How to Prepare Raw & Healthy Cat Food at Home
You feed your family the healthiest food available---why not do the same for your cat? Recent recalls of commercial pet food have prompted many pet owners to look into making cat food at home. But creating well-balanced and nutritionally complete cat food isn't as easy as opening a can of tuna or broiling a chicken breast. According to Dr. Elizabeth Hodgkins, DVM, the perfect food for a cat is a mouse, but the next best thing is raw meat mixed with a precise blend of supplements.
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Things You'll Need
- Meat grinder
- Canning jars or plastic containers for storage
- Bowl
- Whisk
- 4.5 pounds raw muscle and organ meat
- Uncooked bones, or 4 tablespoons food grade bone meal and 2 tablespoons unflavored gelatin
- 2 cups water
- 4 raw egg yolks
- 4,000 mg taurine
- 30,000 IU vitamin A
- 3,000 IU vitamin D
- 800 IU vitamin E
- 200 mg vitamin B complex
- Salmon oil or cod liver oil
- 1/2 cup cooked pumpkin, or 4 tablespoons psyllium husks, or 4 tablespoons bran (optional)
Instructions
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Choose your protein source. Most cats do best with chicken, turkey, duck and other poultry, and rabbit meat is a good choice if you can find it. Some cats can't tolerate beef, lamb or venison, so these meat should be tried in small quantities. Do not feed your cat raw pork products or raw fish. Cats generally prefer a rotation of different protein sources. Ideally, you will want to purchase your protein as a whole carcass so that you can use the muscle meat, organs and bones from the same animal. If you must purchase muscle meat and organ meat separately, use four pounds muscle meat and a half pound organ meat, specifically hearts and livers. Butchers may be willing to set aside or special order organ meat for you, or it may be purchased frozen over the Internet.
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Chop up about half the muscle meat into small, cat-bite-sized pieces. Set this aside.
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Grind the remaining muscle meat, as well as the organ meat and bones, in a meat grinder. Cooked bones can splinter dangerously and should never be given to cats, but raw bones provide important nutrients and help clean teeth. If you cannot get raw bones, substitute four tablespoons of bone meal and two tablespoons of gelatin, added later with the other supplements.
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Place water, bone meal, egg yolks, taurine and vitamins in a large bowl and whisk them together until smooth.
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Stir in gelatin to the supplement mix. Add cooked pumpkin, psyllium husks or bran if your cat needs more fiber. This is completely optional and not necessary for most cats. Try making the first batch of raw food without the extra fiber to see how your cat does.
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Combine the ground meat, bones and organs, diced meat and the supplement mixture, and stir well.
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Portion out the raw cat food into canning jars or plastic containers. Store a few days worth of cat food in the refrigerator, and put the rest in the freezer.
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Feed your cat a few tablespoons of raw food two or three times a day. Adjust the amount of food as needed to keep your cat at a healthy weight level. Add a few drops of salmon oil or cod liver oil to your cat's food at every meal.
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Tips & Warnings
If you have any concerns about your cat's specific nutritional needs, talk to your veterinarian. A holistic veterinarian is likely to have more experience with raw food diets.
There are many varieties of frozen, pre-supplement raw cat food available by mail order or over the Internet if you do not have the tools or time to make your own.
According to Dr. Hodgikins, cats are evolutionarily designed to eat raw meat and are not troubled by any bacteria present in fresh, raw meat. However, you should always clean your kitchen thoroughly with vinegar or antibacterial spray after preparing raw cat food to avoid contaminating human food.
