Cat Food Recipes, making healthy cat foods at home is easy and good for your feline gourmet!
About making your own cat food
In this article, I will share with you my own cat food recipe and variations. For those of you who want to know exactly what you are feeding your cat and in what proportions, making the food at home is surprisingly easy and simple. There are some rules that make things easier and more practical. I will present these first.
To cook, or not to cook?
It’s been proven that kittens who are fed a diet of raw meats grow faster than those fed cooked meats. This is natural since the cat’s digestive system is designed to process raw meats. However, with today’s meat processing as it is, one must assume that all raw foods, even ones marketed for humans, may carry Salmonella or worse.
While it is unlikely that the consumption of these bacteria would actually cause your cat to become sick, it could however make your cat a carrier for the bacteria, which is a danger to all of his humans. Freshwater fish, when served uncooked may present another danger; that of tapeworms! Also one must consider that uncooked oily type fish are very high in Thiaminase, which can break down the vitamin Thiamin and lead to disease.
Lastly, there is a potential problem with feeding raw meats, (which generally have a poor calcium/phosphorus ratio). This can lead (especially in Siamese kittens) to osteodystrophy, a very painful, developmental joint disease. Because of all these reasons, I must say that I and many other experts do not advise feeding a raw diet to your feline.
Always use human-grade, high quality ingredients.
When choosing ingredients for your home made cat food recipes, always opt for human grade foods. Feeding meat alone is not a complete diet unless you serve the entire animal, skeleton and all. While meats and fish are good sources of protein and fats, they are unable to provide other, key ingredients your cat needs to be healthy such as vitamins A and D and also, calcium.
So you need to include other ingredients to properly fulfill your cat’s dietary needs. You will find my basic cat food recipe below. This gives the general mix of ingredients needed for a complete diet. Variations are listed below. For this recipe, I’ve used chicken,because Spooky likes it, but of course, other meats can be used. Cats, like humans enjoy variety, so it’s best to switch meats and/or recipes occasionally.
Cat Lady's Basic Cat Food Recipe
Ingredients:
5 ounces chicken (ground is fine)
1 ounce liver (beef or chicken)
7 Tablespoons uncooked brown rice
1 Tablespoon sterilized bone meal
1/8 Tablespoon iodized salt
1/2 Teaspoon olive or sunflower oil
Cook the rice, bone meal and oil in 1 cup water, and
simmer for 20 minutes. Add the meat and simmer for 10 more minutes. Let cool and blend thoroughly with potato masher or in food processor.
This recipe makes enough food to feed a medium size (6-8 pound) cat for three days ( ¾ cup per day) or a large (9-11 pound) cat for two days (1 1/8 cup per day). I find it’s easiest to buy small zip lock bags and portion the food out and then freeze it. Each day you simply take out one portion from the freezer and your cat food for the day is all taken care of. You may double or triple this recipe, but unless you do plan to freeze it, only make this amount, because lack of preservatives may cause bigger batches to spoil.
Recipe variations and adding variety to the diet
For a weight control diet, use very lean chicken or turkey or flaky white fish, and cut the oil by half.
To provide extra fiber, add ½ cup wheat bran and increase water to 1 ½ cups.
To help with flea control, Brewer’s yeast may be added when serving. Just add about 1/4 teaspoon per serving one time daily.
For optimum urinary tract health, I use over the counter cranberry capsules. The brand I use is Nature Made. The capsules are 405 mg each, but provide the equivalent of 6075mg of whole cranberries each. I open and empty 4 of these capsules into each batch of food. This helps maintain the proper PH balance to help kitty avoid those nasty UTIs.
Cat Lady note:
Always provide fresh water and encourage UTI prone cats to drink as much as possible. I find that freezing tuna juice in ice cube trays and offering the cubes helps a lot.
Foods to avoid
- Milk, because most cats are lactose intolerant. If you want to treat kitty, buy either canned “Cat milk” at the pet food store or lactose free milk for humans at the grocer. Many cat food recipes on the internet call for milk, so be cautious and use lactose free milk for these.
- Tofu, because it is very hard for cats to digest, and can cause loose and pasty stool. Also, it may cause excess mucus in your cat’s lungs.
- Onion, because it is poison to cats!
- Garlic is also poison!
To learn more about which plants and foods are cat-toxic and cat-safe, please visit my pages on these subjects.
Find out which foods and plants are safe for cats here
Find out which foods and plants are toxic to cats!
Learn the best procedures for feeding your cat and getting him to actually eat!
Your cat is a hunter and as such, likes his food to have that yummy “just killed” warmth to it. Warming up your cat’s food makes it much more appealing to him. Just be sure to test the temperature if warming in the microwave, so it doesn’t have hot spots to burn kitty’s tongue. All my cat food recipes are best served warm.
Use a dish that is wider than your cat’s whisker-span. If kitty’s whiskers touch the sides of the dish, he will most likely grab a bite of food, transport it onto your carpet or tile, and eat it there. This can be messy. Be thoughtful and provide a big enough dish.
I use the saucers that came with my glass plate set. Easy to wash, microwave safe and nice and flat so my Spooky’s whiskers don’t touch the edges. If you’ve got a finicky eater, check to be sure you are following these guidelines. You may find that your finicky eater just needs a different dish, or warmed up food.
Is it a good idea to put my cat on a vegetarian diet?
Absolutely not. Cats are meat eaters and THEY NEED MEAT. It is unnatural, incomplete nutritionally and even potentially deadly to deny your cat meat. All my cat food recipes and treats contain meat.
I understand that for a variety of reasons, some humans choose not to eat meat. Your cat has none of those reasons to avoid meat and every reason to expect you, as caretaker to provide the meat that he needs for his diet to be complete.
Yes, I realize that some commercial suppliers have cat food recipes that are meat free, and still complete because of added suppliments. While this may satisfy the nutritional requirements, your cat will still be missing out on what should be his primary protein source and long term effects of this kind of diet have not been studied.
This is just my opinion, but if the very thought of feeding your cat (or any pet for that matter) meat is offensive; you seriously should consider getting a vegetarian pet and NOT a carnivore.
What about treats?
Cat treats should comprise no more than 10% of your cat’s daily intake. For information on cat treats, please visit my pages on
Cat Treats
and
Homemade Cat Treats
I hope this page on cat food recipes has been helpful to you and your cat. I know you will feel good knowing that your cat is getting the same kinds of high quality ingredients that you and I enjoy, and of course, he deserves nothing less than the best. After all, he’s a cat!
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