#feeder rat

[dog-den-ink]

This is barely a comic but the experience derailed my entire day, so I had to make something about it.

Going quietly is easier for everyone but the one who goes.

Anyway, Tumblr is the one social media I'm not taking a hiatus from since it's pretty low stress here.

[drferox]

Feeder rats for cats

@blanketcreature said to @ask-drferox: Hey doc, I was wondering what you would think of feeding cats and dogs frozen thawed mice/rats like tbey do for reptiles. They are bred specifically for pet consumption so, they are supposed to be safe. I also once read that cats benefit from each part of their prey. So what's the tea?

While you certainly could give your domestic cat whole prey items, most people are not super inclined to do so. Certainly a whole prey item (mouse, rat, chick, rabbit, etc) is reasonable nutrition for a cat, assuming that prey item was in reasonable condition itself. It’s not perfect though, especially for growing and lactating animals, and we may lose some essential nutrition in freezing.

I would not feed such items to my cats for the following reasons:

Trash Bag picks up his food and runs away with it, to hide and eat at his leisure. This is fine for dry food, but not fine for half a rodent.

Wonka in uncoordinated and tosses his food while eating. It frequently ends up on his head, and I stopped feeding him raw meat after he successfully but accidentally tossed an entire raw chicken wing into my fruit bowl. I am not keen to do that with a whole prey item.

It’s just not going to go well in my house.

There is also difficulty in enforcing a ‘whole prey diet’ on some cats. With a snake it’s easy - they eat the whole animal. A cat can nibble and chew and leave behind the bits it doesn’t want to eat and potentially miss out on some nutrition that way. How many cats just lick the sauce off their favorite wet food and don’t eat the rest?

There is also some potential risk with small bones causing issues, though I’m not sure if the cat really would eat the entire prey item.

[z-zomey]

So I went and rescued another baby feeder rat from a pet store...

She's maybe only 5 weeks old, skin and bones. Mites and bumps on her tail and ears. Very slow. Was desperate for water and seemed very happy to get a warm bath. She'll have a vet appointment this week to treat her skin and make sure she's OK.

[flanchanof2002]

I've discovered rats and mice love garlic

[honneyfae]

i looked over to see him staring directly at me while panicking and now he wont leave me alone

[raxit-rat]

Saw her tummy move today!!

She's definitely got a couple babies in there

[dog-den-ink]

Thought of a different final line, so I'm sharing again. I think it better gets my point across.

[drferox]

@bettsplendens said to ask-drferox: On the subject of whole animals as cat food- what if the animal was put through something like a sausage grinder, so the cat had to eat all of it? I mean, I know that's something you'd have to be really careful with to avoid disease, so it might be good to cook it, but it would sure be hard for a cat to pick out only specific bits. And if someone were to feed a diet including birds, most of the feathers would be removed, right? I can't imagine cats naturally eat every feather on a bird.

They usually pluck feathers, but the sausage grinder idea is viable. That’s the principle in making pellet food for parrots or commercial feed. It’s all mixed in, they can’t pick it out.

This is perfectly fine for plant foods, but you’re right in that there would be some gut contamination in doing this with a whole prey item, so you might choose to use an eviscerated prey item and add back in some of the offal.

This is basically what commercial pet mince claims to be.