situation. Scarlet was adopted at 3 months of age, from a foster home with dogs in it. Foster came from a family, no dogs, at 8 weeks of age. Princess and Samantha have just rolled with the changes through the years. They are too old to really like any newcomer. 🙂
3 responses to “Friend or Foe, what it comes to”
Sounds like your pups will be/are an enjoyable addition to your family! 🙂
What are you feeding them (cats and pups) for raw food and what are your sources?
Tamara,
Dogs and Cats are both carnivorous. The commercial pet food companies and regular vets will tell you different — that Dogs are “Omnivorous” but that’s not true.
Go to http://www.rawmeatybones.com for lots of info.
I feed the cats and pups the same food, just different amounts. The pups can handle larger bones than the cats.
Chicken frames we get from a raw feeding co-op in our area. They come from a restaurant provider, I think. We get them in boxes of 50lbs frozen, and have to separate them for storage and usage, I use Gallon size freezer bags.
Chicken frames have some meat on them, not a whole lot. They are totally eatable by dogs and cats, kittens and pups as well. Some of the parts have bigger bones that the dogs do better with, so for us, if the cats leave a part of bone, the dogs get it next.
Fish are great, whole mackarel, etc. The dogs and cats eat the whole thing, tearing into it themselves, or I can cut it up a bit to help them if they need it.
For us, the pups fight over stuff too heavily, so I give them portions of their own for now.
The cats share free-style. One fish, or several pieces of chicken frames.
Also, other kinds of meat are used, the above is just the base-line main. Venison left-overs from hunters can be gotten for free at times – and both animals love some beef. For cats, only meat of beef. For dogs, some beef bones can be eaten. Always though, bones are raw and meaty.
To implement something like this takes changing minds about “pet food”. If people shouldn’t eat processed food, why should animals? That’s what brought me to this place. I don’t feed my animals raw because I value them higher than, as a Christian, I should, I feed them raw as that’s what’s best for them as animals that I am a steward over.
Many have thought that doing this takes so much time, is disgusting, etc.
It’s not for the weak stomached person. You have to have a place to feed the animals, which you can mop or hose down, or not have to worry about it. Some people feed their animals in the back yard. Some people feed their cats in a baby play-pen. They train them to eat in there. If they take the food out, they pick the food up and put it back in, insisting on the cat eating it ONLY in that place.
Some, like me, feed their animals on the kitchen floor. I’m always here, so I can watch them. I try to keep the cats food over on one end of the kitchen. They eat slowly, coming back to it later at times too. I just have to moniter them NOT to carry it off to another part of the house.
The puppies are in a Superyard baby gate thing, in the kitchen, and that’s where I feed them. They eat really fast, so no matter where I’d feed them, it wouldn’t pose a “carry off” problem most of the time. I have to feed them in the Superyard for the cats sake, as well as to keep them from roving all over the house at will. So they are in there for any free-time in the house. At night in their crate, and outside in a 10×10 chain link dog kennel sometimes, with walks on leash and free-time in the yard as well.
I mop the floor often. The food itself I had a hard time with the fish at first, but now have no problem picking it up with my hands. Before it was with tongs and holding my breath and squinting my eyes. All of it, just thaw out, and give it to the animals. Little other prep. Just the putting it away for bulk storage [cheapest prices — for them and for human food!] Our freezer has been taken over for pet food mostly, so having more than one freezer is good. We need a second one.
Benefits are great though, less “poop”, less “smelly” everything, happier animals, better fur coats, etc. Many people report sickly animals improving dramatically on a raw diet.
I saw, in the first couple of weeks, cats with shinier fur, longer fur, thicker fur, happier acting. Nicer pets.
Weaning a pup or kitten to raw is easy. It’s normal and totally natural. Getting an older animal to eat raw can be troublesome. I switched cold turkey, and it worked for us. There were a couple of days of picky or nothing eaten … then they all just began to chow down … except the one cat that died the other month. [she ate, just not raw.]
So anyway, I really like raw feeding, it’s not difficult, it’s different, and does take time. Feeding dry or wet kibble takes very little time, comparing the two methods, one seems to take much time. Really, people should care about what they feed their animals, and caring usually takes some time. It’s still not that much time, just means being able to find the food, a co-op for rawfeeding is good, and store it, and remember to get on schedule to have the food ready at the right times. It fits right in with life after a bit, I think.
Makes perfect sense to me…that’s how God made them after all. It makes perfect sense too that health would improve when put back on a diet that is natural for them. Raw Food Co-op for pets is something that I’d never heard of…although it doesn’t surprise me as it seems everything you can think of has been done so to speak (nothing new under the sun right?! ;-)). Up here Salmon is, of course, plentiful and the dog mushers often stock up during the summer to have for their dogs through the winter. We always did for our dogs too although we didn’t have sled dogs, etc. Whenever we had Moose, deer, rabbits and what not, they shared in that too. We lived pretty rural though so it was difficult to do continuously…no raw food co-ops nor butcher shops to keep the supply coming. So, dry food was (and still is) the staple. Now that my family doesn’t live as rural, I was thinking of something like that…going around to the butcher shops, etc. But…ugh! What a chore! Not what I have time for. Something to keep in the back of my mind for the future though.
Thanks for sharing that info and your experience! 🙂