Posted on 04/25/2022 10:09:56 AM PDT by nickcarraway
When Tom Radcliffe owned three Carmel-area pet stores, customers would often complain about how finicky their cats were. “They’d say, ‘My cat doesn’t like tuna, my cat doesn’t like chicken,'” said Radcliffe. “I thought, ‘Why don’t they make cat food out of mice?’ Cats eat mice. Ask Tom and Jerry.”
Now, after selling his stores and enlisting some expert help – including friends’ cats and animal nutritionists with Ph.D.s – Radcliffe is making cat food out of mice. In the process, he catapulted himself during a shaky pandemic economy to the forefront of what appears to be a burgeoning business opportunity. And his canned product, Mouser, has just become available around the Bay Area.
A month after its commercial launch, Mouser is for sale in pet and feed shops in California, Arizona and Nevada, and Radcliffe expects to expand to Oregon, Washington and Idaho as early as next month.
At Pets and More in Campbell, one of numerous Bay Area stores that have just started carrying Mouser, manager Erin Lee said customers have reacted to the product with surprise – and interest. “They pick up a can or two,” Lee said. “Right now it’s more of a novelty, but I don’t think that’s a bad thing. Their cats like it.”
Radcliffe, 55, started building his self-funded business just before the pandemic and has had to navigate regulations and nutritional standards, along with distribution and supply chain issues. “I feel like a mouse in a maze,” he said.
(Excerpt) Read more at mercurynews.com ...
I wonder if the “forest” he’s pictured in is Rip Van Winkle Open Space?
Being a mouse butche and having to use all those tiny filet and boning knives would really suck.
Don’t laugh - things may get creative for people too if President Retard’s famine occurs 🤪
Perfect for Disney pet stores
First mice, then rats. Soon cat food might provide a solution to dealing with Demonicrat politicians.
My wife purchases bags of frozen "pinkies" for her small snakes (garter/boa). When they get larger, she purchases live pinkies at the pet shop. Some of the garters are nearly ready for "fuzzies". The ball python and corn snake can handle live adult mice.
We can probably raise our own mice for the small number of snakes. The two cats and 7 dogs eat significantly more, so we've been buying ahead in anticipation of supply problems. We had been able to buy 3 x 40 lb bags of dog food from Costco until 2 weeks ago. Costco has a 1 bag limit now.
Yes, but is it made from all white meat from free range organic mice?
Yes, but is it made from all white meat from free range, vegetable fed, organic mice?
Next big thing: Dog food made from grass fed liberals.
Cats were domesticated by humans to kill mice and rats in our grain stores and primitive barns thousands of years ago. Cats by their very existence should be eating mice and rats. They like all other felines are obligate carnivores they not only have no need for vegetable matter it is harmful to their digestive health. We had barn cats growing up they never once got feed by us the lived exclusively by hunting in the barn and afield. If too many were a round we would set out traps and catch them with raw meat as the bait.
preparation for upcoming disney layoffs...
Bad idea! Rodents are loaded with every known pharmaceutical known to man from all those drug trials. Lol
Seems like an expensive cat food to produce. I imagine it will remain a ‘novelty’.
What about birds, rats and squirrels?
I draw the line at cooking mice.
Rodents are raised in a large scale in feed lots just like chickens for the pet industry and for pet food for snakes and other reptiles. They are grain feed just like you would a chicken or any other monogastric animal. 1/3 protein 1/3 carbs 1/3 polylipids. You can buy live mice or rats at petco for your Python to eat. Or keep one as a pet, mice tend to be very friendly once accustomed to their owner.
How many snakes do you have?
A friend who knows more about cats than I do said only 25% of cats will go after rats. I guess the rest are scared.
Whole mice are what cats were breed and evolved to eat. They are the best food for a feline. This canned food is ground up whole mice fur and all bank on it. Pressure cook mice, put the product in a grinder and evaporate off some of the liquid to make a slurry then can that slurry cats will go nuts for it they have the instinct to know that’s exactly what they should be eating. This guy should make a fortune doing what cats do naturally. I have a couple of cats feral on my land they leave carcass on the deck as gifts in exchange for the water bowls I leave out for them. That keep the rats and mice out of my steel buildings and garage where there blankets and heat lamps are at. It’s a fair trade they get inside digs and I get pest control it’s why humans made them in the first place. Domesticated cats are a human invention we literally made them from wild stock.
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