Monkey's Blog

"Eyes blue and not near mild,

Markings extravagant and wild.

A sweetheart she shall be,

Little claws crawling but messy.

She likes it when people come to stay,

So she can have a new buddy for some play.

And when one person leaves one day,

She'll beg for someone to come and stay."

Monkey is a beautiful female Bengal who came to Avalo Cat Sanctuary through through Bengal Rescue in the Philly area last year. Monkey is a total love bug by the way. She has her own room here at Avalo. Our guests come to stay and Monkey go around under the covers, sleep on thighs, and talk very loudly to anyone who will listen. Her claws are also quite sharp and pointy. She especially loves it when Emily (author of the above poem) comes to visit and meows extra loudly in excitement!

Monkey had an IBD diagnosis prior to arriving and was on a special holistic food. After checking several poop samples (also for tri-trich) and switching to a variety of good, different foods it just wasn't getting any better. Her stools were always very soft and sometimes runny. She even often appeared 'hunchy' like and sore in her stomach.

I've been wanting to try raw diet for the cats forever, but due to time and $ contrainsts, and procrastination, never made the leap. She loves to eat raw chicken but needed a more complete diet. I wanted to take her off her hard food and the canned food (which she had been quite enjoying). So, we started on Instinct Rabbit Raw diet (rabbit is a cooling meat which helps to offset inflammation). I am thrilled to report that this week Monkey has had 3 days of normal BM's as well as looking far more comfortable in her abdomen. See picture below (which only a cat person can love!)

Monkey's normal poop!

I now am trialing 4 cats on this diet - Nala a Female Bengal with bladder stones; Roo a very active Female Bengal; Chasity, and older Female Bengal with Coccidia quite some time ago and a very sensitive stomach with soft stools consistently (fecal check all good).

I am delighted to say that Nala is in and out of the box less, Chasity has normal BM's and a less red bum, and Roo enjoys the diet a lot. Monkey, a week later, still has normal poop and no hunchy look to her! She's a lot more vocal and active too! This week we tried chicken which wasn't as much as a hit. Although they all are eating the chicken they don't fancy it as much as the rabbit. We have beef but haven't opened it yet. Last week we tried lamb and it was not a success. None of them cared for it, the smell turned them off even! It even caused two of them to vomit after eating only a taste. They turned their finicky cat noses up at this choice. So, off to Aiken again on Friday to pick up more rabbit :)