Can kitties get Salmonella ?

[Morghan De Miren]

Ok. so thread last week about Kitty made me decide I will be raw feeding in the future. Need to save a bit to purchase a Grinder that can grind bone~~ Mom is totally for it because I informed her his poop would be near odorless.

Also that patch of missing hair is growing back in and the bumpy spots are gone. I dunno. He must have gotten into something. He'll be getting his checkup when he goes in to get his shots for his second year. I'll be watching to see if they come back but for now they seem to have cleared up.

My question is can Kitty get Salmonella from raw chicken ? Should I cook it a tiny bit first to kill bacteria or just let him eat it completely raw ?

I have some chicken hearts to cut up and add to his canned food. ++ Giving them to him whole. He L-O-V-E-S chicken hearts as I have given them to him raw before and it is like his F-A-V-O-R-I-T-E treat ever. I just never thought about it until my mom asked.  

[Gabrielle_AnimalLuver]

TECHNICALLY yes it is possible. Howerver, a cat's stomach and intestines are genetically engineered for this not to happen. They have stomach acids more acidic then ours, made to kill bacteria because historically carnivores didn't cook their food. Their intestinal track is also much shorter which means the bacteria have a short window of oppertunity to do any harm. This means though, the cat POOP may contain bacteria. For this reason households with young children should be careful and just general hygene rules apply a bit more strongly. Wash utensils and bowls with very hot water and soap. Wash hands after cleaning litter etc.

The chances of your cat getting sick from raw meat if you follow basic hygene rules is extremely rare. But it is there. So should your cat ever be sick for whatever reason. THEN I would cook the food, just because his natural immunity to bacteria may be overwhelmed and let something slip.

My cat has been eating raw on and off for years and never gotten sick. I know Savage has most of her cats on an all raw diet for years. I think the many health benefits of raw food outweigh the rare chance of a bit of sickness.  

[Moth Feathers]

Good job on feeding the chicken hearts! It's great that he loves it, since heart is very high in taurine.

The risk of a cat getting salmonella is extremely small. I don't want to say "none", because that's not true, but it is extremely small.

Cats (and any other carnivore for that matter) have highly acidic stomachs with strong, potent stomach acid. To give you an idea of how acidic it is, its pH is about 2 (for comparison, pure water has pH of 7 and an acidic fish aquarium is about 6 pH or slightly higher). This high pH kills the grand majority of bacteria, similar to how putting alcohol-based hand sanitizer kills most bacteria on your skin.
Not only that, cats have short digestive tracts and digest their food quickly. Their intestines are about half the length of a human's, and naturally their metabolisms are much quicker too. This makes it very difficult for bacteria to have any time to reproduce to a level capable of infection.

Salmonella is present in small quantities practically everywhere, which is something a lot of people do not realize. It isn't just one microbe of salmonella that happens to get through that causes disease, it's when they get the chance to multiply and overtake the immune system. If your cat has ever caught any rodent, bird, or similar creature, it's consumed some salmonella. If it's ever stepped outside on the grass or soil, it's exposed to salmonella. If you ever see a wild bird dropping, it too has salmonella.

In order to raw feed, it's really important that the food is actually raw. Cooking food destroys many of the vitamins that the cats need in order to get balanced nutrition from eating their raw meat, such as taurine. You've probably heard of the famous experiment when a man fed one group of cats raw meat and the other group of cats cooked meat. He allowed them to breed and continued the diet across generations. The group of cats fed cooked meat significantly declined in health, and also developed issues to a deficiency in taurine. Raw fed cats thrived.
That's why commercial wet/dry foods need to be fortified with so many vitamins and minerals; even if it's a good brand and contains a lot of real meat, because it has to be cooked, processed, and preserved, it loses so much that it has to be fortified.

If you're concerned, you can parboil the meat. Parboiling is when you lightly cook the outside of the meat by briefly boiling it in water. If any microbes are to contaminate the meat, it's going to be on the outside surface.

I recommend reading catinfo.org, it's an excellent site and contains a good raw recipe on it too.  

[Morghan De Miren]

Ha ha yes I know. I was just curious if they could.

I think I'll just give them a quick hot water bath before feeding.

I was checking out his friskies cans and I was actually surprised to find that on most of them the main ingredients were water, then meat, several other things then by-product. Dunno if they have changed recently or what.

We'll be feeding him the last of his dry food this month. Then he'll be going to only canned with additional chicken hearts / livers / meats mixed in then we'll switch to raw feeding once I can acquire a grinder that will grind bone as well.  

[Gabrielle_AnimalLuver]

Morghan De Miren

Ha ha yes I know. I was just curious if they could.

I think I'll just give them a quick hot water bath before feeding.

I was checking out his friskies cans and I was actually surprised to find that on most of them the main ingredients were water, then meat, several other things then by-product. Dunno if they have changed recently or what.

We'll be feeding him the last of his dry food this month. Then he'll be going to only canned with additional chicken hearts / livers / meats mixed in then we'll switch to raw feeding once I can acquire a grinder that will grind bone as well.

Oh, just a quick tip. Don't grind ALL the bones. Try to leave some appropriate sized ones for him to chew (those must absolutely be raw because cooked bones are brittle and can splinter) regular raw bones will give him amazing teeth and gums which could save you thousands in dental procedures.