How Raw Feeding Actually Works

Raw feeding sounds complicated because there are a lot of different ways to do it.

You can make food yourself, buy commercially prepared raw, feed whole prey, or use a combination of approaches. Then there are all the conversations about ingredients, supplements, percentages, recipes, and whether one method is somehow more "correct" than another.

But underneath all of that, raw feeding is actually pretty straightforward.

You're choosing to feed your cat an uncooked, animal-based diet, and then making sure that the food you're feeding is nutritionally appropriate, fed in the right amounts, and handled properly.

How you get there is where the different approaches come in.

What Does Raw Feeding Actually Look Like?

At its most basic, raw feeding looks a lot like feeding any other type of food.

You choose an appropriate food, determine how much your cat needs, establish a feeding routine, serve the food, and clean up afterward.

The biggest practical difference is that you're usually dealing with frozen and refrigerated food rather than something you can simply scoop out of a bag or open from a can.

If you're feeding premade raw, for example, you might take the next day's food out of the freezer and put it in the refrigerator to thaw. Once it's thawed, you portion out what your cat needs at mealtime and put the rest back in the refrigerator.

If you're making your own raw food, the process is similar, except you're doing the preparation yourself. You make food in batches, portion it into individual meals or containers, freeze it, and then thaw what you need as you go.

And if you're feeding whole prey, the process looks different again.

There isn't one particular way that raw feeding has to look in your kitchen. The basic idea is simply that you're feeding raw animal food rather than cooked or heavily processed food.

Frozen, Thawed & Ready to Eat

For most people feeding raw, the freezer becomes a pretty important part of the routine.

Raw food is commonly purchased or prepared in larger quantities, portioned, and frozen. Instead of keeping a week's worth of fresh meat sitting in the refrigerator, you keep it frozen and move portions into the refrigerator as you need them.

So no! You don't have to make food every day and you don't have to thaw an entire batch at once.

You just need to stay a little ahead of yourself by having a good defrosting routine.

For example, if your cat eats two meals a day, you might move the next day's portions from the freezer to the refrigerator each evening. By the following day, the food is thawed and ready to feed.

Some people prefer to thaw several days' worth at once. Others move food over one meal at a time. You can figure out what works best for your household.

The important thing is that raw food should be thawed in the refrigerator rather than left sitting out at room temperature for hours. And once you're feeding raw regularly, you'll quickly learn how much freezer space you actually need.

How Do You Serve Raw Food?

This depends somewhat on the type of raw food you're feeding.

Premade raw might come in patties, nuggets, chubs, tubs, or other portions. Homemade raw may be portioned into containers, bags, or individual meal-sized portions. Whole prey is obviously going to look completely different.

You can feed it straight from the refrigerator, but don't be surprised if your cat has an opinion about the temperature. Some cats don't care at all and will happily eat their food cold. Some prefer it closer to room temperature.

I've had cats who would look at perfectly good refrigerated raw food like I had lost my mind, but would happily eat the exact same food once it had warmed up a little. So if your cat seems interested in the food but reluctant to eat it, temperature is one simple thing worth experimenting with.

You can also run into preferences about texture.

A cat accustomed to canned food may take readily to a soft ground raw food, while another cat may prefer chunks. Some cats have very specific ideas about what food should feel like in their mouths.

Your mileage may vary.

The goal isn't to force every cat to eat raw in exactly the same form. It's to find a way of feeding an appropriate raw diet that your cat will actually eat.

How Much Do You Feed?

Once you have the food figured out, you need to determine how much your cat should eat.

This is where you'll often see feeding recommendations based on a percentage of body weight. Those numbers can be a useful starting point, but they aren't a magic formula.

A cat's needs depend on age, growth, activity, body composition, reproductive status, and the calorie density of the food.

A growing kitten may need considerably more food relative to its body weight than an adult cat. An active young cat may need more than a sedentary adult. And two foods containing the same weight of food can provide very different amounts of calories.

So rather than deciding that your cat must eat exactly a certain percentage forever, use a starting amount and then watch the cat.

Their weight, body condition, appetite, growth, and overall health all give you useful information.

I've gone into the actual numbers and how I approach feeding amounts in How Much Should I Feed My Cat or Kitten?.

How Often Do You Feed?

There are several reasonable ways to structure meals, but consistency is helpful.

Some cats do well with two meals a day. Others prefer smaller, more frequent meals.

At RBC, my kittens are raised eating two meals a day, and I generally recommend continuing that routine through at least the first six months whenever possible.

Once you understand how much your cat needs to eat, establishing a predictable routine makes raw feeding much easier. You know roughly how much food needs to be thawed, when you need to move food from the freezer, and what your cat's normal appetite looks like.

For more on meal frequency, see How Often Should I Feed My Cat?.

What If My Cat Doesn't Finish the Meal?

This is one of the practical differences between raw and shelf-stable foods that new raw feeders need to get used to.

Raw food is perishable. If your cat walks away from a meal, you don't want to leave it sitting around indefinitely and treat it like a bowl of dry food that can stay out all day.

How long food can safely remain out depends on factors such as temperature, handling, and the specific food, but in general, I prefer to think of raw food as something that should be served fresh and cleaned up promptly.

You'll also learn your individual cat's eating habits.

Some cats eat everything immediately. Some wander away and come back. Some eat half their meal and then decide they're ready for the other half twenty minutes later. So if you know your cat is one who want the food less cold, be prepared to maybe set the dish out for a longer period of time, but do try not to forget about it all day unless you're pretty sure they'll eat it all.

