Pookie, thank you so much for all your help! I just gave Mazy cat her first taste of raw organic apple cider vinegar. Three tiny drops (probably equal to about one real drop) in .2 oz of canned food. She ate it right up. I could smell it in there but she either liked it or couldn't smell it.
10 minutes later she had her other half of the meal, another .2 oz canned, this time with the lecithin in it (that is her usual after work meal routine, .2 oz plain, then ten minutes later,
and after she pees, .2 oz with the egg yolk lecithin.
To test what it's going to do to her urine I got the strips out and tested her pee, to keep tabs on that. Haven't tested her pee in a long time since the results I get from the strips never match up with the results the vet gets. But I thought it would be good to have a base for comparison. It was the same as it's always been showing 7.25 on the top square and 6.5 on the bottom. Ideally there is only supposed to be a match with ONE of the squares, but I always seem to get two answers.
Now, I think I am going to need to read more on this, to figure out how much she should be getting to help her. I have a lot of questions now.
A drop with every canned serving? Or
A drop with the first serving but not the second? She gets 12 servings a day (9 are canned 3 are raw).
Two of those servings, totaling .5 oz, have 1/8 tsp of SEB (1/8 total I mean) mixed in (the lunch meal, she gets two servings of .25 oz)
The middle of the night meal has 1/2 of a Vet's-Best hairball relief tablet in .3 oz.
Will the ACV interfere with the benefits of the SEB and the V-B? Or,
because of the acid nature of the ACV, it's good that she have it with the mucilage meals?
Maybe it would be best to give it only with the mucilage meals?
So many things to figure out.
The article got me to wondering about cats and digestive enzymes (like dogs need for carbs) since I couldn't find enzymes in Bio-Kult, and I found this:
http://consciouscat.net/2010/02/08/benefits-of-digestive-enzymes-for-pets/
This is one of the few brands I can find without lactose though. At least I think cats are lactose intolerant.
http://www.goodpet.com/cats/feline-digestive-enzymes/
But you could look for different brands to see if you can find others without lactose. I'm not going to link a ton of things because, I'm sorry, but I can't remember if she's already on enzymes or not.
Thanks Dee! I have read that Conscious cat article before. The article warns against mixing raw and canned feeding, but that is what I do and have no intentions of changing it. I am of the belief that ANY raw is better than no raw.
I don't feed raw and canned mixed together but the cats do get both raw meals and canned meals.
Thanks for doing the digestive enzyme research. How do you know it's lactose free? I looked at the goodpet digestive enzyme link but it does not list ingredients. I do tend to be a bit..skeptical.. of made for pet supplements like this because it seems every new catch word brings out a flood of products. "Digestive Enzymes" are all the rage now, so everyone wants to get on the bandwagon.
I'm not saying there isn't merit in the suggestion there is the need for them, just saying I don't trust things made for pets, generally speaking.
Prozyme (the brand I tried before) does have a for cats only formula that doesn't contain any dairy ingredients, but I didn't like some of the "other ingredients" in it.