At the end of the day JWB plus a decent wet is a million times better than a cat which refuses to eat, can't keep his food in long enough to extract the nutrients or a cat with a stressed out meowmy.
The key to complete wellbeing of a cat is arguably a human who cares enough to play regularly, steel themselves against vet visits, reads the ingredients on ALL the cat foods on Zooplus etc. etc. I bet you had double vision by the end!
This is not directed at you, Helen, just at anyone who might be considering raw but worried about the time aspect. Providing your cat takes to raw as Noah did (duck to water
) I am amazed how easy it is. You can buy heart ready diced, liver ready sliced - I freeze on a baking sheet lined with silicone paper so the wet offal doesn't stick
and the washing up takes seconds. Flip off the sheet and bag or box up free flowing. Chicken I buy
lazy person's ready frozen portions (drumsticks , thighs). I defrost two days at a time in a tupperware - offal a few cubes by eye, then top up with chicken to approx 400g total. It isn't any slower than commercial as I have to mash up wet or Noah eats the jelly and flips chunks on the floor.
Having said that I absolutely would NOT want to go through the rigmarole of encouraging a reluctant cat by progressively adding raw into their wet! Plus commercial wet gets fly eggs
by the end of a summer's day, I wouldn't want to leave that out whilst at work never mind raw and the extra worry about bacteria. Hygiene is part of the reason I buy ready-frozen chicken, I know it's not been sat in a butcher's window or supermarket chiller for days before I serve it.
I know some US raw feeders mince their own but it looks like an awful lot of
washing up effort and stress.