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Cat Food Recipes and Nutrition

You can find a lot of cat food recipes anywhere, on the internet, books, but bear in mind that cats are by nature carnivores. They aren’t designed to eat high carbohydrate diets with plants and grains – which are the very things in most commercial diets because they’re inexpensive to produce.

Many dry foods can carry up to 50% carbohydrates.

Learn to read a label – the ingredients listed are in order of amount.

If the first ingredients are grains this isn’t truly what your cats need. Cat food is convenient to measure out.

Dry food has an added risk in that cats consume much of the water in their diet as well. Unlike some other species they don’t drink enough sometimes to keep from being dehydrated.

Some people believe cats survive on a vegetarian diet but the fact is cats are carnivores.

Among the things meat is needed for is taurine. Cats cannot produce taurine in the body – it is needed in raw meat.

They also need inositol, a B-vitamin but don’t need vitamin C. Cats need much higher protein than people as well as higher fat content.

These are important notes! Cats deficient in taurine not only have eye problems (including cooked foods), much higher stillbirth rates and lower survival rate of kittens. Skeletal deformities increase. Excessive feeding of raw fish can block thiamine absorption.

A good cat food recipes can be

a pound of coarsely ground or minced meat or poultry,
quarter pound heart, gizzards, liver, chicken necks or lamb riblets
and 2 tablespoons fat. Raw of course.

If you're worried about how this is going to be a balanced diet to your cats, Feline Future offers a powdered premix for making homemade cat food. They also conveniently offers a few raw cat food recipes for you to use with their product.

At feeding use 6-8 ounces of water, some recommend using grapefruit seed extract, and pour over a serving size – two heaping tablespoons per cat twice per day. Kittens can be started with ½ to 1 teaspoon 4-6 times per day but chicken necks only with supervision over 8 weeks old. Pregnant or lactating queens may consume twice the maintenance amount.

Still others point to this is good for cats with teeth issues but the full effects of raw feeding can be seen best with whole chunks. The cat working on chewing her food is also cleaning her teeth naturally, removing the tartar and bacteria that cause dental disease. There is little information about raw feeding of cats as fewer seem to embrace the concept than dog owners, perhaps the idea that dogs are better able to handle it.

Cats will consume a whole bird (my cat below eat whole bird) and some larger cats will catch and eat squirrels and rabbit with little problem. Cats are an efficient killer and nature adapted them to eat what they kill, including a set of teeth that grinds it into pieces that is easy for them to swallow.

american curl eats a bird

Ground foods are more apt to harbor bacteria, but grinding and freezing foods halt this providing it’s handled properly when thawing. Fish once per week is fine but don’t overdo serving fish.

Many online cat food recipes involve cooking – which can destroy enzymes true carnivores need. After all cats don’t cook their food! Others list grains or vegetables in the recipes, again which carnivores don’t need. This provides filler and bulk, but not necessarily nutrition needed. One might be 2/3 cup cooked rice, 2 cans oil packed sardines, 2 chicken livers and ¼ cup parsley.

Still others contain flour and other grains – providing a cooked diet no better than commercial kibble. Remember – the more grain and less meat means the less cat nutrition your cats are getting. A healthy, happy cat is worth the effort.

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