Knowing your cat makes it much easier to figure out how much to serve at once and how to structure meals without wasting food.

What About Changing Proteins?

Once your cat is comfortably eating one raw food, you can introduce variety.

You don't need to introduce five different proteins at once. In fact, introducing one new food or protein at a time makes it much easier to see how your cat responds.

Chicken, turkey, rabbit, duck, beef, pork, and other proteins can all be part of a varied raw-feeding approach depending on the particular diet and what is appropriate for your cat.

The important thing is understanding that variety isn't the same thing as completeness.

You don't make a diet complete simply by throwing a bunch of different meats into the bowl. Likewise, you don't necessarily need a completely different protein at every meal.

If you're interested in how the different parts of the diet fit together nutritionally, that's covered separately in [Understanding Muscle Meat, Organs, Bone & Other Components].

Premade Raw vs. Homemade Raw

There are two very common ways people feed raw: commercially prepared raw and homemade raw.

With a complete commercial raw food, much of the nutritional formulation has already been done for you. Your job is primarily to purchase it, store it correctly, thaw it, portion it, and feed it according to the manufacturer's directions and your cat's needs.

Homemade raw gives you much more control, but you're also responsible for making sure the finished diet is actually complete and appropriate. That's a pretty significant difference.

I enjoy making homemade raw for my own cats, but I don't think everyone needs to make their own food. In fact, for most people, I think starting with a properly formulated commercial raw can be a much easier way to learn how raw feeding fits into their household.

I've compared the different options in Comparing Homemade Raw, Premade Raw, Freeze-Dried, Wet & Dry.

And if you're considering making your own food, What Homemade Raw Actually Takes is the article I'd read before buying a grinder and twenty pounds of chicken. 😂

What About Kittens?

Kittens can eat raw, but they're not simply tiny adult cats.

They're growing rapidly, so their nutritional needs and feeding amounts need to be appropriate for growth. This is particularly important when you're making food yourself.

If you're bringing home a kitten who is already eating raw, I generally recommend keeping their food and routine as familiar as possible at first. Coming home is already a huge change, and there's no reason to pile a completely different diet on top of everything else if you don't have to.

And don't be surprised if a brand-new kitten doesn't eat immediately.

A kitten can be perfectly healthy and still be overwhelmed by a new home. That's why I talk about this separately in What to Expect When Your Kitten Comes Home.

If your kitten is hesitant about food, your first priority is getting them comfortable and eating- not checking off every step of a food-transition chart.

What If You Need to Transition to a Different Raw Food?

This happens more often than people realize.

Maybe your usual brand is unavailable. Maybe your local store stopped carrying it. Maybe you're traveling. Maybe your breeder feeds a particular raw food that isn't easy for you to obtain.

Ideally, you can transition gradually from the food your cat already knows.

But sometimes you just have to work with what you have.

If the exact food isn't available, look for the closest appropriate alternative you can reasonably get. If your cat is already eating raw, I'd generally look for another complete raw diet rather than assuming that the only acceptable option is their exact usual product.

If you can't get the same protein, food format, or brand, do the best you reasonably can and pay attention to how your cat responds.

You don't need to create a crisis because the preferred food is temporarily unavailable.

I've covered the actual transition process, including moving between foods and introducing raw, in How to Transition Your Cat to a New Food.

Raw Feeding Means Handling Raw Food

The other major practical difference is that you're handling raw animal products in your home.

That means the normal rules of raw-food hygiene matter: keep food appropriately cold, wash your hands, clean preparation surfaces, avoid cross-contamination, and store food properly.

You'll also want to think about the rest of your household, particularly if you have young children, elderly family members, or someone who is immunocompromised.

And don't forget the litter box. Cats can shed bacteria in their stool even when they aren't visibly sick, so litter-box hygiene is part of responsible raw feeding, too.

I go into that much more thoroughly in Salmonella & Raw Feeding.

The Freezer-to-Bowl Routine

Once you get into a rhythm, this is really what raw feeding often looks like:

Freezer → refrigerator → portion → bowl → clean up → repeat.

That's "it".

You're not necessarily standing in the kitchen making a complicated recipe every night. You're usually just managing frozen food, thawing what you need, feeding it, and putting the rest away.

If you're feeding homemade raw, there is more work involved because you have to formulate and prepare the food. But even then, you're generally making food in batches rather than starting from scratch every morning.

The exact routine will depend on how many cats you have, how much they eat, how often you feed, what type of raw food you're using, and how much freezer space you have.

Once you have a system, it becomes pretty routine.

So, Is Raw Feeding Actually Complicated?

The answer is: it can be as complicated as you want to make it.

Feeding a complete commercial raw diet can be incredibly straightforward.

Making your own food requires considerably more knowledge and work.

Whole prey is another approach again.

And you can learn more as you go.

You don't have to understand every raw-feeding philosophy before you put your first meal in the bowl. You don't need to make homemade food just because someone on the internet told you that's the "real" way to feed raw. And you don't need to follow someone else's exact routine if you've found a safe, nutritionally appropriate system that works well for your cat.

The important things are pretty simple:

Feed an appropriate diet. Feed the right amount. Keep the food properly stored and handled. Pay attention to your cat. Adjust when necessary.

The rest is figuring out what works best for you and your cats.

And if you're just getting started, that's exactly why I built this feeding resource library the way I did. You can learn one piece at a time instead of trying to absorb the entire raw-feeding internet in one sitting. Start with some of our other feeding resources, and the other resources that apply to the way you want to feed.

You don't have to know everything on day one.

You just need to know enough to feed the next meal and the rest can come over time.