The problem in transitioning from mom milk to raw was simply that they both loved raw. I started them on Darwin and they only had chicken and turkey available at the time. Initially Jammu would get bored with his food so I would add a couple of spoonful of canned food but Rafiki hated that so eventually I was just feeding either chicken or turkey. Yes, my bad! I should have worked harder the first year to get them to like other things. I learned my lesson the hard way when Darwin changed their formula and neither cat would eat it. Rafiki developing liver fibrosis (and has apparently made a complete recovery, knock on wood) shortly thereafter made me concentrate solely on getting her to eat anything at all so I defaulted back to cooked chicken and then thankfully to the raw when the meds would allow it. Once they were healthy again, I started adding beef chunks to the food but never quite got to the point where they had a beef-only meal. When Jammu had a skin reaction a month ago, I eliminated the beef. So assuming that this current reaction is food related, it would have to be chicken since that is all that he has eaten (other than freeze dried duck tenders and hearts) this past month. That makes the food elimination unnecessary in regards to diagnosis but makes the path forward quite rocky!
Neither have had digestive issues in the past. Last month was the first time for even diarrhea. Jammu will occasionally throw up after eating grass and Rafiki will if she decides to eat all of Jammu's food as well as her own. Other than that, no issues. So this morning I added a smidgeon of pumpkin. Suffice to say that they were not pleased. Rafiki finally ate her food but it took quite a bit of kitty crack in chunks to accomplish. Picky little monsters! To anyone new to this site.....learn from me and my mistakes and introduce your babies to a wide variety of food as early as you can!
